THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Thursday, March 27, 2003 Unless you live in Pittsburgh. Sharon "Mama'' Spell makes her home there, regularly performing what she calls "comedy cabaret.'' "I hear a song and I think, 'I can't believe that got written,' '' Spell said. Which would explain why she plays weird ditties such as Is She Really Going Out With Him? (with audiences providing the "where'' part) and Limp Bizkit's Nookie on her live compact disc Stories With No Morals. Spell will bring her "comedy cabaret'' to MadLab, 105 N. Grant Ave., at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. The art major from Hattiesburg, Miss., said a friend held a cabaret night at a Pittsburgh club a few years ago, and Spell put together a show that was "in one fell swoop an amalgam of stand-up, vaudeville, burlesque and comedy.'' "Performing comedy was always a dream for me,'' she said, but she didn't like doing straight stand-up. "It was more like I was reading a script.'' Though once "very shy,'' Spell has overcome the "fear of public ridicule'' by following Andy Kaufman's style -- to "just let things happen.'' Her whimsical Southern manner and offbeat humor -- "I met my husband the old-fashioned way . . . on the Internet'' -- is abetted by some stuffed animals and her trusty Casio CTK-631 keyboard. She's threatening to tap-dance at Saturday's show. When she's not painting or writing in journals, Spell waits tables and sings in a punk-rock band called the Mofones. "With all these projects, something's gotta give. The payoff is when the audience laughs in my comedy or when they rock out in my music.'' |