Sheila Head
Interview Highlights
Humor is about identification. When you make people laugh, you can reach them on an emotional level.
If you are doing creative work, be persistent. Keep doing it. Stay at it.
A big part of being a woman is being an adult, taking care of yourself and others.
Women can “whip” each other up, launching each other forward in our lives and careers.
Find Sheila Online:
Website: sheilahead.com
Other social media: @hoohahead
Sheila’s Current and Upcoming Work:
Phoenix Theatre Company just presented two staged readings of Sheila’s play Hollywood Nurses (written with Peter Michael Marino) on May 13 and May 15!
“A lot of womanhood is taking care of each other on our journey forward.”
Bio
Sheila Head (she/her)
Television/film credits include: "FBI: Most Wanted, ""Orange Is The New Black," "The Michael J. Fox Show," “Odd Todd,” “Split the Difference,” “Salon Royal,” “As the World Turns,” “Nail Polish.”
Theater credits include: No Exit, Regrets Only, Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise, Creation Nation with Billy Eichner. Comedy: Sheila appears in NYC and LA as Sandra O’Day, ex-con motivational speaker with anger management issues. Other comedy appearances include PS NBC, Ars Nova, Ensemble Studio Theater, HBO Workspace, IO West and Catch A Rising Star.
Sheila has narrated the WE Network documentary series “The Secret Lives of Women,” Lifetime's “Beyond the Headlines” and MSNBC's "Caught on Camera".
For Oxygen she created and wrote “The Ruth Truth” (winner of the Grand Prize at the World Internet Animation Festival), based on her experiences as a Private Investigator in NYC’s Chinatown. She has also written for ABC/Disney, Garrison Keillor, and PBS’s “Cyberchase” and has contributed to “The Next Big Thing” on WNYC/NPR.
Playwriting credits include The Egg Game (The Present Company), Over My Head (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and Hollywood Nurses.
Sheila created the improvised sitcom Character Witness, which ran for two years and led to the development of over fifty original characters and a cable TV spin-off, “The Uncle Charlie Show”.
Sheila is a founding member of the comedy group The Heartless Floozies.
Teaching credits include AMDA, Williamstown Theater Festival, ACTeen, Arts Genesis and Theater for a New Audience. Sheila taught improv as an artist in residence in NYC and Newark public schools and housing projects.
Corporate workshops clients include Eli Lilly, FCB Draft, AT&T, Unilever, PBS and the Oxygen Network. SAG-AFTRA, AEA
Meet Sheila
Amy: We are here with the amazing and inspirational Sheila Head! Sheila, please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us about what you do in the theatre world.
Sheila: Hi, I’m Sheila Head, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I started as an actor and an improviser. I’ve been doing improv forever, and I realize it’s kind of the Dungeons and Dragons of the theatre world. I totally nerd out on it. That’s why I went into writing, when you find people that you can create with onstage, who throw you all the best kinds of problems and let you solve them, it really turns you on.
Peter Michael Marino and I have been working on this play called Hollywood Nurses for 20 years. He also encouraged me and directed me to create my character Sandra O’Day. Sandra is an ex-con motivational speaker who’s actively managing her anger. That character started because Jason Eagan of Ars Nova saw me performing in a reading of Hollywood Nurses. He said, “I absolutely love you, I want you to do something at my theatre.” And I said, “Great, what is it?” And he said, “No, you’re not getting it, I want you to write something.” So we did the Sandra O’Day show. At that point, it was all scripted, but now I have moved into improvising as the character. Basically, Sandra is the really intense, unforgiving voice in my head. So those are some of the things I do for theatre.
Hayley: Can you tell us about how you came to theatre?
Sheila: When I was in second grade in Keokuk, Iowa, I did a thing for school. There were a bunch of adults in the audience, and the laughter was deafening when I did my bit. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to make large groups of people laugh. I was completely hooked.
I went to Syracuse University, and Arthur Storch, who had been the head of the Actors Studio, was the artistic director of Syracuse Stage and the head of the drama department. He worked with James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Lee Strasberg. At the time, Ronald Reagan was president and Pope John Paul II was Pope, and my mom did not like it that I was going into theatre. She was like, “Well, what are you going to do if you don’t make it?” And I was like, “I don’t know Mom, I’ll be president or Pope.” (laughs) I’m still doing theatre, which is astounding.
Hollywood Nurses
Amy: Can you tell us what you’re working on right now, Sheila? I know you have exciting stuff coming up with Hollywood Nurses.
