Erma Bombeck would have appreciated Susan Marie Frontczak’s quest to portray her.
It was a process that required determination, persistence, a deep respect for the power of humor and good old-fashioned luck.
Frontczak will portray the celebrated American humorist July 21st at Ashland Chautauqua.
The Colorado-based storyteller and performance artist explained how, in 2018, she came to present Erma Bombeck to Chautauqua audiences, one of six women in her repertoire.
“Erma came about because Ohio Humanities chose the theme American Legends of the Mid-20th Century for their traveling Chautauqua and sent out an invitation for proposals,” she said in an email interview. “I knew Ohio Humanities liked having an Ohioan in the troupe when possible. (Erma was born near Dayton.) I also expected that many of the candidate characters might have a heavy message. So, Erma seemed to be a promising character to be a part of the roster.
“I already had a soft spot for Erma. I started laughing at her humor as a teenager, thanks to my mom introducing me to her writing. It is valuable to pick a character that one resonates with, as you are going to be spending a lot of time together.”
Becoming Erma – preparing for the role
Frontczak happened to be in Ohio touring with the Ohio Humanities Chautauqua and was in the process of preparing her application and proposal to portray Erma, so she visited the Erma Bombeck Archives at the University of Dayton. There she met archivist Teri Rizvi.
“She told me that, if my application were accepted, she could get me in touch with the family,” Frontczak said. “Oh my, a personal connection to family members is something I’ve never had in preparing any of my other ladies!”
Once her Erma Bombeck portrayal was approved, she read her books — all 12 of them — plus a juvenile biography written to inspire young writers. Frontczak went on to write a half-dozen essays on Erma. They can be accessed on the website Storysmith.
Her research, which also involved candid print and video interviews, provided insight into the essence of Erma.
“She speaks as if from her own life, but she freely admitted in interviews that as a humorist she exaggerated and shaped her stories,” Frontczak said. “The books and columns gave me her voice, her vocabulary, cadence and personality, but they did not let me know what was true.”
True to her calling as a storyteller, Frontczak wove a bit of drama into her account of becoming Erma.
“About this time, I went back to Teri to ask about contacting the family and ran into a snag,” Frontczak said.
She received an email from Aaron Priest Literary Agency, which manages Erma’s copyrighted books. They wanted to know what Frontczak planned to do with her work.
“I was suddenly worried that the agency would want prohibitive royalties or even forbid the portrayal,” Frontczak said.
She explained to them that, if she were to commit to portraying Erma, she would have to do so for 10 years to make it feasible. At this point in her career, Frontczak made her living doing portrayals for Chautauqua and other venues.
She got a phone call from Aaron Priest.
“I was quite nervous,” Frontczak recalled. “But I need not have feared. It wasn’t about money; it was about accuracy, both what she did and how she sounded. They wanted me to sign an agreement that gave them the right to review the script. What a boon! You’ll review my script and tell me if anything doesn’t look or sound right? I could ask for nothing better.”
Erma’s son, Matt Bombeck, later contacted her.
“He graciously thanked me for keeping his mother’s legacy alive,” Frontczak said. “He has been a valuable source of information. He also connected me with Erma’s secretary, Norma Born. So, between Matt, Aaron, and Norma, I have had rich access to information that is not available anywhere else.”
Asked whether there were parts of herself she saw in Erma, Frontczak responded, “I may be envious of her willingness to be snarky. Of course, as a writer, she had the luxury of pondering and crafting the words, then putting them into dialog that sounds spontaneous. Even so, she is willing to say things that are edgy, things I probably wouldn’t say myself. So, portraying her gives me permission to step into that space.”
Asked what aspects of Erma’s life and writing she wanted audiences to take away from her portrayals, Frontczak said, “I find her writing to be so down-home. Because her humor comes from a place of honesty with herself, she lets us laugh at ourselves. For all the strife and division in the world, we are more alike than different.”
From a technology career to full-time performance artist – and an 80-percent pay cut
Perhaps Frontczak’s motto says it best: “Give me a place to stand and I will take you somewhere else.”
Her life and career have come full circle. Or circles.
According to an article posted on the Computer History Museum website, Marie Curie — one of the women Frontczak would go on to portray — inspired her to major in engineering. Which led to a 14-year career at Hewlett-Packard.
“Over the course of those years, I worked as a mechanical engineer, an integrated circuit designer and software developer,” Frontczak said. “In 1994 I took a year’s leave of absence to try storytelling full-time. At the end of the year I didn’t go back. So, I have now been absent without leave for over 30 years.”
She thought perhaps the leave of absence might help her get storytelling out of her system.
“It didn’t work,” Frontczak said. “Yes, I accepted an 80-percent cut in pay to suddenly become a self-supporting performance artist. But I was having too much fun.”
Childhood playacting set the stage for her second career.
“When I was 8, 9, 10, years old, my sister and I put on plays in the neighborhood, writing our own scripts, speaking extempore, recruiting neighborhood kids to present shows such as ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Johnny Appleseed,’” she said. “Parents and siblings made up the audience.”
From there she went on to community theater and storytelling as a hobby.
Which eventually blossomed into a career. Not just in storytelling and portrayals but in conducting workshops and teaching.
Frontczak’s first portrayal of Marie Curie for a storytelling conference in 2001 proved to be a game changer.
“I didn’t yet know about Chautauqua presentations,” she said. “I suggested I would tell Curie’s story in the first-person rather than the typical third-person storytelling fashion.”
Developing the character, which she began to work on in 1998, took on a life of its own, one that left her underprepared for the conference portrayal.
“This is growing into something and I can’t tell what, I can’t possibly be ready,” she recalled telling conference organizers.
Ultimately, they settled on calling her portrayal a work in progress.
Of course, the first audience question she was asked after the performance was, “Why do you call this a work in progress?”
That made her realize she was on to something worth pursuing.
“I worked another year on the script and came up with a two-act play, from which I later extracted a 40-minute Chautauqua monologue,” Frontczak said.
She continues to do Chautauqua format portrayals and other storytelling, performing and teaching gigs. Although it’s hard to nail down an exact number given the variety of programs she’s involved with, Frontczak said there were times — especially before the pandemic — when she did 40-50 Chautauqua format programs a year. Not counting coaching, teaching, etc.
“All told, my ladies have taken me to 43 of the United States,” she said.
In 2011 — the 100th anniversary of Marie Curie’s second Nobel Prize — Frontczak portrayed her in 13 states, Switzerland, Denmark and Puerto Rico.
In addition to Marie Curie and Erma Bombeck, her Chautauqua repertoire includes Mary Shelley, Eleanor Roosevelt, Irene Castle and Clara Barton.
The rest is history
Portraying historical figures introduced her to new horizons.
“Chautauqua is way more than theater,” Frontczak said. “The scholarship, the history, are paramount. This is ironic because, in high school, history was my least favorite subject. I found the roster of wars and leaders boring.”
Through her research, she found herself immersed in the lives of real people, people who were there, people who were the essence of history.
“I looked up and blinked,” Frontczak said. “I was loving history! These were real human beings with hopes and fears, forging their lives, often surrounded by circumstances over which they had little control. History suddenly had meaning for me.
“That love has stayed with me. The research is as much fun as performing, and that is saying a lot.”
