In this episode, Chris Lindstrom engages in a thought-provoking dialogue with Irene Malloy, the creator of the solo show "Show Pony," set to premiere at the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival. Their conversation traverses various facets of Irene's artistic journey, beginning with her early involvement in theater and the subsequent evolution of her creative expression. As Irene shares her motivations for developing this solo play, she candidly reflects on the pressures of the entertainment industry, particularly the expectations placed upon young performers. This introspective examination provides a backdrop for the narrative of "Show Pony," which seeks to answer the poignant questions surrounding her departure from a career that once defined her.

Show Pony

Date(s): March 19, 2026 - March 21, 2026

Venue: Frechard Gallery

https://pittsburghfringe.org/events/show-pony/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom, and this part.

This is part of our preview for the Pittsburgh Fringe Festival.

I. I know this is outside of the typical Rochester and surrounding area content, but Fringe is universal, and we're thrilled to partner with the Pittsburgh team for their 13th year, running from March 19th to the 28th.

To learn more about all the shows and get Tickets, go to pittsburghfringe.org Tickets range cap out at $20, which wildly reasonable, and an entire event pass is only $150.

So make sure to get your tickets today and join the action over on Penn Ave. And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Irene Malloy, and I'm doing my show Show Pony.

It's a solo play.

It's a premiere at Pittsburgh Fringe this year.

Yeah.

And tickets for this show are $15.

And the venue is the.

I'm gonna guess, Freckard Gallery.

Over.

And it seems like a beautiful little intimate venue.

And the shows are running March 19th, 20th, and 21st, so just seems like a great venue for, you know, for your first kind of foray into this kind of a show.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I've.

I've worked with Philly friends before and done a lot of stuff in the city in New York, but I was, like, wanting to plan out a series of Fringe fests and.

And do a run of French fests around the area that I could drive to.

So I thought, you know, this one was perfectly timed.

It's, like, in a great spot in the year where there's not a lot of fringes going on in March.

So it's a nice place to go.

I have some friends there, and I thought it would be a great place to premiere the work and, like, have it in front of an audience, hear where the laughs are, where the pauses are so I can work out the kinks.

I'm going to do it three times in Pittsburgh, so I just thought it would be a really great place to try it.

And so far, all of the people I've connected with in Pittsburgh have been amazing.

Yeah.

I got to say, like, this is.

This is the first one I'm recording as part of working with Pittsburgh Fringe.

I met them at the Rochester Fringe last fall, and I was just entranced with the enthusiasm.

You know, how enthusiastic they were.

And one, I love Pittsburgh as a city.

It's an amazing city to visit and hang out in the, you know, My wife spent time there when she was younger and we're there at least once or twice a year.

It's kind of a great town for, you know, these kind of shows because it's, you know, it's a town that likes people trying things, it likes people experimenting.

And that's what the amazing thing about Fringe is.

So when you were, when you were looking at this show, when you were formulating it, what was, you know.

You know, I can read the description, but what was your, what was your goal with it when you were trying to formulate this?

Because this is a full, you know, almost hour and a half, one person show, which is a big undertaking.

Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping we come in at an hour 15.

It's because it has a lot of original songs in it that it sometimes creeps over.

But when I was originally coming up with it, I wanted, you know, I had had a whole career when I was young.

I worked a lot as a kid and a teenager and a young adult, and I kind of burn out on the entertainment business.

I'm still quite young, but I had had like a whole, a whole journey.

And then I went in some other directions and I still, you know, made work, whether it was directing or writing or songwriting over the years.

But I became a mom and I kind of grounded myself in other things and eventually over some time, my kids started getting older and I was like, you know what I want?

A lot of people want, like, come up and ask me, like, why did you leave?

You know, why did you quit?

Like, how could you quit?

How could you have a gig in Hollywood or, you know, have those kind of chances and just kind of walk away and do something else?

And so I was like, I kind of want to try to answer those questions.

