There's No Doubt About It: Cooper Is A Trouper

Photo by George Hixson

​What were you doing when you were seven months pregnant? (Question intended for women only.)

One thing you probably weren't doing: scrambling madly to stop a wildly leaking roof only minutes before you were going onstage for a 90-minute bout of dancing, singing and dashing around.

Tamarie Cooper, Houston's favorite comedienne, has semi-revived her old Tamalalia series with The Tamarie Cooper Show: Journey to the Center of My Mind (In 3-D!) at Stages Theatre. It's the same type of raucous, demanding show she's done in the past, except this time she's toting around a supporting actress, a soon-to-be daughter named Rose.

And on Friday, when a cold front brought some vicious storms downtown minutes before the curtain, Cooper and her cast were scrambling to minimize the damage. Eventually three rows were blocked off, much to the dismay of some of the sellout crowd.

"It felt like we were back at the Axiom," she tells Hair Balls. That former rock club had the structural quirkiness you'd expect from a former rock club, but apparently Stages isn't much better in a stiff rain.
We knew the new show was partly about being pregnant, but for some reason we thought Cooper had already had her kid. So when she came out onstage visibily bigger, we assumed she was wearing a prosthetic baby bump, and weren't impressed with the fact she was not only dancing but staying on stage for just about the full 90 minutes without peeing.

Talking to her after the show, we found out how wrong we were.

"The doctor says it's fine as long as I don't get too flushed," she says.

Hey, there's got to be an acting award in this somewhere. If not for her, then for Rose, for not kicking her Mom's bladder too much during the show.

The Tamarie Cooper Show: Journey to the Center of My Mind (In 3-D!) runs through this weekend, barring further rainstorms or other types of water breaking. It's pay-what-you-can, with a suggested price of $25.