Tickets are on sale now.<\/a><\/p>\nListen to the interview or read the transcript, which has been edited for clarity, below.<\/em><\/p>\n\n WTOP’s Anne Kramer and Shawn Anderson speak with celebrity chef Carla Hall about her upcoming one-woman show.<\/p>\n
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\n- Shawn Anderson:<\/strong>\n
What\u2019s on the Carla Hall agenda these days?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
- Carla Hall:<\/strong>\n
I\u2019m a hustler. Look, I\u2019m a hustler. But the biggest thing locally is I\u2019m working on a one-woman show. It will be at the Olney Theatre.<\/p>\n
As in, it\u2019s just me on stage. It\u2019s called, \u201cCarla Hall \u2014 Please Underestimate Me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- Anne Kramer:<\/strong>\n
And it\u2019s not cooking, it\u2019s not baking, it\u2019s not anything culinary.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
- Carla Hall:<\/strong>\n
Well, there is a culinary aspect only because that\u2019s my life, and the story is about my life. So it does start out that way, but it\u2019s really about how I\u2019ve matriculated through my life.<\/p>\n
So the thing that a lot of people don\u2019t know about me is that I wanted to be an actress when I grew up \u2014 and I wasn\u2019t. I wanted to be the Black Carol Burnett \u2014 and I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n
So when I turned 55, looking at 60, or shall I say \u201csexty,\u201d I said, \u2018I really want to lean into theater. I really want to do a variety show.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know what that looked like, and I just kept talking about it.<\/p>\n
I told my agent. I said, \u2018I want to do more voiceovers. I want to do cameo roles.\u2019 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 \u2018building a runway,\u2019 and I\u2019d been working on this thing.<\/p>\n
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, \u2018Hey, we have a program where we have these new works, where we do workshops. Would you be interested?\u2019<\/p>\n
So we did that in September of last year. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
And it felt so far away, and now \u2014 Oh, my God! I don\u2019t even have a year. It\u2019s here! I\u2019m talking about it. It has a name. It has a poster. Tickets are on sale. I have to keep my voice.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- Anne Kramer:<\/strong>\n
How exciting is that to know that you\u2019re putting that into action?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
- Carla Hall:<\/strong>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also still dreaming and still thinking of new things to do. It\u2019s what one of my partners and I call \u201cmain dish energy.\u201d I\u2019m not being put out to pasture. I\u2019m creating new things.<\/p>\n
And I think that\u2019s what keeps you not only excited, but energized, with different generations \u2014 younger people, older people \u2014 doing something new, challenging yourself. I feel challenged. Very much so right now.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- Anne Kramer:<\/strong>\n
What do you tell somebody who wants to get into the culinary world, whether it\u2019s baking or whatever it might be? How do they continue to be in this world that we live in, in this economy, particularly if they want to be an entrepreneur, because it is very hard to sustain it. So is there any kind of sage advice you have for them?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
- Carla Hall:<\/strong>\n
I think, as lay people, we think that there\u2019s one path, and that\u2019s making stuff. Something that somebody will eat. There\u2019s so many other careers in the food world. There\u2019s baking science, there\u2019s testing, there\u2019s food styling. There\u2019s so many different things.<\/p>\n
Food is expensive. Unless you\u2019re going to work with somebody, or somebody who has a restaurant and you\u2019re 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\u2019t like hard work.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source wtop.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Award-winning chef and TV personality Carla Hall spoke with WTOP about what she\u2019s cooking up next. This page contains a video which is being blocked by your ad blocker.In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker. Celebrity chef Carla Hall on her new one-woman show, daring costumes, and meeting Gordon Ramsay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2203617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[371419,357166,425370,425371],"class_list":["post-2203616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-carla-hall","tag-chef","tag-olney-theatre","tag-one-woman-show"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Celebrity-chef-Carla-Hall-talks-to-WTOP-about-her-upcoming.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2203618,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203616\/revisions\/2203618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2203617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}