Arts Alive! podcast: Culver Casson of ‘Weird in St. Pete’

Actress, vocalist and vocal teacher Culver Casson joins us for today’s Arts Alive! conversation. She’s currently appearing in American Stage’s production of Weird in St. Pete, an interactive play that moves the audience through the grounds – over the river and through the woods – of the Duncan McClellan Gallery. (Info and tickets.)

The show, written by American Stage producing artistic director Helen R. Murray, is part of the company’s “Beyond the Stage” initiative, delivering theater in unexpected corners of the community.

Casson in “Weird in St. Pete.” Photo: American Stage.

Weird in St. Pete introduces a quintet of notable “characters” from the big book of St. Petersburg history. Casson appears as Mary Reeser, the 67-year-old widow who died under extremely bizarre circumstances in 1951. Investigators found her foot, still tucked into an (undamaged) slipper, and a pile of ashes.

Legend persists to this day that Reeser was a victim of “spontaneous combustion.”

Casson, who has been active in bay area theater – both community and professional – for nearly a decade, is from the New York/Connecticut area. She received her vocal training at the Juilliard School, and is fluent in both opera and musical theater.

She also talks about her father, Mel Casson, a legendary newspaper cartoonist (Sparky, Angel, Redeye, Mixed Singles) and her mother, opera singer Mary Lee Culver Casson.

Click on the arrow to listen to the conversation.