Paul Perroni, star of Long Wharf Theatre's Defending the Caveman
Paul Perroni, the 30-year-old star of Defending the Cavemen, recalls quite fondly his days in high school playing Harold Hill in the The Music Man. He thinks he probably wasn’t too bad for a 17-year-old. But after that star turn, life took Perroni in a very different direction. “I’ve got one of those stories,” he said.
A native of Arkansas, Perroni went to college to study International Politics. A life on stage was a distant memory. Facing the prospect of a career in an office, or in the classroom, Perroni decided relatively abruptly to pursue a different route. “I was 24 and about to go to law school. I decided against it after I started to do stand-up in Arkansas,” he said. “You only live once. I know that sounds like a cliché.”
His work in Chicago led him to become a Caveman, performing the fun relationship comedy over 150 times. The initial draw of doing Defending the Caveman was the actor’s siren song of a one person show. “It was a huge challenge. I was very excited,” Perroni said. “You get to break the fourth wall and because you are intimate with the people in the audience, it is like I’m telling a story in their living room.”
As time went on, Perroni became really attached to writer Rob Becker’s wry observations about how the sexes interact. He found the show upbeat and sweet in a lot of ways. “The show really brings people together through laughter,” he said. “People laugh with it and at each other.”