Disguised as a glasses-wearing, modestly dressed Catholic grade school mathematics teacher, Pat Musker guides her students through torturous lessons in quadratic equations and polynomials, tolerating no guff and demanding their undivided attention.
At night, although she doffs her disguise and transforms into one of Chicago’s most flamboyant comics, she still takes no guff and demands her audience’s undying devotion.
If juggling two careers sounds schizoid, Musker — a founding member of the Noble Fool Theater Company — must also keep straight the personalities of multiple wacky characters. This past year alone she played the tough, guilt-inducing nun in the long-running “Late Nite Catechism,” the manipulative gangland psychiatrist Dr. Farfalle in the “Sopranos” spoof “The Baritones,” the fiery feminist goddess Freya in “Vikings! A Musical in Two Axe” and, in “Roasting Chestnuts: Gina Bell Rock,” both the brash lounge singer Roxy Bellows and queen-of-schmaltz Gina Oswald.
Unlike Gina and Roxy, Pat Musker comes from a happy, fully functional Irish Catholic family of five sisters and three brothers, one of whom — John Musker — is the co-director and writer of Disney’s Oscar-nominated “Treasure Planet” as well as “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin.”
Within the family, there’s lots of encouragement to perform and, as longtime Noble Fool collaborator Mark Czoke points out, “Pat’s large supportive family is a good thing for us because on any given show we’re guaranteed 40 or 50 Musker tickets.”
For Musker, teaching and improvisation originated as simultaneous passions. After acquiring a bachelor’s degree in special education from Northeastern Illinois University and a master’s in math education from DePaul, she started teaching elementary school in 1982 at Glenview’s Our Lady of Perpetual Help. At the same time, she began studying improvisation at The Players Workshop. Teaching fuels her comedy, sharpening her powers of observation, and improvisation enhances her teaching. “As a teacher, you have to think on your feet and, if something new comes up, you have to be flexible,” says Musker.
But she emphasizes that her job as a teacher is to educate, not to entertain. Musker does both really well, according to colleagues at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. “Pat might go into an operatic act,” says Delores Leonis, a 30-year veteran at the school. “But she maintains complete control and keeps the students on task. She’s as good, or better, a math teacher than she is a performer.”
Another Perpetual Help teacher, Mary Beth Lucas, began her education career with Musker as her mentor. “I was amazed when I observed Pat teaching. She would break into song or improvise a math game,” says Lucas. “I would think ‘I never learned to do that in my education classes.’ ” Besides teaching, Musker employs her stage skills to produce a musical at the school, organizing a show that features almost a thousand students. While initiating her teaching career, she and a few Player’s Workshop cohorts opened the Improv Institute. There she met her future husband, actor/writer Jack Bronis. They helped make the Improv Institute a focal point for Chicago improv. “It was my favorite place to see improv other than Second City,” says Kelly Leonard, producer of The Second City.
Leonard describes what made Musker so compelling. “She had a classic Midwestern girl-next-door quality, really regular and sweet and then suddenly the most incredibly dirty or funny thing that you’ve ever heard would come out of her.”
Inspired by comic heroines Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Catherine O’Hara, Musker struggled against female stereotypes in the male world of comedy. “She didn’t stick to the wife, the girlfriend, the whore; she played the car mechanic, the sausage maker, the doctor,” says actor Lynda Shadrake. “She played a truck driver with just as much gusto as any guy and was funnier.” Musker has continued her history of playing tough, striking, independent women.
Earlier this year, Musker branched out from Noble Fool to play the black-clad nun in “Late Nite Catechism.” As the demanding Sister of merciless, Musker evokes an intimidating air of authority as she sweeps down the aisle of the Royal George Theater.
“With my Catholic upbringing and being a teacher all my life,” says Musker, “you might say I was born to play Sister.”
But even as the teaching nun, Musker disappears into the role. “The real Pat Musker is the one in the classroom,” says colleague Leonis. “where she’s pretty conservative and strict.” Like a comic confronting a heckler, Musker silences classroom troublemakers with such lines as “One person at a time should be speaking, and it had better be me” or “If you want to be a clown, join the circus.”
A strict disciplinarian as a teacher, Musker becomes an intimidating femme fatale when she hits the Noble Fool stage as Roxy. “If Liza Minnelli and Don Rickles had a kid,” says brother Marty. “It would be Roxy Bellows.” A washed-up but lovable cabaret diva, Roxy mocks, badgers, ridicules, prods and charms her audience, improvising a three-hour show of wicked dialogues, scathing and sometimes self-deprecating monologues and hilarious songs that incorporates the lives of the audience. “I’m the vessel, the conduit, the fiber-optic cable through which the entertainment flows,” bellows Roxy, “It’s not my show; it’s OUR show.”
Despite having destroyed three relationships, Roxy stops short of excessive cruelty. “Roxy says what she thinks,” says Musker, “which is probably what all of us would like to do.” Despite her stream of insults and painful honesty, the audience relates to her because she pokes fun at herself. “Pat’s characters, like Roxy, are so nuanced,” says Kelly Leonard. “A lot of people build characters on affectations and you never get that feeling with Pat. Her characters seem to be real. She kind of lives them, Peter Sellers-style. Though their traits might be exaggerated or bizarre, they’re always tied into reality.”
That’s because Musker is tied into reality. What could be more real than teaching a bunch of 7th- and 8th-grade kids. “Dealing with students, other teachers and parents helps me stay anchored,” says Musker. “Occasionally my students do ask me if I’m an actress,” says Musker. “I reply, `Do I look like an actress? What would an actress be doing sitting here in Room 203 of Our Lady of Perpetual Help? Let’s get on with the numbers!”
