Broadway World - Interview: Rain Perry
Those drawn to intimate, music-driven storytelling and powerful, personal theater take note of This Is Water, written and performed by a singer-songwriter Rain Perry (pictured), which makes its debut at the 2025 Hollywood Fringe Festival. And in our current cultural moment where conversations about privilege and identity are increasingly polarized or silenced, This Is Water dares to reflect instead of lecture as Rain looks back at her own life and US history with humor, empathy, and musicality.
I decided to speak with Rain about the genesis of her show, her six-disc recording career, and how her own experience lends to taking an insightful look into her own history in the United States.
Thank you, Rain, for taking time to speak with me today about your upcoming Hollywood Fringe show. First please tell me about your recording/entertainment history.
I am a singer-songwriter, playwright, and filmmaker known for my deeply personal and socially conscious work. My music has been featured in film and television, and my theatrical productions blend narrative and song to explore themes of identity, memory, and justice. “Beautiful Tree” was the theme for the CW Network’s Life Unexpected, on which I had the surreal pleasure of appearing as myself!
In 2016, I directed The Shopkeeper, a documentary about the impact of the streaming economy on the longest continuously operating recording studio in Austin. And more recently, I wrote and toured a solo play about my childhood called Cinderblock Bookshelves: A Guide For Children of Fame-Obsessed Bohemian Nomads.
As for my recording history, I have released six albums on my own Precipitous Records. My latest, A White Album, wades into the fraught topic of the day: what does it mean to white in America? Can we face our demons head on?
Were you born or currently live in Austin? Or what was your journey to get there?
I was born in Hollywood and spent my childhood in California and Colorado, raised by - as I say in the play - my “writer, actor, cook, occasional drug dealer, traffic school instructor, struggling single dad.”
I found my way to Austin for my second record, Cinderblock Bookshelves, because I wanted to work with producer Mark Hallman (Carole King, Ani DiFranco) at the Congress House Studio. That was the beginning of a beautiful collaboration, and we’ve done five albums together. He’s also the Musical Director for This is Water. My collaboration with Mark is the best. I write and sing the songs, and he plays - with a couple of exceptions - all the instruments.
When and what inspired you to launch Precipitous Records?
I started making records during the height of the DIY movement, when people like Ani DiFranco were showing that you could have a viable career without a record company. That made sense to me, so I started the label. I’m very happy that I own everything I create. And then I hire folks like publicists and radio promoters to do the work that’s better to delegate to a professional. That makes it so much easier when a big opportunity comes up, like the theme song for Life Unexpected, because I don’t have to ask anyone else for permission to use my own music.
Have all your albums been recorded there?
Except for my first “do it yourself” record at a friend’s studio in Ojai, all my albums have been recorded at the Congress House in Austin and released on my own label.
How does A White Album reflect the subject matter in This is Water?
This is Water offers a rare fusion of memoir and rooted in lived experience and brought to life with original songs in A White Album where vulnerability meets melody and social reflection meets personal reckoning. From the beginning, I conceived this play as kind of a cross between What the Constitution Means to Me and Stop Making Sense - an inquiry into American history told through my own experience, with music.
All the songs in This is Water are from A White Album - we use six of them in the play. The simplest way to describe the whole project is that I’m looking at my own White family to tell a true story about America. There are some tough facts about our history. But it’s also joyful, and hopeful, and - if I do a good job - funny too!
Was the album inspired by the 2020 pandemic-caused societal shutdown? How so?
Absolutely. It was 2020 and we were all locked down, so - like lots of my artist friends - I thought “might as well make use of this time and create something.” George Floyd had been killed, and the Black Lives Matter movement was blossoming, and I wanted to respond to that somehow.
I knew that the last thing anyone needed was a lecture about “how not to be racist.” Besides, who am I to tell anyone what to do? I’ll be learning how to be a more empathetic, equitable human my whole life. My favorite songs are the ones where someone is striving to figure out their lives or the world and I get to see myself in their quest. That’s what I wanted to do. I don’t have any answers for this fraught American moment, but come with me as I see if I can find my way.