So I started writing along those lines, like, here's all the reasons why I left.

You know, sexism and, you know, all kinds of crazy chaos and all the pressure and auditioning and the ups and downs.

Getting a job, losing a job and never knowing how you're going to pay the rent, like just a lot of.

And then when you do know how to pay the rent and you've got a gig, I just found myself, you know, not bored, but like, it's sort of monotonous when you're signed up and you're doing one thing, you're doing, you're continuing to do episodes every week.

I was young, you know, I didn't know.

So I wanted to answer those questions.

You know, you're young, you're like, sure, Sign me up.

I want to be on tv.

And then the next.

The next thing you know, you're in your makeup trailer at 5am and you sit in your trailer all day long playing video games, and you're like, what am I here for?

You know, you're having existential questions.

At 22, video games weren't nearly as

photorealistic as they are now.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the other thing.

Like, it's so.

It's so funny to.

So funny to think about, you know, think about what you were thinking at that time of life.

Right.

Like, and I think it's one of those things, like in retrospect and something I talk about a lot is how few people really know who they are at that age.

And like, the thing you're saying, like, oh, the monotony and the repetition of doing it, like, it sounds like a day job, which for me is the thing that facilitates everything else that I do, all my passion projects.

And then you look at that like, oh, yeah, that's the feeling of having a day job.

Cause that's what TV, especially at the time when everything was 24 episodes, assuming the series continued, you know, it's 20 to 24 episodes a year, which is a lot.

It's a lot of recording, a lot of memorization, a lot of scripts.

Yes, it is.

And it's very repetitive.

It's very normal.

You know, it's very Monday to Friday and the actors are there, like, really, like before the sun rises most times.

But a lot of days you sit around and you maybe film 15 minutes twice, but you're there for 12 hours, you know, so.

Yeah, it's just a.

Kind of a strange world.

Especially when you come up as an actor and you're doing theater and you're doing live stuff and you, you know, coming out of Philly.

I grew up in the suburbs of Philly, so I was doing so much in the city and in the burbs, and then to go into TV and sort of sit around in a trailer and be like, this is making it like.

Like, I understand, you know.

And like, when you're young too, you have the luxury of being like, I know it's a lot of money, but, you know, it's not all that great, you know, of course, when you're older, it's like those things, you have more perspective on those things.

But when you're 22, you don't, of

course, and you're like, oh, yeah, well, I'm bored, so I have to go on to something that's more exciting.

That's this.

And you can look at now like, wow, that, you know, in many ways that was, you know, there's stability in that consistency, you know, and also working well.

Yeah, yeah, that.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, you're all right.

No, go ahead, please.

I meant like there is.

If you're, if you're that kind of person.

Yeah, right.

And you don't know what kind of person you are yet when you make those decisions when you're 20.

And you don't know that either because you have all the bravado in the world and like no self knowledge at all.

So for me, it was like just a really hard landing because that was all I ever put any of my time and energy into since I was a really small child.

I went to auditions when I was 5 and 6 years old and then just like pushed through, pushed through until I got to a Broadway role when I was in high school at 17.

And then, you know, you just keep pushing and pushing and driving and driving.

And that was like a very core element of my relationship with my mother in terms of getting her attention because she was so busy.

But when it came to taking me to auditions and get jobs, all of a sudden she would be there.

So I was like, oh, I got to keep doing this, you know, so that we can connect.

So, you know, you drive and drive and drive and drive.

And I've had a lot of people come up to me after readings of the show and say, like, oh, my God.

You know, I, I was being pushed to be an athlete all my whole childhood and didn't wake up till I was 25.

Or I was playing classical violin and every day and my fingers were bleeding until I was 24.

And then I realized I didn't want to play the violin.

You know, I relate to those people and I think they, they enjoy this story because it's like, yeah, it's a reckoning.

Not that I figured out all the answers, but I was able to figure out who I was by walking away from something that seemed kind of obvious to.

