Within five minutes of meeting the Baltimore-area writer and performer Susan Mele, there are several interesting things you are likely to learn about her:
In 1999, she was chosen as the official Nabisco Snacker for the state of California, based on a touching and profound monologue she composed about a Wheat Thin. That same year, she was a finalist on the Nickelodeon cable channel's contest for the funniest mom in America. (She and her husband have four children, all of whom, luckily, share their mother's penchant for wearing oversized elf hats in public places.)
And Mele once went shoe shopping while dressed as a chicken, communicating sizes and preferences to the sales clerk in oddly expressive "bok boks." (Yes, the store rang up her purchase.)
After one such sojourn in her yellow feathered suit - though this time, she was singing to a complete stranger - Mele turned to find that a crowd of perhaps 30 onlookers had gathered and was filming the interaction on their cell phones.
The performer was startled and did a double-take. "You'd think people had never seen that kind of thing before," she says.
Mele - sadly, sans chicken suit - is bringing her offbeat sense of humor to Baltimore Theatre Project for two weekends starting tomorrow, where she will perform her newest, one-woman show, "Rock, Paper, Scissors ... Knife."
The show is billed as a journey "through good, bad and ugly relationships" and features Mele's best-known character, the down-on-her-luck cabaret singer, Roxi Starr. Baltimore theater fans had a chance to meet Roxi last month, when the intentionally off-key chanteuse performed her cabaret act for two weeks at Center Stage.
"Roxie always plays games with the audience, and one of the games she plays is "Rock, Paper, Scissors," says Mele. "The basis of her act is explaining how a knife got into the game, and some of the other things she's done with a knives."
The actress shakes her head in mock-solemn disapproval. "Roxi is a bad, bad girl," she says.
Mele, 42, also plays eight other characters in the show, from Roxi's best friend to her much-abused former boyfriend, from her mother and sister to her director. Late in the show, she will ask audience members to tell their own relationship stories, which Roxi will attempt to top with even more sordid details from her past. Mele will be inventing much of the material as she speaks.
"I just get a stream of consciousness going," she says. "If I'm stumped for 10 seconds and nothing comes to mind, I'll latch onto a word, a prop, a motion. The key to improvisation is trusting that something that small will take you where you need to go."
Making up amusing stories comes naturally to Mele. She is the fifth of six children born to a Chicago schoolteacher and corporate event planner, and each of her siblings, she says, is funnier than the next. After graduating from Niagara University in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in English and theater, Mele returned to her hometown with her new husband, a biochemist.
She spent several years kicking around the Windy City's famous improvisational theater scene, studying with Second City founder Del Close. With other troupes, she appeared in two outlandishly titled shows that quickly became cult classics: "Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack" and "Vampire Lesbians from Sodom."
After the couple moved to Bel Air in 2002, Mele earned a master's degree from Towson University's theater program and continued writing and performing original shows. She'll reprise "Rock, Paper, Scissors ... Knife" at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre in Frederick this summer, and has applied to be part of the New York International Fringe Festival in the fall.
Though most of these gigs pay, well, chicken feed, Mele can always fall back on her gig delivering singing telegrams while outfitted with two wings and a big red beak.
"I feel like I've been put here to help people discover their sense of fun," she says. "I like to think that I spread joy one feather at a time."
If you go
"Rock, Paper, Scissors ... Knife" will be performed 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Jan. 16 at Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 E. Preston St. Tickets are $10-$20. Call 410-752-8558 or go to theatreproject.org.