Celebrity chef Carla Hall talks to WTOP about her upcoming one-woman show

I’m a hustler. Look, I’m a hustler. But the biggest thing locally is I’m working on a one-woman show. It will be at the Olney Theatre.

As in, it’s just me on stage. It’s called, “Carla Hall — Please Underestimate Me.”

Well, there is a culinary aspect only because that’s my life, and the story is about my life. So it does start out that way, but it’s really about how I’ve matriculated through my life.

So the thing that a lot of people don’t know about me is that I wanted to be an actress when I grew up — and I wasn’t. I wanted to be the Black Carol Burnett — and I’m not.

So when I turned 55, looking at 60, or shall I say “sexty,” I said, ‘I really want to lean into theater. I really want to do a variety show.’ I didn’t know what that looked like, and I just kept talking about it.

I told my agent. I said, ‘I want to do more voiceovers. I want to do cameo roles.’ I had gotten an acting coach. I mean, I really did a deep dive. I was looking at one-woman shows and theater, and so I was just really building my consciousness to do this thing. I call it ‘building a runway,’ and I’d been working on this thing.

And then when I had an interview, an article in the New York Times by Kim Severson, and I mentioned how I wanted to do a one-woman show. Olney reached out and said, ‘Hey, we have a program where we have these new works, where we do workshops. Would you be interested?’

So we did that in September of last year. It’s a whole weeklong thing, and then at the end of the week, we do a performance. We, as in me and my writers, so Lori Kaye and Leslie Thomas, and they invited me to be a part of the 2025-26 season.

And it felt so far away, and now — Oh, my God! I don’t even have a year. It’s here! I’m talking about it. It has a name. It has a poster. Tickets are on sale. I have to keep my voice.

It is so exciting. I think at this stage of my life, at 60, when a lot of people are winding down, I am winding up.

I’m also still dreaming and still thinking of new things to do. It’s what one of my partners and I call “main dish energy.” I’m not being put out to pasture. I’m creating new things.

And I think that’s what keeps you not only excited, but energized, with different generations — younger people, older people — doing something new, challenging yourself. I feel challenged. Very much so right now.

I think, as lay people, we think that there’s one path, and that’s making stuff. Something that somebody will eat. There’s so many other careers in the food world. There’s baking science, there’s testing, there’s food styling. There’s so many different things.

Food is expensive. Unless you’re going to work with somebody, or somebody who has a restaurant and you’re making things for them. I think have experiences where you can test the waters and then see if you like it. A lot of times, people like pretty food, but they don’t like hard work.