Sheila: Hollywood Nurses - the play that just keeps coming around. It’s an homage to the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s. There were some really big differences between the early lesbian pulp, like 1928–35, and the stuff that came out in the 1950s, and our play is set in the mid-50s. For example, The Price of Salt - which became the movie Carol - it had a happy ending. It took a while for the women to get there, but they were able to meet and become a couple. In books from the 1950s, they weren’t allowed to have a happy ending. Every woman who was queer had to be that way for a reason. She had been a part of the occult, or she had been raped, but there always had to be a reason. And the language was really - you know, “deviant” and “strange” and “queer” - all these words.
There’s a beautiful book by Jaye Zimit that explores the history of lesbian pulp covers. There was a code. If I'm a woman and I see these books on the rack at the drugstore, and on the cover, two women are looking at each other and a man in the background is kind of like “What?” I know that’s a book I want. Or if I go to my friend’s house and she has something on the coffee table, I can say, “Oh, are you reading that? I’ve read that.” And now there’s a connection.
A friend of mine who was in Vietnam, I love this story he tells. He was 21 in Vietnam, and they were like, “Hey listen kid, don’t go into the showers at night.” And he was like, “I’m definitely going in the showers at night.” He knew the code. Women didn't have that code. There was this community of women that didn’t even know they were a community. There’s a reason why one of the most famous lesbian novels is called The Well of Loneliness.
When we first wrote the play, people were really excited about it, and then they were like, “It’s not really relevant anymore since y’all can get married now.” So Pete and I put it back in a drawer. But my wife Norma said, “No, it’s too good. You’ve gotta do some more readings.” Our director Carl Andress, he’s been with us since 2003. We went on a date with him, and he was like, “I want this play to happen.” He is still with us, God bless him. And we’re gonna take it to Phoenix Theatre Company as part of a development festival that they’re having. It’s so exciting because it’s already sold out!
Amy: Wow! Sheila, that’s so exciting!
Sheila: I can’t even believe it. The tide turns and things start to be less progressive. So something you wrote about at a time when things were not inclusive and you were alone and cast out of society, it’s all coming back again. We have two staged readings and we’ll have a day to write in between. We’ve already learned a lot from it. It’s the first time Peter and I have gotten to work with a dramaturg. It’s been wonderful!
Norma, my wife - she gets things done. She and Carl worked together, and we did this reading at Playwrights Horizons in 2017. We had Rosie O’Donnell and Kathleen Turner and Geneva Carr and Lesli Margherita and Taylor Louderman and Max von Essen… To sit in a roomful of people who weren't there just because they like me and Pete - they were there for the Actors Fund benefit. And to hear that audience laugh - I got that same electric eel kind of feeling from when I was a kid and all those people were laughing.
Some of it is funny. I want it to be funny because if you soften people up and make them laugh, that’s when emotionally you can punch them in the throat with how sad the situation really is. When they walk away from the reading, I want people saying, “Oh my god, that was so funny, I laughed my eyes off. Geez, I’m so glad we don't have to live like that anymore.”
Sheila’s Creative Mission
Hayley: Sheila, what would you consider to be your creative mission?
Sheila: It changes. I’ve been doing this for long enough that I know I’m in a period of change, going into a different part of my creative life.
It’s important to make people laugh. I always come back to that. If someone makes you laugh, it makes you feel good and you want to be around that. The longer I live, the more I’m seeing how sad life is. Humor is not just about being funny, it’s about recognizing something. It’s identification. That’s why your comic hero struggles. She doesn’t have the skills she needs to fix something, but she tries anyway. And that holds a mirror up so people can go, “Oh my god, that’s so funny. I do that too.” I also really like encouraging people. Keep doing it. Stay at it. Don’t take it so seriously that you break your heart over it again and again and again. But stay with it, keep swinging. That’s the only way.
I’ve had a couple of disappointments recently as an actor. But, you know, when you make the agreement with yourself, “I’m an actor, I’m a writer, and this is what I do” - it’s almost like being a cop or a firefighter. If you’re a cop, you might get shot at, and you’ve gotta accept that. If you’re a firefighter, you’re constantly putting yourself in danger for other people. That could burn you for life, it could kill you. If you’re going into the arts, you have to know you could break your heart on a regular basis just filling it up with hope and then letting it drop. I took about a week to completely wallow. And then after that, I woke up and said, “Okay, onward.” I’ll say to Norma, “I think it’s too late to go to chiropractic school.” (laughs)
Thoughts on Womanhood and Identity
Amy: Let’s talk about womanhood! What does being a woman mean to you, Sheila? How does it fit into your identity?
