Chase Padgett wanted to improve on Six Guitars, his one-man show that played at Coquitlam’s Evergreen Cultural Centre last year and won rave reviews across North America.
But his new script wasn’t working out.
The Florida native had debuted his second one-man show, titled Nashville Hurricane, at the Orlando Fringe Festival in 2012 and “it wasn’t well received,” he remembered. “I felt like I could do even better.”
By 2013, Padgett had rewritten the entire story with his mentor Jay Hopkins — except for one line, he said — and, by the time the Calgary and Edmonton fringe festivals rolled around that summer, he was clinching accolades again.
This year, the Portland resident returned to the Edmonton International Fringe Festival where, for the second time, Nashville Hurricane scooped the coveted Best of Fringe award.
Asked about his winning formula, Padgett described it in simple terms: “You have to reach back into the person for good storytelling. That’s the key to good writing and performing.”
In Nashville Hurricane, which Padgett will present at the Evergreen next week, he imagines four people for his 1970s melodrama: an angry manager, a miserable mother, a downtrodden blues musician and Henry, a country music prodigy who — although it is never fully disclosed — has autism.
Henry, Padgett said, gets “conned” into showing off his talents. Still, he does it because he’s a good son and wants to help out his broke mother.
“He has to find the confidence to break free,” Padgett said of his character who he also describes as a reflection of himself. “It’s a story of being pulled in a direction that you don’t want to go in and the world is telling you something else.”
Padgett himself had an interesting direction growing up down south. He told The Tri-City News his path was set while touring Universal Studios as a child, when a voice in a fountain told him to study improv in Orlando.
That he did while attending the University of Central Florida. He worked at the Sak Comedy Lab, the starting place for the careers of Emmy-award winner Wayne Brady and Paul Vogt (Mad TV), and where he also collaborated with Hopkins, his high school buddy.
Padgett graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music in 2007 and later worked at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios.
Now, he tours Canada and the U.S. with his two one-man hits. He calls the Canadian fringe festival circuit “really special. It’s one of the few places in the world where, if you don’t have a manager, you can still do your show in a cost-effective way to build momentum. And you can still get 100% of the door.”
• Nashville Hurricane runs Nov. 10 to 12 at the Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam). Tickets are $33/$28/$15 by calling the box office at 604-927-6555 or visiting evergreenculturalcentre.ca.
