Midland Funny Girl

Mary Lou Cassidy of Midland has made her living as an oil and gas lawyer. “We had about 15 lawyers on the premises but I was inclined to attract an odd assortment of clients. Sometimes they could walk in the door and the receptionist would greet them and say ’I’ll bet you’re here to see Mary Lou.’ They would be barefooted and have an Indian headdress on. Later I would ask the receptionist how she knew that was my client. ‘Just a guess,’ she would reply.” Mary Lou is try- ing to retire but she started doing elder law, helping senior citizens. “They always need something.”

She has been entertaining theater audiences in Midland for a long time. She has the ability to make people laugh.

“I open my mouth and it comes out. I think you must have a sense of timing, a big thing in comedy.

You better be born with it. Either you got it or you don’t. You have to teach some comedy basics to a good actor and they could fake it, but I think comedy timing is something you’re born with and I have it.”

She has been involved in theater most of her life. “When I was a little girl I was loud and boisterous, a tomboy and all this stuff. My parents took me down to the Midland Community Theater, which was in its infancy then, about 1952, or 53 and they had a children’s theater group. Art Cole, the theater director, would teach the first class.

He wanted to work on our accents.

He had us say ‘The light is bright in the night.’ Then we would all shout back at him, ‘The laht is braht in the naht.’ He was from Ohio and couldn’t stand to hear us talk. He finally got someone else to teach the class.”

She has worked with the Midland Community Theater and 20 years ago started another theater group called The Maverick Players.

At first, shows were presented in a shopping mall and the American Legion building before moving to its current location in the VFW Hall. When they were in the mall, the Maverick Players did 4 shows a year.

“Now we can only do 2 because the air conditioning system isn’t too good. We do them in March and November.”

Mary Lou has acted and directed and done just about everything else you can do in the theater. These days she’s having trouble memorizing. She recalls a recent experience on stage. “I’d look at this actor and have to ask what act we were in. My Velcro is getting very slick.”

She started a nationwide playwriting competition that brought in some unusual plays like a Zombie Hamlet.

“In one, they had 2 window washers on a skyscraper talking back and forth and the dialog was good. They were having an interesting conversation.

But the writer didn’t know how to end it. He had them blast off into outer space.”