Sheila: It’s a sin to be glib, but for me lately, it’s been a lot of “Suck it up, buttercup.” You get up and you do it. You just take care of it. You don’t have time for whining. It’s about a type of strength and cleaning up other people’s messes. Which I get super fucking tired of, you know? I am finding that a lot of what I just assumed was being adult is actually a very big part of identifying with being feminine.
A lot of people I’ve worked with, especially young women, will reach out to me on a personal level and say, “Hey, I got this text. I got this email. Is this weird to you?” And I say to them, “Yeah, it is. This is the kind of shit that people used to pull on me when I was your age. And I’m gonna tell you right now what you’re dealing with is a narcissist.” Or “This sounds really abusive.” Don’t put up with it. I made all the mistakes for us. You don’t have to keep making these mistakes. I did it.
You really do have to help, especially young women, and my trans kids. It’s different for us. We’re going to be treated differently. It’s not like you can’t be sad and take your week to feel sorry for yourself. But I want them to know, “I get it. You’re gonna be okay. This really sucks right now, you can’t necessarily burn that bridge. And if the bridge is burning, you can’t run across it to save your friend.”
Take care of yourself, and learn how to navigate. Whether that means finding a counselor or a group… If you’re in crisis, there’s always someone there for you. A lot of womanhood is us taking care of each other on our journey forward. We’re never gonna go back in time. So how do we make the most of the mistakes we’ve made, the triumphs that we’ve had, in order to pay it forward? I just really want to take care of my female peeps because we’re expected to take care of so much.
I’m finding that it’s getting a little hard to do. I was in this training in anti-racism and allyship, and we were discussing a scenario, and I said, “I think maybe the student should just talk to the faculty member. If they have a good relationship, that’s a good first step.” And I’ll never forget it, this changed everything for me - this young person looked at me and said confrontationally, “Well, as a queer person, I’d feel really unsafe doing that.” I had this discovery - I’m the enemy because I have white hair. People used to reach out to me as someone with experience that might be similar to theirs, I started getting treated as someone who was not an ally.
That was a big part of me taking a break from teaching. It was really sad because I was like, “Oh good, here’s another young person who’s going to teach me things and maybe ask me questions” - I don’t give advice unless I’m asked, ‘cause no one wants that. And to be met with this ferocity of, “You’re old, and you’re part of the problem.” That was really hard.
Influential Mentors
Hayley: Sheila, can you tell us about influential mentors you have had and what you’ve learned from them?
Sheila: Oh my god, so many. I have found a lot of comfort in Laurie Anderson. She’s always inspired me with her offbeat perspectives, her love and use of language.
I’m in a comedy improv group called the Heartless Floozies, with Lucy Avery Brooke, Gail Dennison, Cate Smit, Mary Denmead and Emmy Laybourne. We’ve been a group since ’95, and we lost one of our members, one of my dearest friends, Suzanne Hevner, she died from ovarian cancer. That group - and Suzanne especially, I would go to her for everything.
Sarah Ruhl’s playwriting. I can’t get enough of her work. Every time I read it, I go back to the stage directions. In The Clean House, there’s a stage direction: “They kiss. They fall deeply in love. They kiss again. They fall even more deeply in love.” As a reader, you’re thrilled by that. As an actor, you’re like, “Oh, I know how to do that.” That’s gonna send me right there.
A huge, tremendous rabbi of mine is Steve Kaplan. He wrote a book called The Hidden Tools of Comedy. When I first moved to New York City in the late ‘80s, I got into Manhattan Punchline Comedy Corps, and it was basically Steve’s philosophy on what made things funny. If something isn’t working in a script or a sketch, you can go back to that book and use the tools to figure out why it’s not working.
Benefits and Limitations of Womanhood
Amy: Sheila, how do you see womanhood as a benefit to you as an artist and the artistic spaces that you’re in? And how has it limited you, or what obstacles have you faced?
Sheila: When Pete and I first started writing Hollywood Nurses, it was not even a queer thing. It was just a pulp novel, and we were going to play all the characters. One of the reasons we did this is because we had wanted to do a benefit performance of a play called Greater Tuna, which is these two guys who play all different characters, including women. And the guys who wrote it wouldn’t allow us to do it because I’m a woman.
