Closing out this year’s Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters is the hilarious, daring, and brilliant Dillie Keane. Founder of the one-and-only British comedy singing group, Fascinating Aïda, Ms. Keane used her sass and gutsy persona to turn a series of gigs into a full-fledged career adventure – lasting over 30 years. This popular show business veteran has taken her decades of experience and memories to develop a one-woman show that will make audiences laugh, cry, and find solace in life’s uncertain and thrilling journey. Drawing from past material, as well as some brand new surprises, Ms. Keane will tell it like it is in her new 90-minute performance, playfully titled Hello Dillie! StageBuddy got the chance to speak with Ms. Keane about what audiences can expect from the Brits Off Broadway festival, why she loves cabaret, and how she's kept her love for performing alive.

Why do you think this festival is so important in bringing British theatre to the United States? Can you talk a little bit about the differences between the two?

Cultural exchange is incredibly important and possibly there’s not enough of it. There’s quite a lot of ‘cultural exchange’ in the commercial sense - for instance, most of the really big successful musicals in New York get put on in London, and vice versa.  But it’s harder for commercial producers to make financial sense of bringing over the smaller jewels, which is why 59E59 is so important.  It gives people like me and the other companies who play here a safe haven and an amazing shop window.  People in New York now know the venue and trust the artistic judgement behind it, which means they’re willing to take a risk on an unknown show or performer.  I wish we had somewhere like that in London that would bring us a few of the little diamonds from Off- and Off-Off-Broadway.

How have you kept your passion for performing alive and well throughout the years?

I’m quite mentally disciplined.  I realised when I started performing that I would miss out on a lot of things that people take for granted - supper parties, family get-togethers etc.  And I just told myself that I would never regret, never complain.  I’ve had my dark days when I’ve questioned the sideways step into cabaret, because I started out as an actress and I was getting good work, so there’s always that little germ of wondering in my head - what would my life have been like if I’d remained an actress?  Would I have played the great roles?  Who knows.  And then I’ll do a show, and someone will come up and say something astonishing and my heart is right back in it.

Just to give you an example… Many years ago when I was very down about the direction my life was taking, a woman approached me after a gig.  “Thank you for tonight, it was wonderful.”  I thanked her back pleasantly, it’s always lovely when the public comment appreciatively.  “No, I really mean THANK YOU,” she replied.  “I brought my daughter to the show.  She had a massive breakdown over a year ago, and tried to commit suicide.  It’s the first time I’ve seen her laugh.”  A moment like that is worth all the missed roles in the world.  As a cabaret performer, you face an audience in a different and more intimate way, there’s no fourth wall.  So it’s like you reach right out across the footlights and touch their hearts.  In the current show, I sing a quiet little song about grief called "Sometimes";  I wrote it a while after my best friend died and I tell the story of how it came to be written in the show.  It’s not at all maudlin, but it touches people.  I sang it in Liverpool and afterwards, a young man came up to me and hugged me.  He was an ex-soldier, and he said it was the first time he’d been able to cry since seeing his best friend shot and killed in Afghanistan.  I’d unlocked his tears and he was utterly grateful.  So then we had to have photographs taken with him, his Mum, his granny, his Aunty Sonya and numerous relations.  We’ve been in touch since.  That is so special.

Why do you think cabaret and other similar types of performance are important opportunities for artists, separate from appearing on larger stages?

It’s a very good discipline to expose yourself in such an intimate way, to remove the fourth wall and learn how to act ‘yourself’.  It takes away all the safety nets - plot, drama, character, the writer’s intentions, your motivation, your textual analysis, the interaction with other actors.  All that is gone and it’s just you up there on the high wire.

Where did the idea for Fascinating Aïda originate and how has that vision adapted over the years? Can you pick out one or two of your most memorable moments with the group?

It started as an accident!  When I was out of work as an actress, I had a number of piano bar gigs that I could pick up.  Just up the road from where I lived, I saw a new bar opening, and a piano being moved in.  I walked in and talked to the owners, and when I left I had a regular Friday night slot.  It was a really fun bar, lovely people running it - he was Jamaican and she was Jewish so we had the most amazing mix of people there.  At the same time, I had various girlfriends who would get me to run through numbers and play for auditions, so I got them to come down and sing their songs on Friday nights.  We added in a few harmony numbers to round off the evening, and within a couple of weeks, Friday nights were absolutely packed, there were people out on the pavement and it was just clear that we had something.  Two years later we formally formed the group, and 33 years later…

When we started, we sang any old thing that we either wrote or sounded nice.  So we mixed up our own songs with Gershwin, Kern etc.  Now we only do our own songs, and the work has become more sharply satirical.  We’re much braver than we were then!

Great moments?  Oh, being nominated for three Drama Desk awards was unbelievable.  It’s nice to be nominated in your home country, but in New York?  Un-be-lie-va-ble!!!  Another moment - opening the Sydney Festival the year of their Bicentennial - we were the opening act and we were at the Sydney Opera House. Walking into that iconic building and realising we were to perform there was just phenomenal.

What types of music do you enjoy most? 

I have worshiped Randy Newman for 40-odd years.  And I have a very large side chapel for Leonard Cohen and another for Kurt Weill…   I have another quite separate establishment of worship for Mr. Sondheim who is the Emperor of musical drama.  I listen to a lot of French and Weimar cabaret to remind myself of where much of my inspiration comes from.  I go to musicals, and I’m looking forward to catching as much cabaret as I can while I’m here, I love the cabaret scene in NYC.  I suppose you could say it’s theatre music that really turns me on.

Looking ahead to Hello Dillie!, what can audiences expect and what do you hope they’ll take away from your solo show? Can you describe the song catalog?

When I put the show together, I wanted to show the arc of my song-writing, so there’s some very old material, some brand spanking new songs, and much from the in-between years.  As the choice of material came together, I realised there was a semi-autobiographical feel to the collection, and if it’s about anything, it’s about one woman’s search for love - frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often comically disastrous.  People often say afterwards, “Have you been listening in on my life?”

Any plans for projects after Brits Off Broadway that you can share?

We’ve had a roller-coaster time of it because my long term colleague and co-writer from Fascinating Aïda, Adèle Anderson, was diagnosed with cancer early last year.  She’s had a tough time since then but she feels ready to head back into the fray, so we are doing a week of shows at the Edinburgh Festival, just to dip our toes back in the water.  All being well, we plan a new show in 2017.  But I shall be keeping my own show alive - I’ve got some lovely gigs in the fall to go home to, and I’d like to get more work here in the USA, if anyone’s interested!!!