This story by Marion Umpleby was first published in the Valley News on March 6
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — In 2019, Kelsie Hogue put out a bubbly recording under her pop alter-ego Sir Babygirl, and seemed destined for stardom.
Instead, thanks to a period of struggle, she ended up in her own private hell.
Her new production “How to Stay Sane While Losing Your Mind,” which premiers with two shows at the Briggs Opera House this weekend, takes inspiration from that time in her life.
Half play, half rock concert, the show explores the myth of Persephone, the Greek goddess forced to ping-pong between Hades’ Underworld and Spring where her mother Demeter lives.
“She’s stuck between her master and mother,” Hogue said. “Where is her agency?”
That loss of agency is something the 32-year-old Hanover High School graduate can relate to.
Hogue was living in Brooklyn at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Her debut album “Crush on Me,” a glittery, pop-punk inspired exploration of queer desire, had just been released the year before, garnering her write-ups in Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
Suddenly she was earning enough to move out of her parents’ place in Hanover, where she’d been living while she worked on the record, waiting tables at Tuckerbox and substitute teaching to make money.
But it wasn’t long after she’d moved to Brooklyn that the pandemic halted all her momentum. The city-wide lockdown and the flare-up of a chronic illness forced Hogue inside. Around the same time, she experienced a repeat of a traumatic event that had happened to her years prior.
Hogue shut down, spending months stoned and immobile in her Bushwick apartment.
“It was this very Kafka-esque scenario where I’m in this room and I’m kind of turning into the furniture,” she said.
The trauma had felt like “a spiritual death.” Returning to daily life afterward seemed absurd.
“That was really the basis of ‘How to Stay Sane While Losing Your Mind’: I don’t know how to live in this world anymore,” said Hogue, who started writing again in fall of 2020.
In the show, Persephone is preparing to return to Spring when suddenly she’s transformed into a cockroach, a la Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.” She wonders if she’ll be accepted in Spring now, or if she even wants to return. These are questions Hogue herself wrestled with as she prepared to re-enter the world after lockdown.
“I’m like what people consider the most disgusting thing,” Hogue said, referring to the cockroach , but also how her relationship to her body had been marred in the wake of trauma.
Cockroaches may be considered grotesque, but they’re also tenacious.
“Roaches are the ultimate survivor,” she said.
Hogue knew she wanted to make the album with friends, even though she didn’t have many in the music industry. Still living in Brooklyn, she put out a call for queer musicians, connecting with Philadelphia guitarist Rose O’Malley and Larz Brogan, a Boston-based musician who’s played guitar with Julien Baker and indie band Palehound. Brogan would become Hogue’s partner and the musical director for the show.
Hannah Hoffman, who lives in West Dover, and tours as Dutch Experts, would later join on keyboard and backup vocals.
In fall of 2022, Hogue moved home again to focus on making the album.
She had a vision for the project, but issues with her sound engineers jammed up the process and drained her funds. Last year, she brought on Rigel Harris, a fellow Upper Valley native, to direct the show. Hogue and Harris tried to write a script, but quickly learned they did better with a looser structure.
“It’s been a really interesting lesson in trusting ourselves,” Harris said.
The performance at the Briggs was supposed to accompany the album’s release, but with time running out, Hogue decided to record the album live at the show, with Brogan, O’Malley and Hoffman joining her on stage as her companions in hell.
“This is how I was meant to make the album: I had to make the whole thing, and it had to burn down, and then I had to do it again,” Hogue said.
Hogue, who calls herself a “community-made artist,” always knew she wanted to be a performer.
“I was born a diva,” she said, laughing a little at the drama of the statement.
Raised in Hanover, Hogue learned saxophone from a young age, took voice lessons and performed in community plays before studying theater at Boston University.
“How to Stay Sane” marks her return to those Upper Valley roots.
Lebanon Opera House, for instance, donated platforms for the band to use, while members of JAM, the organization that oversees programming at the Briggs, is helping with tech.
“The community around here has been incredibly supportive and helpful. People want to support theater,” Harris said.
Last week, the band stopped by Lebanon High School to play a song for the music classes and encourage kids to come to the show.
“They were totally fangirling over Kelsie,” Harris said.
The show itself as has a DIY feel. Hogue’s bedroom in Hell is constructed from old mattresses strewn with second-hand clothes and CDs salvaged from the Listen Center.
The story takes inspiration from Persephone’s myth, but it also pulls from “The Princess and the Pea” and even the endurance-based performance art of Marina Abramovic, giving it a patchwork quality that Hogue finds fitting.
“What is queerness if not looking at how distorted reality is and being like ‘Oh, I’m going to play with it, too?’” she said.
After the show at the Briggs, Hogue hopes to take the show on tour, though she admits that funding it without industry support is daunting.
Right now, she’s just focused on pulling off this weekend.
“She can do it,” Harris said. “She has all the tools and this time she doesn’t have a label telling her what to do and it’s entirely her impulse.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Hanover native’s rock opera to debut in White River Junction.