Hayley: That is disgusting.
Sheila: And the weird thing is, I’ve done drag. I get called “Sir” a lot. When people ask me about my pronouns, I’ll say, “She/her/hers, but I get called Sir a lot.” I’m okay with that too. But the fact that these guys who were doing these broadly stereotypical female characters wouldn’t let me play a man - I just couldn’t believe it. Peter was like, “Sheila, let’s move on. Let’s do something else.” And I was like, “Can you fucking believe…” And we wanted to do it for a benefit! So there’s that. I think womanhood is beneficial because it’s my experience. I can’t see through any other lens. When you were kids in the schoolyard, did you ever play Whip?
Hayley/Amy: No.
Sheila: You probably weren’t allowed to because it’s “dangerous.” But what you would do is everyone would join hands and you would run as fast as you could through the schoolyard, and whatever kid was at the end you would whip ‘em. And they would - sometimes they would leave the ground and just go flying through the air.
Amy: Sounds like something out of Matilda!
Sheila: So we would play Whip, and it was terrifying and exciting and wonderful to be the kid on the end. You’d get your turn to fly. I feel like women are getting better and better about whipping each other up.
Amy: I love that.
Sheila: A woman who put me in a can and shot me out is Gerry Laybourne, who has been amazing to me throughout my career. Gerry was at ABC Disney for a while and brought me into her think tank there, which led to me working for her at Oxygen. That’s when I had my first-ever animated show, The Ruth Truth, which was based on my experiences as a private investigator in New York City’s Chinatown in the ‘90s. Gerry Laybourne is the type of woman who will whip you out. Once, someone came to me at a voiceover audition, and they were like, “You’re in Vanity Fair!” Gerry had mentioned the project, so my name was in Vanity Fair. That was such a beautiful moment for me. I didn’t even know! And she consistently does that for people. I’m a big Gerry Laybourne fan.
Hayley: We usually use the analogy of pulling other women up the ladder, but I love this whip analogy.
Sheila: ‘Cause it’s so crazy and dangerous and…
Amy: Who knows what’ll happen?
Sheila: Let’s see how far we can get you! Look out for the fence, don’t hit the fence!
Hayley: Amazing.
Final Thoughts
Hayley: Sheila, how do you balance your creative work with the rest of your life?
Sheila: (laughs for a long time, brief pause) I could be better.
(Amy and Hayley crack up laughing)
Sheila: It’s different for me now. I’m really focused on acting and writing now and removing teaching from it. So I’m writing more. It’s a lot of journal writing and note booking. I am working on a project - a private eye project, a new one. I’m also working on a sketch of a short film. Essentially, it’s a woman who gets a diagnosis of dementia, so she hires a hit man to take her out when the special word is rolled out to them. But she keeps forgetting that she might have hired more than one person. So when her caregiver finally rolls out the word, more than one person shows up to take her out. And whoever takes her out gets the reward. (laughs) I was killing myself laughing, I think it’d be fucking hilarious.
Amy: Sheila, what are you most proud of in your life?
Sheila: My relationship with my wife. It’s such a collaboration, such a negotiation. I was not used to this kind of happiness. In the late ‘80s, I felt like “I’m different. I don’t deserve someone who’s great and nice.” And then this one shows up. Our first two years were long-distance, which really served us. That was the way we needed to start.
I remember we were having our first argument, and I was like, “I’m gonna sleep on the couch!” I was that person then. She came out, looked at me, and said, “I’m not sure who you’re having this argument with, but it’s not me. So when you’re finished having this argument, it’d be really nice if you came back to bed with me.” And she left, and I was just like, “Oh. Oh wow. This is different.”
We did a little thing called Liberty and Justice: A Love Story when marriage equality was passed for everyone in this country (directed by Mandy Fabian, who I admire so much). We were inspired by an illustration of Liberty and Justice sweeping each other off their feet and making out, so we did this little short. By far, the most creative and most beautiful thing I’ve ever been a part of establishing and maintaining is my relationship with Norma.
Hayley: That is so beautiful.
Sheila: I wish it on everyone. If everyone had the kind of relationship that we have, there’d be no war. You’d have someone to talk you out of it.
Amy: Absolutely. Yay love. Thank you Sheila, you’re amazing and delightful.
Hayley: Thank you so much.
Sheila: Thank you so much for including me in this!