So I just started looking at my life. I’d already written a memoir of my hippie childhood, so I thought “what if I look again, but this time see it as a White childhood?” What will I learn?
Well, it turns out, a lot. There were so many angles I wanted to address, but the rule for the play became “I’m only allowed to talk about US history if I can connect it to my own family.”
While you were writing and recording the album, did you know you would turn it into your own solo staged show?
I thought I probably would, because I’d done it before and this felt like the same kind of project - almost like a sequel to Cinderblock Bookshelves, my hippie memoir of growing up with my dad that was also an album and a musical play.
Have you worked with your director Kim Maxwell before? Please tell me where/when.
Yes! She directed Cinderblock Bookshelves. I feel so lucky to get to work with Kim, who is a cofounder of the Ojai Playwrights Conference and a beautifully intuitive and encouraging director. We work together very well. But this project scared both of us. How do a couple white chicks from Ojai presume to talk about racism? We realized, though, that our discomfort and fear were what the play was about.
We have worked with several incredible advisors - historian Dr. Yohuru Williams, writer/director Veralyn Jones, and dramaturgs Lindsay Jenkins and Gideon Wabvuta - who have challenged us to always go deeper, be more honest, reveal our embarrassment and confusion in a quest to actually make progress in this conversation America keeps trying to have and then runs away from it. And we hope we can give the audience permission to do the same.
Why did you decide to set out on a journey to discover what it means to white in America?
In 2020, everyone was doing that, from tiny arts organizations to giant corporations. Everyone was creating “diversity departments” and writing elaborate mission statements. And now? Those departments are shuttered and anything that could remotely be called “woke” is being scrubbed from government websites. I’m not ready to give up on the America we say we are, with liberty and justice for all.
Why do you think This is Water will personally resonant the Hollywood Fringe audience?
This is our first Fringe. But our impression from talking to longtime Fringers is that heartening, thought-provoking conversations are what Fringe is all about. Plus, I have a wonderful band!
Of all the experiences you share in This is Water, is there one that especially turned your life around? In what way?
The first memory I wrote down in 2020 was a story my grandmother told me about an interracial crush between my mom as a young girl and a little boy in their neighborhood. I’d always remembered the story as a sweet little childhood tale. And as I was writing all these memories down, it occurred to me that this boy would’ve been about the same age as Emmett Till. Suddenly I saw so many things in the story I’d never seen before, in particular how risky was it for him in the 1950s to tell the mother of a White girl he had a crush on her daughter? That made me realize that behind my familiar memories were all kinds of questions I’d never asked.
Since you have written, directed, and appeared in various entertainment categories, which format rings the most to your soul? Why do you think that happens?
I’ve worked in a bunch of formats, that’s true! But I see myself as a singer-songwriter. I might not ever make another documentary but I will write songs forever.
How do you compare the experience of recording an album to appearing in front of a live audience to tell your story?
They’re actually similar! In both cases, I learn things about what I’ve written that I didn’t know were there. In recording, it’s a process of building an arrangement around a basic idea - the song being the blueprint and the recording of it being the finished building.
In a theater, the unknown thing is the audience reaction. Oh, this part is funny? I didn’t know that! Oh, this part is where the play needs to rest for a second? You only learn these things once you get it on the stage.
What lessons or insights do you hope audiences gain from seeing the play?
For those who appreciate thought-provoking, music-infused storytelling, This Is Water is not just a performance - it’s a call to awareness, reflection, and change. I hope to empower others to follow my example and push the boundaries in their own lives to make a difference; to walk away feeling less scared, more determined and hopeful.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I don’t think so! These questions were wonderful. Thank you!!
For more information and tickets to This is Water in the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June 7-28 at the Broadwater (Second Stage), 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038, visit https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/11376