THE eclectic collection of characters who make up the repertoire of Co Tyrone-born comedian Kate Perry are well travelled, having been critically received at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and by audiences in San Francisco and London.
The same can be said of their creator, naturally – Perry has managed to make her way from Dungannon where she studied at the Convent of Mercy Primary School, to London, South Africa and the United States, where she lived on air force bases after marrying a GI. And yet the humour that flows from Carmel, a sharp-tongued pensioner, or Mary, an unhappy Amish housewife, transcends boundaries of place or audience.
Perry's one-woman show has garnered critical acclaim in Britain and the States, and she's hoping for more of the same when she brings it to the Craic Theatre in Coalisland next month.
The show – something of a homecoming for the funnywoman, who lives in London and combines her stage work with writing radio and screenplays – will see Perry perform at the former site of the Coalisland Weaving Factory, where her mum worked as a young teenager.
"I can't wait to get back home," Perry says. "It's lovely to return to your roots every once in a while and it will be strange to be performing where my mother once stood as a worker in the old weaving factory which is, of course, now the Craic Theatre.
"My mother left school on a Friday at the age of 14 and was straight into a job on the Monday, and for me, for whom the world is my oyster, it is a strange feeling."
Before being lured by the draw of the stage while working as an events manager at the Fort Mason Centre in San Francisco, Perry had a knack for imitating people and personalities, and the characters who make up The Very Perry Show have been nurtured for many years.
"I'm constantly alert and aware to what is going on around me and I will see people, listen to them, and perhaps file something away and keep it," Perry says. "The characters are born of people I've met, even from way back to when I was a child. I've made them into composites of people, I suppose, and I've been able to tap into what I've heard and seen.
"It's great that I've been able to transport the show from the Edinburgh Fringe to the San Franciso Arts Festival, and I haven't had to adapt the characters in any way. Humour is humour, no matter where in the world you are, I think. If you take Carmel, for example. Here you have a woman who lives on her own, is getting on in years, and who has an obsession with Ken Barlow from Coronation Street.
"And there's Mary Peacher Bender, an Amish lady, who is, behind everything else, very unhappy in her marriage. I try to write about humanity and I think there is a certain amount of pathos which comes through in the characters too. They've all got a story behind them."
Perry's first forays into stage writing came with No Mate For The Magpie and My Name is Kate Perry and I’ve Been Drinking in the early 1990s. She studied for a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin and has written for RTÉ, Woman’s Hour and BBC Radio 4.
Double Olivier Award winner and Game of Thrones actor Conleth Hill, Episodes star Tamsin Greig and Doreen Keogh, The Royle Family, are just some of the actors who have performed her work.
:: Tickets for The Very Perry Show at the Craic Theatre on February 24 are available from the Box Office on 028 8774 1100 and online at www.craicartscentre.co.uk
