Photos by Madison Kirkman
“Hello!” I heard the greeting echo through the empty performance space and looked up to see Julie Cascioppo waving to me from a balcony above the stage like a princess atop a castle. We had arranged via email to meet at the stage inside the historic Seattle building where she resides. I, however, was not expecting her to literally live backstage.
I first became aware of Julie Cascioppo when I was just 4 years old, scavenging for hors d’oeuvres at my mother’s holiday work party. Cascioppo, who was hired to perform at the event, towered over me in red stilettos and a festive ensemble that reminded me of the 1997 Happy Holidays Barbie I had at home. A generous coat of Revlon’s Fire & Ice lipstick framed her infectious grin. Having been too young to spell, I thought that surely her name was “Jewel-y” because she was so dazzling and her outfit was encrusted with jewels. With the theatrical flair of a neighbor on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Cascioppo confidently belted a jazz tune for the crowd of hairdressers and estheticians. I blushed, thinking, “Wow, that is the most glamorous woman I have ever seen.” This feeling came back when I entered her apartment 25 years later.
She led me up a staircase behind the stage to her cozy abode, which was adorned with wigs, altars, artwork, and mementos she’s collected from her travels. The loft’s massive windows revealed a (probably) 10-million-dollar view of the Seattle skyline. “People probably think I’m so lucky for this apartment, and I am,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t quick and easy—it took a lot of dreaming, manifesting, and planning.”
The chanteuse has given most of her career to ephemeral performances for intimate crowds at Pike Place Market’s Pink Door since the early ’80s. Cascioppo herself will tell you that her performance style is hard to pin down—a blend of jazz, cabaret, improv, drag, and performance art. An audience member once told her, “Watching you is like watching a movie.”
“Have you seen the movie All About Eve?” she asked me from across a large table filled with scraps of paper, folders, and sticky notes. I nodded. “I need an assistant like that,” she said with a straight face. It was difficult to know if she was joking or not, which is part of her magic.
Over the past several years, the local legend has taken a break from the stage to focus on writing a memoir titled I Love Being Abroad (yes, it is a double entendre). The book chronicles an ambitious young jazz vocalist as she navigates 1980s Paris in polka-dot pumps in search of singing jobs. And, like The Wizard of Oz, the book is woven together by the friends (and enemies) she picks up along the way. Cascioppo’s embrace of adventure, naïvety, curiosity, and just plain luck led her everywhere from a short-lived disco career to an offer from the FBI to be a secret spy to a flirtatious evening with renowned dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (or, as I know him, Aleksandr Petrovsky from Sex and the City). Not to mention, her résumé also includes singing on cruise ships, substitute teaching, starring in her own public access TV show, and competing on the Norwegian reality show Alt for Norge. After she spent nearly a decade in Paris and extensive stays in Istanbul, India, Hong Kong, and Norway, I asked her what kept bringing her back home to Seattle. “I’ve never found a place where I wanted to live forever,” she said. “I guess I like being a big fish in a small pond.”
Cascioppo grew up in Ballard with her brothers, Norman and Tony, and their parents, whom she described as “a Sicilian meat cutter and a cool blonde Norwegian beauty.” Her older brother Norman, a serious classical pianist, introduced her to Seattle’s early gay clubs like Shelly’s Leg and the Golden Crown, where she developed a love for cabaret and drag. “Norman wasn’t a drag queen, so he groomed me to be a drag queen.” The siblings would put on shows in the basement of their childhood home. “We had a lot of fun because he loved my humor and really encouraged me.” She told me that her mother wasn’t exactly glamorous, but that young Julie got her fix by playing dress-up in her friend’s mother’s closet, and later by shopping for eccentric clothing at thrift stores.
For a large chunk of her career, Cascioppo was known for her characters, including country singer Starbaby, housewife-turned-new-age-healer Saffron Johnson, and postal worker by day/go-go dancer by night Tony Topaz, but these have long been cut from her act. “I’ve integrated,” she told me. “I used to have all these characters that were different facets of my personality, and most of them were based on failed jobs I had.” However, this integration doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still love to play dress-up. “That’s why I love wigs,” she explained, “they bring out different aspects of my personality.” I asked which wig is her current favorite, to which she pulled out a voluminous blonde monstrosity in the style of Marie Antoinette or Marge Simpson. “My friend made this by sewing all of my Marilyn Monroe wigs together.”
While showing me around her apartment, Cascioppo pulled out a magazine clipping from a small drawer. It was a painting of the Hollywood Savoy, a swanky club in Paris where she used to work as a singing waitress. She broke out into song (something that happened at least three times during our interview), belting “Battle Hymn of the Republic” while reenacting the tasks of the job. Later, she sang “The Windmills of Your Mind” after I asked if there were any new songs she was learning. “If you want to know what’s going on with the singer, look at her repertoire, because she will be singing about her life.”
She doesn’t know exactly what’s next for her career, but she sees her memoir expanding into a screenplay or a touring cabaret show. “I don’t just want my story in bookstores, I want it in the movies!” she exclaimed with sincerity, in a voice that reminded me of an old Hollywood star. Cascioppo has a vision, and it’s for Lady Gaga to play her in a big-budget movie adaptation of her memoir. “Sometimes I think, how do people make fantastic things happen?” she told me, starry-eyed. “It starts with an idea or a dream, and then you, you know, you just start seeing it, and you make it happen, right?”
However, Cascioppo amends that even if nothing happens with the book, she’s just proud that she finished it. “I wrote this for my 94-year-old self,” she explained. “I don’t know what she’s going to be like, but she might enjoy having a book to read.” She told me that despite writing the book, she doesn’t consider herself a writer. “Being a writer is a very glamorous job!” she said, pointing at me. “Being a singer is a very glamorous job!” I retorted.
As our meeting came to an end, I expressed that reading her book made me want to go to Paris. She lit up, saying, “I am going to Paris next month—maybe you should come with me!” I actually considered this for a moment, even though it’s far beyond my means. Julie Cascioppo’s spontaneity is dangerously infectious. I can’t go to Paris next month, I thought while driving away, but I can stop at Walgreens and buy some Revlon Fire & Ice lipstick, bringing me a tiny bit closer to her glamorous life.
Julie Cascioppo will perform at the Chapel Performance Space on Sept. 11 at 7 pm, for the release of her memoir, I Love Being Abroad: Memoirs of an American Chanteuse in Paris.
