Why a 'Righteous Gemstones' star is working at a Memphis brewery and taking the stage here

The bartender at the Soul & Spirits Brewery on North Main has a familiar face, at least to those who are fans of what the online magazine Slate reported "might be the funniest show currently on television."

She is Mary Hollis Inboden, and she has the recurring role of "Mandy" on "The Righteous Gemstones," a satire in its third season on HBO that is set in the scandalous world of Southern televangelism.

Like her more celebrated "Gemstones" co-stars Danny McBride and John Goodman, Inboden was left at loose ends by the actors' and writers' strikes that have shut down most film and television production.

So the Arkansas native has returned to the big city of her youth, Memphis, where she cut her acting teeth, to pour beer and to take the stage in "The Wasp," a Quark Theatre production that opens Friday, Sept. 22, and runs through Oct. 8 at Theatre South, a compact venue tucked inside First Congregational Church, near the corner of Cooper-Young.

"I started in Memphis, and I wanted to come back and fill this artistic hole that was happening because of the strike," explained Inboden, 37, whose lifelong devotion to theater was accelerated by a need to fill a more extreme emptiness — a devastating emotional wound — that was ripped open on March 24, 1998.

That was the day when a teacher and four of Inboden's classmates were fatally shot by two fellow students at Westside Middle School in Craighead County, Arkansas, about 75 miles northwest of Memphis.

She was 12 when she became what news reports called a "Westside survivor." Her best friend, Paige Ann Herring, also 12, was among the victims.

“After the shooting happened, I dug so much deeper into daydreaming and playing pretend," Inboden said. "Theater was a place I could be away from my other little classmates, and not think about the shooting all the time."

Participating in plays, on stage and behind the scenes, in Jonesboro and Memphis, “I learned a lot of different things I didn’t know I was learning. I learned empathy for the people I shared this terrible event with. I learned the importance of laughter. I learned you could have a shared experience, like in the theater, that’s really beautiful and not tragic.

"Getting attention for something that was positive instead of terrible was a draw for me, so I burrowed in," Inboden said. Even so, "there is still a heartbroken kid who lives inside me,” she said, who “realizes how precious life is, how we’re only here for a finite period of time. It’s part of the reason I’m so ambitious.”

That ambition has manifested itself in a so far successful career. "I've been a working actor for 10 years, and that's a huge feat in itself," she said.

'The theater scene'

Testifying to their faith in their daughter's maturity and their acceptance of her aspirations, Inboden's parents allowed Mary Hollis to leave high school and move to Memphis at 16 so she could devote herself to "what I truly think, even now, is such a brilliant and wonderful scene in Memphis, the theater scene."

Inboden said she followed, as much as possible, the "rules, curfews, structure and phone calls" mandated by her parents, who provided financial support, even as young Mary Hollis worked various jobs. "Surviving a mass shooting, it made us grow up really quick," she said. "So I was able to kind of posture as a more grown person than I was."

Claiming to be 18 because "the character had to say a lot of really off-color things," Inboden in 2002 landed her first role at Circuit Playhouse, in "Anton in Show Business," for director Brian Mott. Appropriately, Inboden, according to The Commercial Appeal, was cast as a "star-struck neophyte in the theater world."

She soon found roles on most stages — Circuit, Playhouse on the Square, Theatreworks, and so on — in plays both minor and major ("Ragtime," "Beauty and the Beast"). At 17, she won an Ostrander Award (the Ostranders honor Memphis theater) as Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, for Theatre Memphis' production of "Cloud 9."

But she didn't just perform: She took on whatever job was needed. "I said yes to almost everything, and that's advice I would give to young artists today. For 'The Wizard of Oz' at Playhouse, I was the dog handler. We had three Toto's, and one of them was prone to psychotic episodes, and I was constantly being bitten by a very nervous dog."