To stick with, you know.

Well, and I think that's.

I.

That was exactly the analogy I was going to bring up is like, especially nowadays with the specialization in sports and the specialization in so many things, like this was way more common, especially with, you know, going through that entire journey of auditioning at the age of five and doing all that stuff.

You know, that was.

That was kind of the predecessor to where everything has gone nowadays with kids.

That specialization, that intensity, that loaded pressure that you know, and, you know, assuming even, even if it wasn't like toxic, like a lot of things are nowadays, especially with, you know, with the family blogging and, you know, the scandals around that and taking advantage of children, even if it's not a bad situation, it's still loaded.

It's.

It's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure for anybody.

It's a lot of pressure for a kid.

Absolutely.

100%.

I think that that's another kind of topic that I've been wanting to talk with people about and that people bring up to me.

I'm a music teacher, I teach lessons, and I'm a parent of two.

And people come up to me all the time and say, oh, my kid found an audition.

Should I take them to the city?

Should I do this?

And for a long time I was triggered, I was like, no, don't do it.

But then after lots of therapy, I was able to, hey, you know, there's a couple key things that I think need to be in place if you want to go for that in terms of like, does the kid have strong relationships around them?

Is the kid's self esteem in good shape?

Because if they're trying to fill voids with achievement or fame, then that can be a real danger zone.

But if they're pretty stable and they're driving the bus and they're saying, this is my one true calling, then you can tread carefully.

But I also tell parents, you know, you should be prepared to get some kind of training in entertainment law because you're signing contracts for a minor all the time.

You know, and people, when they.

A lot of parents might come to the business with stars in their eyes and say, oh, well, you know, I'm working with these famous people and they don't realize, like, no, you're actually signing legal rights away and you're representing someone who really can't speak for themselves yet.

So that's really important to realize.

Even though it might be very fancy to put them on American Idol or something like that, you also need to consider that, like, it's.

It's a business, you know, the people around them are not going to be a family.

And even though everyone likes to say, you know, we're all a family at this show and at that show, it's not for your kids.

It's not a family for your kids.

No, no.

And I think that's the other thing too is, you know, when you're talking about that, right.

That, you know, that consideration, you know, it's Just as toxic as when you're working any job and they say, oh, we're like a family.

It just means you're being taken advantage of most of the time.

Right.

But I think the other thing, when you're talking about that specialization, when you're talking about all that time especially, it's not one thing a year when you're a kid might be 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 projects a year you're working on.

Like, you also have to live a life because that's how in anything, whether you're.

You know, whether you're doing.

Whether you're just an interesting person to be around is actually living a life and not just.

Not just going after your craft, but you actually have to live a life because that's how you draw on.

That's how you become identifiable as a person.

Not just a.

Not just a person who is doing the craft of acting.

Like, you have to pull from things, too.

You have to be a person to portray a person.

Absolutely.

You need to have friends.

You need to have downtime, you need to have hobbies.

There's a line in my play where, you know, I'm a teenager and I'm working so many jobs, and I'm running back and forth to the city.

I'm skipping vacation for performances.

I'm staying on the choreographer's couch so I don't have to miss.

So I don't have to miss performances.

And.

And then there's finally a line that's like, yeah, everything's going so well, but there's a hole in my life where my life is supposed to be.

Yeah.

And I think that this happens to a lot of performers or exceptional kids, athletes, where they get to be 22, 23, and they're like, oh, I don't know how to do regular things.

Like, I don't know how to even maintain friendships because you're moving around a lot, and you're, like, best friends with the kid on this show, and then you're best friends with the kid on this show, and then they go, you know, everyone moves on.

It's all fleeting.

You're really missing that.

Yeah, that very basic, like, social set of skills.

And those.

Those things that really do make us like just a person, those things are neglected.

And that's why, you know, when I looked back, when I did my work and I read a lot of.

