Northern Minnesota Comes to NoHo in 'Don't Hug Me, I'm Pregnant'

Theater fans may be familiar with the Don’t Hug Me trilogy of musicals by Phil Olson already. The latest production, Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant, makes it a quadrilogy when it premieres at the on Friday. This world premiere follows Don’t Hug Me, A Don’t Christmas Carol and A Don’t Hug Me County Fair and runs through Nov. 20.

The series takes place in Bunyan Bay, Minnesota. Gunner and Clara Johnson own a bar called The Bunyan, and Clara is the pregnant woman of the title. A snowstorm locks the Johnsons in The Bunyan as Clara goes into labor, so what else could they possibly do but sing about it? There are 17 original songs in the play, to be exact.

Olson lives in Santa Clarita, CA and is very active in the NoHo arts community. He is a member of , who have produced four Olson plays at Lonny Chapman Theater, including two of the Don’t Hug Me series. He also has productions throughout the year in the Midwest. A full time playwright, Olson called me from Minneapolis where he opened A Don’t Hug Me County Fair on Sept. 8. Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant will open in Minnesota in October and Wisconsin in November after its North Hollywood debut.

PATCH: You’ve got yourself a quadrilogy, haven’t you?

PHIL OLSON: [Laughs] I have not heard that. A quadrilogy. I will have to use that, thank you.

PATCH: We didn’t invent that. The Alien movies were a quadrilogy.

OLSON: Right, right, yeah. That is funny. Yeah, it’s a quadrilogy.

PATCH: Are all the Don’t Hug Mes with the same characters?

OLSON: Three of them are the same characters. One of them, the original Don’t Hug Me has the same characters that are in Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant and A Don’t Hug Me County Fair. In A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol, because it’s a spoof of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, we added the ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future which was one of Gunner’s nemeses. So we brought in a different character in A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol. In A Don’t Hug Me County Fair, Gunner and Clara are the owners of this little bar called The Bunyan up in Northern Minnesota and Gunner’s twin sister Trigger comes in to town. Trigger is played by the same actor that plays Gunner, so they play sister and brother. It’s pretty funny.

PATCH: Have the same actors been able to play the same characters in every production?

OLSON: Yeah. I’m in Minnesota right now and I’m going to see them tonight because we open A Don’t Hug Me County Fair on Thursday downtown. The same actors have been with me in Minnesota for seven years. They opened the original Don’t Hug Me in 2004. I actually tour this cast around the Midwest. We have a set and they all get along, they like each other, they enjoy doing the show so they’ve been with me for seven years. It’s incredible.

PATCH: What about in the North Hollywood productions?

OLSON: I have had three or four of the actors in two or three of the Don’t Hug Mes. The difference in North Hollywood and equity waiver is just the nature of it, nobody’s getting paid a whole lot of money to do it. So a lot of people in North Hollywood will get television work, movie work and will not be available because they have to do something that’s going to pay them more. In Minnesota we’ve had a lot better success in keeping the cast together, although about every other show we bring back characters from previous Don’t Hug Mes in North Hollywood.

PATCH: Are they all set in Bunyan Bay?

OLSON: Yes, every one of them is set in Bunyan Bay, up there in Paul Bunyan country in Northern Minnesota. And the same set, a little bar called The Bunyan. That’s worked out well because theaters, over 100 theaters around North America, U.S. and Canada and 30 some odd states have done one or more of the Don’t Hug Me musicals. By keeping the same set and the same actors, it makes it easy for them. I do that on purpose so it’ll be easy for them to produce all of them.

PATCH: How did you conceive of making Clara pregnant for the fourth entry?

OLSON: In A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol we announced [her pregnancy]. Part of the storyline, Gunner and Clara Johnson are owners of the bar, they’ve been married for a long time and they have not been able to have kids. They’ve both wanted to have kids and at the end of A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol, they announce that Clara is pregnant. So Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant is flash forward 8 ½ months.

PATCH: Is it easy to follow if this is your first Don’t Hug Me experience?

OLSON: Yeah, they’re all standalone. I explain everything without giving too much exposition but just enough so that they don’t have to see any of the previous Don’t Hug Mes to fully appreciate and enjoy Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant. So I explain everything but quickly. I don’t belabor things that have already been gone over in previous Don’t Hug Mes.

PATCH: If people enjoy the music, can they buy the soundtrack?

OLSON: Yes. We have a cast album for each of the Don’t Hug Mes. Usually we do it the week after we close because the actors are practiced and they can go into the studio. That’s when they know the songs the best. So yes, they can go to Donthugme.com. In the merchandise section of the website, they can order the cast albums.

PATCH: How would you describe the style of your music?

OLSON: The music all comes out of a sort of magical karaoke machine. In the original Don’t Hug Me, a Northwoods music man comes into town. His name is Aarvid Gisselsen and he’s like the Harold Hill [from The Music Man.] He comes in and he sells them a karaoke machine that contains all the songs from folk legend Sven Jorgenson, fictitious. There’s a device on the karaoke machine, it’s called intuitive voice activation. You just say a word or a phrase from a song title and the karaoke machine starts to play just like magic. So that is the device for the music to start. It all comes out of this karaoke machine. So they’re having a conversation, in Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant, Gunner wants to hug Clara, and she says, “Don’t hug me.” The karaoke machine starts and Clara sings the song titled “Don’t Hug Me.” Sven Jorgenson, the author of all the songs of the karaoke machine, went through different phases in his career depending on what was current at the time. So he went through a John Denver phase and a disco phase and an Elvis Presley phase, a Peter, Paul and Mary phase, a polka phase. So the styles of the music are across the board. It’s everything. It’s rock n’ roll, disco, polka, tango. We have a ballad in every show but it’s all across the board.

PATCH: Has North Hollywood theater been prolific for you?

OLSON: Yes, I’m a big fan of the North Hollywood theater scene. They do a lot of great work. There are a lot of theaters there and it’s inexpensive to produce a play versus if you’re a screenwriter, it’s so hard to get a movie made that you write. It’s really not that expensive to produce a play in North Hollywood and it makes it easier for playwrights to get their work out there and then get published and then play all over the country.

PATCH: How do you divide your time between L.A. and the Midwest?

OLSON: It’s really difficult. This year I’m going to have a heart attack. I have four productions going right now pretty much all at the same time. At least I’m marketing them all at the same time so every day I have about five deadlines for some sort of advertising. I’m doing a radio interview in about 45 minutes here. Tomorrow I’m going to be on the NBC affiliate and the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis being interviewed on their entertainment shows. We have some of our cast members who will sing a couple songs on TV. It’s challenging but fun.

PATCH: Are your plays designed for smaller houses like we have in North Hollywood?

OLSON: We’ve played it in 1,000-seat houses and we’ve played it in 50-seat houses. One of the nice things about the Don’t Hug Me series is they can play in both sized houses. They are small cast musicals, five characters. It doesn’t require a band because of the device where all the music comes out of the karaoke machine. So we don’t require a band. Five characters, simple costuming, pretty simple set. It’s very inexpensive for theaters to produce this so it makes it very affordable for small theaters to do it. But it’s fun enough for the large theaters to do it. We have to mic the actors in the larger theaters of course, but it plays well in all theaters. Thankfully, it’s so inexpensive to produce, I get a lot of productions from the smaller theaters.

For tickets to Don’t Hug Me, I’m Pregnant visit https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/855905.