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Curtain Call — Mia Gaskin: Pandemic consolation for voice-over actor is working at home in her Cookie Monster PJs By Jim Flint Jun 10, 2022 06:00 AM A A Mia Gaskin performs with Eoghan McDowell in "Hunchback of Notre Dame" at Camelot Theatre in Talent in 2019. She is the cast of the musical "The Full Monty," opening June 30 at Oregon Cabaret Theatre. Photo by Chelsea Fine. Mia Gaskin is a Rogue Valley stage and voice-over actor, and an audiobook narrator. The pandemic has not been kind to the performing arts, but one consolation for voice-over actor Mia Gaskin is being able to work out of her home studio. “I get to stay healthy and work in Cookie Monster pajamas if I feel like it,” she said. Voice-over work is fun and helps pay the bills, but Gaskin also does stage work, having appeared with many Rogue Valley theater companies over the past decade. The 41-year-old Ashland actor will soon tread the boards again at Oregon Cabaret Theatre as Estelle in the musical “The Full Monty” from June 30 to Sept. 4. She plays the “occasional” girlfriend of Jerry, an unemployed Buffalo steel mill worker who, after seeing women go gaga at a Chippendales performance, decides his ship has come in and organizes a similar stripper act of his own. “Estelle is a hoot,” Gaskin said. “There are some very colorful characters in this show.” The local production of “The Full Monty” was a casualty of the pandemic when the Cabaret and other theaters were forced to close. “I’m looking forward to diving into a piece we were originally slated to do in 2020,” Gaskin said. “We’ve been holding out patiently and now we finally get to bring it to the Valley.” She has become a familiar face to Rogue Valley theater goers. Gaskin played Sally in “Whodunit” and appeared in the Naughty But Nice Late Night Cabaret at the Oregon Cabaret. At Camelot Theatre, she was Esmeralda in “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and Charlotte in “A Little Night Music.” Other local credits include Maggie in “Lend Me a Tenor, The Musical” and Meg in “Leading Ladies” (Collaborative Theatre Project); Audrey in “Little Shop of Horrors” and Elizabeth in “Young Frankenstein” (Randall Theatre). She first moved to the Rogue Valley in 2007 for three years. After a two-year break in L.A., she returned to Ashland in 2012. “I met my husband then, got married, and have been here ever since,” she said. Gaskin was born and raised in Orange County, Calif., the daughter of healthcare workers. “I’m the first person in my family to pursue a career in the arts,” she said. When she was 10 years old, she saw Michael Crawford in “Phantom of the Opera” in Los Angeles. “After that, I became obsessed with all things theater and started seeing more shows and making up plays in my room.” Her first big break came in middle school when she played Lucille Ball in a tribute show. “I went to a Catholic school and we didn’t have a theater program,” she said. “But after that performance, one of the nuns pulled my parents aside and strongly recommended they get me in theater classes, ASAP. Which they did, thankfully.” She studied commedia dell’arte, improv and clowning at South Coast Repertory in its youth conservatory program. “I was in that program for four years, and it was the best part of my childhood,” she said. She stayed with the SCR program in high school where she also sang in the choir. By the time she was graduated and ready for college, she knew she wanted to study theater. “Nobody could talk me out of it.” She earned a BA in theater/business from the University of California at San Diego, then threw herself into a career in the arts. Her parents were less than thrilled at first, especially when they saw her struggling. “In the beginning, I worked a lot of restaurant jobs to pay the bills,” Gaskin said. “Then I discovered voice-over and audiobook narration, and have been doing that ever since.” Her family is very supportive now. “They see that I’m happiest when I’m doing theater. They come see most everything I do,” she said. She loves painting pictures in people’s minds with her voice when she does audiobooks. “I play every character in the book, so I have both male and female voices, and voices for just about every age,” she said. “On stage, I can do most regional U.S. accents as well as various U.K. ones. But in the audiobook world, I’ve done a lot of international accent bits here and there, too.” Currently, she is narrating an audiobook series called “The Grilled Cheese Mysteries.” “They are cozy mysteries filled with cheese puns,” she said. “I did ‘Up to No Gouda’ and am now working on ‘No Parm, No Foul.’ I always have had a passion for puns, so this has been a lot of fun.” She had an opportunity to utilize her voice skills last summer in Rogue Theater Company’s production of Cheryl Strayed’s “Tiny Beautiful Things” at Grizzly Peak Winery. “I played a bunch of characters. That was a powerful experience, going in and out of very different characters, turning them on and off like pulling a switch.” She also sings and plays the piano. “Lately I’ve been getting into singing jazz and have been performing locally with two different jazz trios,” she said. There are at least two roles on her bucket list that might have to wait until she is a few years older, although with her voice work experience, she might be able to pull them off now. “I would love to play Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ and maybe, down the road, Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard,’” she said. After the run of “The Full Monty” ends in September, she and her husband will move to San Diego to start a new chapter in their lives. She hesitates to say where she sees herself in 10 years, especially after the past two years of unpredictability. “I’m very much in the moment and ready for anything,” she said. “It could go a thousand different ways, but I hope I’m performing and traveling and surrounded by loved ones and cute dogs.” In the meantime, she can work on her corgi and terrier accents. Reach Ashland writer Jim Flint at [email protected].