Entertaining PAUL WILBORN AND EUGENIE BONDURANT
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ne asset to being married to your work partner is you can multitask at home. “We can be making dinner and rehearsing at the same time,” said Eugenie Bondurant, who pairs up with husband Paul Wilborn for cabaret shows around Tampa Bay. An actor, model and acting coach, Bondurant started out with small parts in Wilborn’s “American Song Book” performances. During the Cole Porter classic Let’s Do It, she held up cue cards for the audience that read “birds do it” and “bees do it.” “She was in this long evening dress, like Miss Florida with long white gloves. She was trying to change the signs and the gloves wouldn’t let her,” recalled Wilborn, executive director of the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg. Bondurant hammed up the fumbling and the audience laughed. A lot. “It was like Lucy suddenly appeared on stage. A star was born,” he said. Bondurant, who teaches teenagers at the Patel Conservatory at the David A. Straz Jr. Center in Tampa, took voice lessons and became her husband’s regular sidekick. They’ve now been married and performing together for 11 years. There was a learning curve at first as Bondurant built up her confidence. She worried too much, Wilborn said, and was the duo’s worst critic.
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“He’s taught me how to layer things on a more positive slant,” she laughed. “Instead of ‘No, that’s horrible,’ it’s more, ‘Why don’t we try this instead.’ ” Bondurant recently appeared in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 as Tigris, the feline-esque ally of Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, Liam Hemsworth and the gang. She was in her element acting, but the premiere and celebrity-packed red carpet presented new roles for both Bondurant and Wilborn. “It was incredibly helpful to have him there,” she said. Along with preparing remarks for the throng of media interviews, Wilborn helped his wife find the perfect shoes to go with her Christian Siriano gown. Her stylist insisted on Barneys, but instead they went to Santee Alley for store after store of knockoffs. “We were taking pictures of shoes and Paul was sending them to her,” Bondurant said. The stylist finally approved of a black, T-strap spike heel. “She said, ‘I can tell by the carpet in the picture you are not at Barneys,’ ” Bondurant recounted. “She was right. We were at Payless.” Wilborn stayed within a few feet of his wife on the red carpet, but didn’t share her limelight. “If I was Brad Pitt I would have walked with her,” he said, adding proudly, “but being Paul Wilborn, it was her moment alone.” — Katherine Snow Smith