There's actually a lot of people have written memoirs about these types of things about, you know, getting past the hump of.

Of early success or success as a teenage, and they Talk about how you're actually missing a stage of development, right?

So when you're 18 to 25, you're supposed to explore, make mistakes, go to college, have supportive people, make friends, have supportive people around you and mentors.

And if you just take the fast track and you have millions of dollars and you're 18, 19, you skip that phase of development and you really can suffer for it over the later.

As you go, as you graduate 25, 30, 35, 40, you.

You're missing some pieces.

And I think, you know, I refer a lot to this whole movement of reparenting and inner child work.

You know, you can go back and try to replace it, Right.

You sign up for a bunch of classes and you, you go, okay, maybe I'm in my 40s, but I didn't get like this 19 to 21, so I have to do some things and I have to let myself make mistakes.

And everybody has to go through that.

You can't skip it or else, you know, it's another thing that makes it hard for you to relate to everyone else and how hard to just be a normal person.

Yeah, And I think that's also, it's also a specific effort, Right?

Like when everybody expects you to be a more fully formed person, people expect you to have had these kind of life experiences.

I can say, like, from a personal standpoint, like, you know, I, I had to work at being a better social person.

I had to work at developing relationships.

I had to work at, you know, how to age people.

It's.

It's hard because you're in an environment that's so controlled.

And like, I grew up in a small family business and I could sell all day, right?

I could sell and I could work and I could, you know, go to school and I was good at math and I could do all that stuff.

But all the other stuff, how to be a.

How to be a complete person, how to have confidence, you know, how to, how to really engage with somebody, not just talk to them, but engage with them and really be present.

That was effort.

How did you find, how did you find that process?

Because I think we went through that probably about the same time.

How did you find that process of learning how to do that?

For me, I really just.

I've read a lot of deep books and spiritual texts and did a lot of therapy.

And then I just sort of kind of.

I had to kind of let my ego go.

I had to just say, like, okay, ego, you're going on the shelf, and I'm going to just try to put that aside, instead of entering every room with, like, here's my credentials and like, do you want to hear me sing a song?

I would have to enter a room and just be present and really learn to listen.

You know, that was the first thing I really needed to learn, and it came alongside learning how to relate to myself instead of just, you know, are you ready for the audition?

Are you working hard enough?

Is, you know, always kind of looking through that lens of criticism of like, no, my worthiness is not based on what I'm able to produce in the world.

I was born worthy.

These kinds of mantras helped me to be able to just say, I can just be, and I can also be there for other people.

That really helped me to, like, because when you grow up as a kid who's pushed towards exceptionalism, everything is about you.

You're so self absorbed, whether you want to be or not.

Because in order to hit those marks and show up for auditions every day, it's like, there's always something you have to do to prepare, so you're not able to show up for other people, which makes real friendships impossible.

So I just started to, like, ask myself, am I listening?

I was always checking and am I showing up for people, like, the way I want people to show up for me and looking for that reciprocity and really just checking my ego all the time.

I have a post on my board, like, how to check your ego.

Gratitude, Release expectations, celebrate others.

Those are the three.

The three keys.

Well, I.

Sorry, I was cringing because, like, as soon as you mentioned that, like, getting, you know, that you're enough without doing things, it's the thing that I can never get in my head.

It's like, it's.

It's impossible for me to feel that.

But the other side, I think that's the thing that, you know, even if you're not there on one thing, it's that, oh, I can do something for somebody else.

Right.

It doesn't have to be coming back to me directly.

It's just, hey, let's do something good for somebody else.

Let's help them get their voice out.

Let's help them, you know, be a better version of their selves.

And that's the service that you can provide and that's that maybe that's the thing you can hold on to while maybe you're figuring out, yeah, I can just be me.

And that's okay.

Yeah, I think both can work.

But it's actually, I totally agree that, you know, you can really lose yourself in serving others.

And that can get you out of that funk of, like, oh, God, I don't want to think about myself.

