Being Mother Ginger
This year, Ballet Austin invited Kevin Connor to be one of its celebrity Mother Gingers in this year's production of The Nutcracker, and the KGSR morning anchor learned firsthand what it's like to be dolled up for a quickie in the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
By Robert Faires, Fri., Dec. 14, 2001
When Ballet Austin invited Kevin Connor to be one of its celebrity Mother Gingers in this year's production of The Nutcracker, the KGSR morning anchor wasn't entirely sure he wanted to accept. True, he would only have to appear in one performance and would only have to be onstage for a few minutes, but for those few minutes he'd have to wear a humongous, candy-studded headpiece straight from the Carmen Miranda Collection, a pair of Morganna-sized breasts, and a two-story skirt from which issue oodles of children. And he'd have to vamp while the kiddies do their Bon Bon dance.
Connor didn't know if he had the right stuff to be Mother Ginger. "But geez," he says, "I looked at the list of other people they had asked to do it -- Kay Bailey Hutchison, Kirk Watson, Luci Johnson -- and I thought, this is an honor. You gotta do this." So, misgivings and all, the deejay joined the ranks of the proud, the few, the 35 local luminaries who, since the tradition was established four years ago, have dolled up for a quickie in the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
First, Connor had to figure out some shtick to provide during his time onstage. That was expected of the Mother Gingers. "Ham it up," he was told by the ballet staff. Other celebrities had played off their occupations: The Mayor, the only person to play Mother Ginger in every Nutcracker since 1997, had taken calls on a cell phone. Former Cowboys linebacker Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson threw footballs to the crowd. "But what am I supposed to do?" Connor asked rhetorically. "Wear headphones and miscue records?"
Connor's gig became on-air fodder prior to December 8. One day, he ragged on Watson for playing Mother Ginger so much. "I was saying, this dude must like this," Connor says. "He must like being a big woman." Watson, who happened to be listening to the station just then, called Connor -- and proceeded to make him more nervous about his appearance. "I said, 'Well, you're only up there for three minutes, right?'" says Connor. "And he says, 'Yeah, but let me tell you, big boy, when you're up there, those three minutes feel like thirty.'"
Last Saturday, Connor learned that for himself. After watching the first act from the house -- the ballet staff "don't even want to see you before intermission," he says -- he went backstage to be rigged up. While he had his own dressing room and was treated "like a queen" (emphasis his), all that courtesy couldn't finesse over what he was doing once they strapped on that 76-EEE bust: cheap drag humor. "I had my son and his best friend in the dressing room with me, and they were just howling."
Soon enough, he climbed into place and was wheeled onstage. He had created a KGSR sign on a stick, which he waved and also used as a guitar and a violin. Unfortunately, he kept being distracted by that headpiece, which proved as ungainly as the one Lucy wore in the show where she tried out to be a Vegas showgirl: "That hat, that centerpiece, that floral arrangement, whatever you want to call it, did not fit my head too well, so I spent a lot of time dealing with that."
He also spent a fair amount of time playing with Mother Ginger's beach-ball-sized bosoms. He rubbed them, he pressed them, he worked them harder than a Yellow Rose dancer at a bachelor party. "I was told," he says, "that in the 39 years Ballet Austin has been doing The Nutcracker that I was the first Mother Ginger to use my breasts as bongos."
Overall, Connor says, the experience was a little fun and a little scary. "It was kind of like a thrill ride at an amusement park ... although it seemed to last a lot longer than most of those rides do."
