Irene Ziegler used to have a wolf. She also has currently a baller headshot and is wonderful in the play she's doing, but we'll come back to that, because I know you want to hear more about the wolf first.
I think it was around 2005 when I first met Irene Ziegler. She rang me up while I was at Swift Creek Mill Theater standing next to the coffee pot dressed as a rabbit to ask me if I could fill in for someone that evening last minute at Virginia Arts & Letters Live. I felt myself at once to be very fancy and accepted. I didn't know what Virginia Arts & Letters Live was, per se, but I had heard of Irene Ziegler and knew I wanted to do whatever it was she asked of me. It turned out to be a wonderful experience- I got to read a very long story out loud on the Novempire stage from behind a podium to a wonderfully responsive audience using funny voices and dressed very elaborately in black. One wears all black when one is doing a reading. Everybody knows that. (Well, maybe a tasteful brooch. Of a quill or an alligator taking tea or something.) Irene was pleased with my work, and so after that- we were friends. Soon it came to pass that I was cleared to house/pet-sit.
Now- Irene used to live in a sprawling, dark-wooden, renovated barn-palace next to the river surrounded by forest and accessible only by drone. Or by humans in a car if they are a. excellent drivers, b. extremely determined to get there, and c. possessing of 20/.05 vision which allows them to spot her address post from where it sprouted from the underbrush on the side of the road while driving 60mph down Route 5.
I've forgotten the specifics of where the barn-palace came from but it's something about it being flown over from Budapest or Romania stone by stone from the location where it was originally erected by the Pilgrims. Or Thor. Or someone like that from back in the day. But- I found the house. I was coming over to receive the rundown of alarm codes, keys, dog feeding schedules, the norm.
But friends, Irene didn't have a dog. She had a wolf. A wolf hybrid. I was SO excited about this. Whenever my brother and cousin and I played animals growing up I was always the lead wolf. An extremely bad-ass thing to have- a wolf. This wolf was named Maya*. Maya's shoulder topped out just south of my boobs. Maya fancied herself a Shih Tzu and would happily sit on your lap, which was great until all life and breath was pressed from your body inside of 20 seconds. Maya gently scratching at the glass back door to be let in was a lot like the velociraptors gently scratching to be let into the kitchen in "Jurassic Park." She was silver and grey and white and beautiful and loving and spirited and exciting. She liked to sleep next to you (which was awesome for taking cellphone photos with which to alarm your parents). She liked to stand silent and still as death at one end of the cavernous night-black upstairs corridor and glint her eyes at you in the moonlight glowing in from the skylights at 3a.m. and utterly eliminate any chance you had of working up the nerve to go past her to the bathroom because no matter how much you knew she had a personality akin to a spunky Popple, facing off with a wolf in the woods in the middle of the night all alone just didn't seem wise.
[Sidenote: I did go past her to use the restroom that night- at last. I was very brave. I felt like She-Ra that night.]
Maya passed several years ago. But I'll not forget her. She was, after all, the only wolf I've cuddled with. So far. And by a long shot the most fascinating pet-sitting experience I've ever had. Nothing beats being ushered into the kitchen to see the location of the dog treats and being shown- instead of a cheery plastic container decorated with puppies containing bacon flavored niblets- a freezer full of gallon Ziploc bags containing bloody, bony cow hips fresh from the butcher.
All this to say- Irene's in a play right now. "4000 Miles." And in it, she is grand. If I didn't know Irene was a fit and brilliant woman with great teeth who wears sexy black leather leggings and cunning boots to sushi restaurants in the fan for lunch and hears every single thing you say, I'd totally think she was a stooped grandmother in her eighties who is hard of hearing and favors dressing in nearly matching pastel leisure suits.
The theme of this play is this: If you are in love with your sister, need to deal with it, and also have a grandmother- you can hang out at her house and eat all her snacks until you are done thinking it over.
That said, you should also know that this particular play features:
1. Funding by tomatoes.
2. A young lady with the last name of Ukrop who is curiously NOT related to the Ukrops of Quirk Hotel and Grocery fame and therefore the subject of so much discussion over brunch at The Savory Grain this morning that Matt Shofner completely forgot to place his to-go order for chocolate chip waffles.
3. The best hand-acting I have ever seen in my life.
4. A grandmother whose name is either Vera or Grandma, but we are never quite sure.
5. An aging miniature pumpkin which calls to mind the question- how many miniature pumpkins are required for a show with a four-week run to prevent rotting?
6. Someone named Micah.
7. Cereal. Cereal the type of which I couldn't make out and thereby became thoroughly incensed.
8. A very, very long monologue about cross-country road trips, bicycling, over-ambitious amateur photography, and a chicken truck.
9. A very entertaining performance by an actress whose name I learned today is "Anne Michelle Forbes" and not, in fact, "Not Carolyn," which is how I'd been referring to her ever since I saw her in production photos for a different show a couple of years ago and thought she looked like Carolyn Meade but did not know her actual name.
10. An excellent curtain speech by Laine Satterfield.
Overall- you should go. And now you know all these things about Irene. So as you watch her do delicately nuanced geriatric phone cord/marijuana performance art you can secretly know that she is a mistress of wolves and be even more impressed than you already are.
*Maya was not AEA (that I know of). I'm just not certain I'm spelling her name correctly.
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