I don't want to overthink myself.

So just start.

Put that energy towards, like, what can I do to hype someone else up?

What can I do to show up and, like, put this aside and then.

And then you do start to feel like a real person.

If you do that consistently.

Yeah, but what.

What is any.

What is life but being consistently doing the thing that you feel you want to be.

And eventually people see you that way.

Even if you might not quite see yourself that way, other people see you that way, which is the start to you feeling that way about yourself.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

I think it works that way.

I really do.

So I'm kind of intrigued about the.

When you're talking about an hour 15, you know, doing a solo show, was this a bit of a stretch from stuff you've done in the past?

You're doing, you know, being in episodes, doing Broadway, doing those things.

You're not the person talking or performing for an, you know, 75 to 80 minutes.

How did you work through that process of, you know, you mentioned testing, but how'd you work through that process of doing that solo and keeping it all bouncy and moving forward and keeping that momentum through that whole time period

of developing the show or actually, like, rehearsing the show?

Both.

Both.

Oh, man.

I think I was really.

I was driven by an impulse to make work, and this was like, put stories out into the world.

And for the longest time, I couldn't find scripts out in the world that really appealed to me.

It was so rare, so many, you know, when I was reading stacks of scripts every day, it was, you know, the turn of the century.

And I have to say, so many of those women written by men just did not resonate with me as anything that resembled a woman that I'd ever met in real life or that I was interested in playing.

The female characters were really used as kind of, I don't know, placeholders or pawns in.

In someone's hero journey.

So I was driven by this impulse to make something.

Didn't know if I could make something myself.

So I started trying writing.

I worked with this amazing program.

Matt Hoverman has a go solo program, which a lot of solo shows have been developed through that program.

So I started working with that group and with Melinda Buckley as well, who works with him.

And I just started writing week by week.

So Stories and then share them.

Stories.

Share them.

Share them with a group, and just start doing that regularly.

And then over time, you amass, like, a whole archive of stories, and then you start to see patterns, and you start to be able to shape that into something with an arc.

And then, I mean, honestly, you start to realize really big things about yourself and your life, like, things you didn't expect.

And that's sort of how the narrator role in the show kind of was formed, was the things that I discovered along the way.

So I thought I was telling a story of, like, why I left this career and what.

What I was thinking, and I started telling, like, well, this happened, and this happened, and then all of a sudden, it started to turn into, like, oh, there was something in me that didn't align, that didn't jive with what was going on out there with the scripts.

And so I need to write something for myself, and that's what I'm doing, which kept propelling me forward.

And then when I got into rehearsal, I was like, oh, damn, what did I do?

Like, this is the hardest thing to get up and do the whole thing yourself.

There's no ping pong, there's no volley.

Nobody's throwing you any cues.

It has been a Mount Everest to even just memorize and grasp all the different roles, the different arcs.

I had a very kind of.

I started with a very caricature version of my mom, and then as we started going, I was like, oh, I need to make this.

I need to become my mom and act her story for real, which was so intense.

And that made me discover things about her that I had never discovered, because, of course, I'm her child, and I take her for granted as a person.

But when you play her and you have to be her for real, it changes everything.

So that's been a light bulb for me.

But the whole thing has been a huge challenge that I created for myself for no other reason but that I have a really strong impulse to do it.

Did you end up asking.

I apologize, you know, if you're.

Did you end up asking questions, you know, to your mom about that process, or was that.

Were you just interpreting that yourself?

I was mostly interpreting myself.

I.

One of my mentors, had me do kind of a writing dive into her backstory to help me kind of realize sort of the midpoint of my show is like, trying to move away from being, you know, living her dream.

And so I did ask her some questions to fill in some of the gaps.

My mom had, like, a particularly challenging Childhood.

And so I knew basics of chapters, but I was like, what year did that happen?

