Two years ago when the world shut down and pretty much everything considered "live entertainment" was canceled, Julia Sweeney was just weeks away from filming her latest one-woman show on the Fox Theater stage.
The Spokane native and high school employee of the Fox during its movie-house days had already performed Older & Wider here back in 2018, but now she wanted to film it at her hometown theater, for posterity and broader public consumption.
Then, like the rest of the world, she was forced to go home and hunker down. And wait. And wait. And wait some more until her rescheduled date at the Fox wasn't waylaid by some new variant or lockdown.
That date finally arrives Saturday when Sweeney will film two Older & Wider performances (directing them herself), and then go immediately to work editing the special in her brother's Spokane condo.
While she's excited, there were times during the past couple years Sweeney definitely thought about just dropping the whole idea.
"I had six months where I would wake up in the night and go, 'I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't care that it's recorded for all time,'" Sweeney, 62, says on a phone call with the Inlander. "I know what you have to do to shoot something. It's not easy. I have one friend who just kept saying, 'Julia, you already have what most comedians need. You have the material. You have this beautiful space. You just have to do it.'"
Sweeney also has something else most comedians would probably envy — a perspective on her career that is clear, and a confidence that she could walk away from the spotlight right now and be just fine.
That insight came, she says, when she was locked down with her husband, Michael, and daughter Mulan in their 1,350-square-foot house that was just big enough for them all to have their own space to write, work or go to school. The experience of staying home and sharing cocktails nightly at 5 pm gave Sweeney a glimpse of what retirement might look like.
And she really liked it.
"I feel guilty saying this, but for me, it was fantastic," Sweeney says of her pandemic life. "It was really kind of life-changing, actually. I'm a social person; I have a lot of friends. But I also love to be alone, and I always do feel like I'm cheating that side of me."
Sweeney was busy during the pandemic to be sure. The Saturday Night Live veteran had roles on three different series that all did some filming during the last two years (American Gods, Shrill and Work in Progress) in addition to planning for the eventual Spokane filming of Older & Wider.
Sweeney enjoyed those acting experiences, but notes that it was not much fun to film during the height of COVID-19. American Gods in particular gave her a juicy send-off: "It ended with me getting my throat slit, which is a hilarious thing to do." But bouncing between three cities where the shows filmed, and being trapped in hotel rooms quarantining when not on the set, made her appreciate home all the more. And also maybe realize she was over the acting thing.
"I don't think I'll audition; I'm not going to go after things," Sweeney says. "I like to just have a quiet life at home. That's what I want now."
Between learning the art of craft cocktails so she could impress her husband and daughter when it was her turn to bartend — "it wasn't until the pandemic that I started taking drinking seriously" — Sweeney spent some of her home time reworking sections of Older & Wider. Spokane will be the first audience to see the "new" show, and perhaps the last. Sweeney doesn't picture doing much in the way of live stage work going forward.
"I bet 70 percent of the show is exactly the same show I did back in 2018," Sweeney says. "But I've written a new opening to talk about my feelings for the theater, which are strong and deep."
Sweeney made popcorn at the Fox as a 16-year-old; "I never actually sold tickets, that was like a higher level." The first movie she ever saw was at the Fox, The Sound of Music in 1965. And when she was little, before the Fox was converted into a triplex cinema, she'd go watch children's movies there every Saturday. For 50 cents, kids could catch a double-feature of movies like The Love Bug and The Shakiest Gun in the West.
"I lived there on Saturdays," Sweeney says. "And kids just screamed the entire movie. I mean, like it was a Beatles concert. Just screaming and beating each other up. But I could still see the movie, and I loved it."
The other new section of Older & Wider is about the pandemic and her mother, who still lives in Spokane in an assisted living facility. Sweeney's mother suffers from dementia, and she touches on that "most particular kind of heartbreak" in the show just a little bit.
Once Sweeney's done with Older & Wider, Spokane might be one of the few places where fans will see her in person, but it will likely be in a coffee shop when she's visiting her mom. Otherwise, she's embracing the idea of working at home, progressing on a screenplay about the Mamas and the Papas' "Mama" Cass Elliott that Sweeney started during the pandemic and doing some other writing. But not too much writing.
"This is the formula I've come up with: I'm going to write 15 hours a week. Which I do, and I like it," Sweeney says. "But I'm not going to write 30 hours a week. And I'm not going to have any expectations of how it turns out. And then the rest of my life is just going to be me being a retired lady."♦
Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider • Sat, March 26, at 4 and 8 pm • $25 • Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox • 1001 W. Sprague • foxtheaterspokane.org • 509-624-1200