At 20, Inboden moved to Chicago, a city with a vibrant theater scene that has launched the careers of many famous actors (John Malkovich, Tina Fey, Michael Shannon, and on and on). There, she wrote and staged "The Warriors," a play inspired by her school-shooting experience, which she brought to Rhodes College's McCoy Theater in 2014.

Also while in Chicago, she auditioned for the co-lead in the Chicago-set CBS sitcom "Mike & Molly." She lost out to Melissa McCarthy, but the audition opened doors, and Inboden relocated to Los Angeles, where she has enjoyed what she calls "a really fortunate career" in TV and film. Among other gigs, she was a regular for two seasons on the ABC sitcom "The Real O'Neals," and a lead on the one-season AMC show, "Kevin Can F**k Himself."

Her success enabled her to buy a home in Jonesboro, as a sort of sanctuary from Hollywood stress, and a way to stay close to her parents and roots. That rural getaway proved especially helpful when first the COVID shutdowns and now the Writers Guild of America and the SAG-AFTRA strikes put her on what she calls "furlough."

Suds and sanity

Meanwhile, a friend from Inboden's Arkansas childhood, Owen Blair Perry, opened the Soul & Spirits Brewery at 845 N. Main, along with her husband, brewer Ryan Allen. So when Inboden returned to Jonesboro to wait out the strike, she also agreed to become what she calls a "beer wench" a few nights a week at Soul & Spirits, to help her friend, to earn a little spending money, "and to maintain my sanity."

"Most people walk in and see Mary Hollis and say, 'You look familiar, do I know you?'" said Perry. "She just lets them think about it for a while until it hits them."

At the brewery, Inboden met Memphis actress and theater veteran Meghan Lisi Lewis, who was preparing to appear in "The Wasp," a two-woman play that needed a co-star. Inboden had been wanting to return to acting in ways that would not violate the strike; and appearing again on the Memphis stage was another goal. So "The Wasp" opportunity seemed ideal.

Tony Isbell, the Quark co-founder (with Adam Remsen and Louisa Koeppel) who is directing "The Wasp," said he was eager to cast Inboden when he learned she was interested.

"When she was doing theater here, we never actually got to work together, but I'd seen her work and she's seen mine," said Isbell, who has been involved in Memphis theater for 45 years.

Founded in 2015, the Quark Theatre presents "small plays about big ideas," according to the motto on its website.

"What we always look for is plays that have great, strong roles for actors, and this play has two incredibly good roles for women," Isbell said.

Written by British playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, "The Wasp" is a psychological thriller about two women who meet up for the first time since high school. "Enjoyably nasty," according to London's The Guardian, the play debuted four years ago in London; a movie version has been announced, to star Naomie Harris ("Moonlight") and Natalie Dormer ("Game of Thrones").

Yet, "somehow, I don't know why," Isbell said, the play never has been staged in the U.S. In other words, "Quark fans will be the first Americans to get to see this amazing show!" boasts the Quark Theatre website.

"It's a beast of a play," Inboden said. "It took my breath away because it is a big bite, it is a challenging show, it is two women on stage for 90 minutes talking about some very serious things. It's a thriller, and it weaves, and just when you think you've figured it out, it weaves again."

With seating limited to about 50 people per show, the audience for "The Wasp" obviously will be much smaller than the one that views "The Righteous Gemstones," which averaged about 5 million viewers per episode in its third season, according to TheWrap, an online entertainment journal.

That doesn't bother Inboden. "Theater is where I feel the most creative," she said. "Television and film, as we know, pays more, but I think I've missed theater most of all."

Quark Theatre presents 'The Wasp'

Sept. 22-Oct. 8, Theatre South at First Congregational Church, 1000 Cooper.

8 p.m. performances on Sept. 22, Sept. 23, Sept. 29, Sept. 30, Oct. 6 and Oct. 7; 2 p.m. performances on Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8. Plus, a pay-what-you-can 8 p.m. show Oct. 2.

Admission: $20.

For tickets, visit quarktheatre.com.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'Righteous Gemstones' star Mary Hollis Inboden is in Memphis: Why?