I asked her a little bit about that, and then I came up with a monologue, and then a piece of that still exists in the show now, not all of it, but enough to, like, where you see that she was, you know, this was her way of connecting with me.

And she was so blocked by the traumas of her own upbringing, which were not processed, that this was the only way that the love could get through.

You know, was this obsessive kind of theater journey that we went on together.

And you have no way of knowing that as a kid, but when you grow, when you get older, you can sort of understand those things in a deeper way.

Yeah, I think we can also, you know, you know, not as somebody with kids, but, you know, we can look back as fully formed adults and see God.

Wow.

He, you know, you know, I look at my dad like, oh, he's a broken man.

But he had a goal, and his goal was to make us better than him.

And that he succeeded in it.

Didn't leave us without some, you know, without some emotional.

Emotional scars and other things, because he's a broken person in many ways.

They don't say that as a, you know, as a pure negative, because that's the reality of the situation, but that, you know, his drive for us to be better.

Yeah, Was difficult, but we were better.

And hopefully that we're better than.

We're better than he was, and that, you know, my sister's kids are better than.

Better than we are, and my brother's kid is better than we are.

And that's the whole thing.

And that's where you can always look back on and say, hey, yeah, good intentions.

But, you know, maybe the path wasn't always the cleanest as you'd hope it would have been.

Yeah, not clean at all.

Definitely messy.

But that's pretty common, Right.

With those generations ahead of us, they just didn't have.

They hardly didn't even have the language that we have now about the nervous system, about therapy, like, the things that are very common for us to hear, especially because we have social media and Internet and all those things.

They didn't have those.

And therapy, I think, for a lot of them is still looked at with some sort of stigma, which my friends and I are just like, what?

But all of our boomer parents are like, I would rather die than go to therapy.

And we're all like, we all go to therapy all the time and all the generations behind us.

Everyone goes to therapy now.

And they're like, oh, I wouldn't be caught dead going to therapy.

So what I'm kind of intrigued about as we're going to wrap up is you mentioned that there's original songs, and I saw that you're also a longtime songwriter and performer.

When did you find that part of performing in your life and how has that been through that journey?

So I was doing a lot of theater, as we talked about when I was younger, and I went out of town to do a musical in Minneapolis.

And once the show starts running, you just do the same show eight times a week, right?

You're 20 and you're like, God, I need something else to do.

So someone gave me a mixtape with Joni Mitchell songs on it.

And once I heard Joni Mitchell Blue, I was like, okay, I'm writing songs like, this is it.

This is everything.

This is somebody singing.

The voice of a real woman, like poet's poetry, the most gorgeous lyrics.

It's almost theatrical because of the storytelling that's happening.

She's also using her head voice in a way that, like, I would never hear on the radio.

So I was just blown away by hearing her.

So I bought a guitar and I just started trying to figure it out.

I started playing GC and D over and over again in my little apartment.

And that's when I moved to LA right after that.

And it was something that I used to kind of as a self soothing, you know, I was in between going to different sets and auditions, I would play and make up songs.

And then it just grew from there.

It was like it was part of what was happening to me was like my selves were splitting off.

I was like, I was gonna go this way, but, you know, I want to write my own words and I want to learn how to be a writer.

I want to express something in me that might be weird or unique, but I'm tired of trying to fit this mold.

It's too much pressure to fit this mold.

And if I want to be creative and explore, then I got to write my own thing.

So that was the first time I really started writing much of my own anything.

And it grew from there.

And it was great because when I became a mom and I left Hollywood, I was able to make things.

In acting, you need so many people and so much money a lot of times to make anything.

But as a songwriter, I was able to put my baby down to bed, go play, you know, a set with my guitar by myself and.

And come up with new material.

You can write A new song in the bathroom and then go on that night.

You know, it's all just up to you.

So that kind of freedom was a real contrast to the.

The lifestyle of, like, memorizing lines and auditioning and, you know, be this today, be this tomorrow, you know, be the nice girl, be the bad girl, all that stuff.

