‘Joplin’ actress has gotten high marks for portrayal, uncanny resemblance
Joplin personified Kacee Clanton embraces singer’s true nature in Alley Theatre production
Kacee Clanton’s voice has a low rasp, a touch of vibrato and a drawl that might not be too far away from Port Arthur, Texas.
She sounds a little like Janis Joplin, the blues and rock singer who is that city’s most famous daughter. Though she assures you she’s not trying.
“No one can do an impression of Janis,” Clanton says. “You still have to be you. You have to have her spirit come through your body and your mouth.”
Clanton, a rock singer from Northern California, knows Joplin, and her songs such as “Piece of My Heart” and “Mercedes Benz,” well. She has the title role in the Alley Theatre’s production of “A Night With Janis Joplin,” a musical showcase running through Sept. 18. In it, she sounds, looks, talks and walks like the singer who died in 1970, and she often meets fans afterward who believe — or believe they believe — they’re in the iconic
singer’s presence.
But Clanton knows impressions are superficial, and there’s no room for superficiality in a Janis Joplin show.
“To play someone like Janis, who lived honestly and out in the open, you have to be yourself,” she says. “You have to find her in yourself so it can be authentic and organic.”
That’s no cakewalk, but one that Clanton strides through better than most.
Friends and bandmates noticed Clanton’s Joplin-esque growl early, and, in 2001, Clanton found herself playing Joplin in the Off-Broadway show “Love, Janis.” And in 2013, she joined the first production of “A Night With Janis Joplin” at the San Jose Repertory Theatre.
Clanton was praised for her exacting portrayal and her uncanny resemblance to Joplin. She says she’s studied nearly every video the singer appeared in, and that precision helps transport the audience to another time and place.
But even though “you take the bits and pieces, you need to help your audiences suspend disbelief,” Clanton says, adding, “nobody can sing like that.”
She means it not only spiritually but literally since Joplin’s guttural rawness is terrible for the voice and impossible to keep up in a two-hour show. “It’s a really unhealthy way to sing. I had to spend hours and hours honing a technique that will allow me to survive it. ”
Clanton wanted to avoid impersonation, which is all about what’s going on outside — think Jenna Maroney’s Jackie Jormp-Jomp, the fake Joplin biopic in “30 Rock.” A portrayal in a true sense of the word is internal. So Clanton approached her role from the perspective of a young woman surrounded by thrashing fans but more alone than anyone would ever know.
For all of Joplin’s rock ’n’ roll loudness, there was also a quiet desperation.
“Janis didn’t live long enough to realize all this, unfortunately,” Clanton says. “She would have understood all this down the road, but she was living in the middle of it. I have the benefit of afterthought, of living through it, which makes it survivable for me but also very real.”
Much has been said, written and documented about Joplin’s death. That’s exactly the tragic story that her younger brother, Michael Joplin — he was in high school when she died — wanted to avoid with “A Night With Janis Joplin.”
“We wanted people to smile when they walk out,” says Michael Joplin, who came up with the idea for the show with sister Laura before taking it to writer-director Randy Johnson. “We know she died of a heroin overdose when she was 27. I wouldn’t call it trite, but it’s in that realm. I have nothing against that because I’ve watched many documentaries, like (the 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary) ‘Amy.’ But it was extremely sad. This is more about who she was rather than watching a car wreck in action.”
That’s why the vision for “A Night With Janis Joplin” is decidedly different from something like “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” the 2015 documentary about Joplin’s music and battle with drug use. It isn’t an examination of a life cut short but rather a dreamy, concertstyle re-creation of the singer’s spirit on the stage, featuring Joplin in duets with musical influences Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Odetta, Nina Simone and Bessie Smith.
“This play is what I want to remember about my sister — fun, smart, incredibly talented,” Michael Joplin says. “We told Randy, I want to be able to visit my sister for a couple of hours. We had zero input telling him what to do. He just asked a million questions, went home and wrote. And it was right on the money.”
Clanton agrees and says the music is the star of the show. Still, hints of unraveling are there, poking subtly through the live-out-loud persona.
“There’s a veil between you and everyone else,” she says. “During that show, that veil lifts a little but drops back down again.”