Thoroughly honored Milly

LASHING OUT Murphy caked it on during her Orchid years.

Brigid Murphy remembers the exact details of how the character Milly May Smithy leapt—fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’ forehead—into the performance artist’s imagination. The setting is key: a dive bar in a broken-down downtown district of mid-’80s Nashville. Such Millys were everywhere then, with their beehives and cat-eye glasses, Murphy says.

Having developed a love of the Grand Ole Opry during childhood road trips from Chicago and Florida, Murphy had returned to visit the Nashville institution as an adult. One night, not far from the Opry, Murphy recalls, “I was in Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. I went to the washroom, and the door opened and this woman walked in with bad painted eyebrows, frosted lipstick, a beehive and a polyester pantsuit.”

An inspired Murphy soon channeled the character for a performance piece with three songs and a boom box. Not long after, Milly’s Orchid Show was born—initially a fringe act with a rotating ensemble that graduated into a Chicago legend. In case you missed Milly’s heyday, you’ll get one shot to relive it when a number of Orchid Show alums gather Saturday 26 to bestow Murphy with Live Bait Theater’s career-retrospective Grigsby, an award that honors pioneering solo performers.

Although they were retired a few years ago after almost two decades, the boisterous monthly Orchid Show hoedowns, initially staged in 1987 at the since-shuttered Lounge Ax, eventually packed the Park West throughout the ’90s. To mount the Mother of All Variety Shows, Murphy became producer as well as performer, corralling an ever-more-impressive roster of top-drawer musicians, monologuists and acrobats. She then shared the stage under the guise of the zany Milly, a musical MC from Tennessee, clad in sequined bodysuits, a very big wig and eyelashes so long you could dust with them.

“I was a showgirl,” Murphy recalls with a grin. “I wanted it to be like a vaudeville show, with vaudeville-style acts mixed in with performance art and films and dance. Then it wouldn’t be so precious. Most of the performance art [at the time] was coming out of the [School of the] Art Institute, and it was all so serious and hard to access.”

For 17 years, audiences ate it up. One look at the guest list demonstrates why: The menagerie included Ira Glass, David Sedaris, Lynda Barry, Eric Bogosian, Nora Dunn, Frank and Malachy McCourt, Syd Straw, Cheryl Trykv and David Cale. Among those making a Chicago debut under Murphy’s auspices were Blue Man Group (little known outside of New York then) and Michael Patrick King, who went on to produce, write and direct Sex and the City. Murphy was the Aaron Spelling of the Chicago cultural scene, able to spot a hot talent and produce a show like no one else.

The Orchid Show included plenty of group routines—such as her hilarious shtick with the Coal Diggers, Milly’s less-than-polished, leggy male dancers. At her core, though, Murphy is a solo performer: Her roots grew in that scene, and today she cultivates that talent in others. Which is primarily why Live Bait’s Sharon Evans chose Murphy for the second annual Grigsby. “Through Brigid’s efforts,” Evans says, “the Chicago audience for solo art greatly expanded, and solo artists who worked with her enhanced their careers.”

The monthly Orchid Show went on hiatus in 1993 while Murphy battled lymphoma; she revived it on a saner, twice-yearly schedule in ’95. “The show became more conscious,” she says, “because I became more conscious about what I put into the world.”

Months of aggressive cancer treatment tend to crack open a person’s life, and Murphy’s no exception. A graceful and genuine survivor, she’s happily married (to actor Marc Grapey) and living in Rogers Park, where she teaches the twin skills of writing and solo performance. Multifaceted as ever, she’s shopping her cancer story to book publishers while converting bowling bags into chic totes. Future projects for the stage include North Side/South Side (working title), a Chicagocentric Christmas show she’s developing for Live Bait featuring two of her students.

As honored as she is about the Grigsby, Murphy admits to some reticence about being feted. “I was like, Just take me to dinner and give me a plaque,” she jokes.

Murphy receives her plaque, and sings for her supper by performing part of her show, Without a Song, at Live Bait Theater Saturday 26.