So it was the.

It was the foil, and it was.

And it was how I learned how to find myself, like, how I started really finding my own voice separate from that.

Well, you're allowed to cast yourself in whatever role you want for that specific song.

Like, you can be.

But that is the multifaceted.

That's the multifaceted thing about a whole person, is that, yes, you can be and are all of those things and can portray them in the way you want to, because you're making the choices.

You can choose for this song.

I am a caricature of this, or I'm the complex version of this.

And you can be all the things in the way you want to be.

Yeah, there's so much freedom in that when you're trying to figure out who you are.

You can write stories in the third person.

You can read an article in the news and write a song.

You can see an episode of television and write a song.

And it just was a very freeing outlet for creativity and continues to be.

We just recorded a new album two weeks ago.

I hadn't been in the studio proper like that with a whole band in 10 years.

It was so exciting.

So I'm really excited about that.

It has a couple songs from the show on.

On the album, because the show just opened up all these new avenues of writing, you know, all these new kinds of titles and writing from writing about anger and shame and regret and all these things.

I think when I was young, I thought you could only write about love, romance, you know, when you go to songwriting class, you know, 101, it's all romance.

But getting into writing about these other emotions has been such an exciting trip.

And I teach songwriting in.

To young people, and I just.

I think it's the coolest way to process life.

Has.

You know, I'm kind of intrigued.

So how does.

Has teaching been.

Has teaching been something that has helped you engage with your kids differently?

Or how.

Is.

How did that all come about?

Is that.

Has that been, you know, an important part of your adult life, is the teaching?

Yeah, it actually.

It just sort of crept in quietly, but over time, I started to realize how much you get, how much you learn from teaching.

And you also.

I Teach singing a lot to kids.

And I had many vocal coaches growing up, so I get to have that experience where you have a child in front of you and you're teaching them about their breath and you're almost about to say that thing that someone said to you back in the 80s, like, stand up straight and project, you know, and then you stop yourself and you go, like, I'm not saying that to this child.

Like, she's clearly dysregulated and needs to breathe and get some water.

And I'm not going to say those things that people said to me back then because that's messed up to say.

So Diary teaching gives me the opportunity to, like, rewrite some of that and to sit and to like, you know, I talk with teachers about this a lot.

You know, that's one way you can tell if you're doing enough work on your own life story is like, are you able to stop or are you just going to say the things that you heard people say to you?

Even if you think about it, it's not really what you want to say.

It's not really the kind thing to say.

And you're looking at a nine year old.

Right.

So do you have to be tough?

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's the right choice.

Well, Irene, this was a real pleasure.

I really enjoyed getting a chance to get to know you a little bit.

And if you want to put out the plugs for the show again, coming up on March 19th to the 21st over at the Freckard Gallery over on Pen Ave.

In Pittsburgh, throw out any other plugs you need to do.

I really hope that people come out and give the show a chance.

It's the first time I'm putting it up.

There's a lot in it to entertain and there's a lot of interesting stories of when I lived in Andrew Lloyd Weber's house for the summer when I was 18.

And, you know, so many interesting stories of my journey.

Meeting record executives and working with Andy Richter on Andy Richter Controls the Universe for two years.

And so there's interesting stories in there.

I had a wild ride.

I love sharing it with people.

And yeah, I just hope people come out and check it out.

And I would love to talk to people afterwards.

I love talking about all of these topics with people.

I hope it gets conversation going.

And I'm excited to go to Pittsburgh.

So come on out and say hello, see the show.

That's awesome.

Thank you so much for joining.

And if people are interested in traveling up to Rochester sometime.

Check out lunchadore.org for all the stuff going on here.

We have a lot of interesting interviews, whether or not you are here or not.

And thanks so much for listening.

Make sure you go to pittsburghfringe.org to get your tickets and we'll see you on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the lunchroom.

Thanks so much, Chris.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

Irene controls her own universe.