Member Spotlight: Erin Duffy

In promotion with our upcoming Cabaret Fest October 1st & 2nd, here is the next installment of our member features.

One cannot speak of TCCAN without the mention of Erin Duffy. Not only did she serve as our first president through a number of terms, but she was part of the original seed that brought us into being after conversations with other local colleagues that had experienced the Yale Cabaret Conference. It was predominantly her vision to create some of that same ideology with the population of cabaret artists here in the Twin Cities. She used her business sense to establish our ranks which aligns with her strong artistic integrity. A consummate cabaret presence, she has found a loyal audience with her recent show I Never Went Away in collaboration with Ben Krywosz & Tom Linker.  
 
Why Cabaret:
Like everyone else noted so far, she is drawn to the intimacy of the art form. "I enjoy every aspect of deeply connecting with an audience by telling the story of a song. Ever since I was very young, when I listened to a piece of music, it was always the lyrics that grabbed hold of me and took me away. My imagination would just take off. The words became mine and I would hear and see the stories for each song and live them, making them my personal songs." She originally juggled theater as her creative outlet. Then steered her vocation into the corporate world. "It wasn't until I was older that I discovered Cabaret. And, when I did I thought I finally found home." Erin gets gratification from conversations with audience members after a performance. Connections that are mutual resound with her. In particular, tapping into a lyric and finding that listeners identify with her discovery in the same way. "I found very often after performing maybe a standard or very familiar tune, audience members would come up to me and say "Is that what that song is about?" or "it's like I never really heard that song until you sang it."

Cabaret Snapshot:
Erin talks in her one-woman show about the magic of meeting Julie Wilson. She was in Chicago for a friend's celebration and Julie was the entertainment at that party. When she entered the room "she was the most stunning woman I had ever seen, with her hair - a gardenia perfectly inset. She walked up on the stage, looked out over the audience, smiled that gorgeous smile and began. She owned that stage, she owned that room! And although there were 100 people in the room I felt in that moment that it was just she and I."