Having serious fun became a business over a decade ago when a young cousin told Heidi and Greta they were silly. They figured they could make a job out of what they were doing naturally and the Silly Sisters was born. Soon their company expanded to include other performers, each of whom brings unique talents to the silly mix.

The Silly Sisters use ordinary words and the interplay with their audience to generate funny, fantastic tales that still manage to teach through all the giggles and laughter. Summertime generally finds them crisscrossing the state to showcase their brand of creative storytelling, music and humor. Watching them is exhausting if you’re a parent, exciting if you’re a kid, and inspirational if you love the idea of making words and stories an ordinary part of every child’s life.

Their book What We Did Last Summer: Some Silly Sisters; Summer Stories published by “Oh, You Girls!” captures the spontaneity of their performance. This book includes stories created as part of the MELSA and SELCO summer library programs and includes pictures, activities and a few surprises!

Singing sisters named Heidi and Greta – I’m looking around for Julie Andrews. Do you come from a musical family?

Heidi: We’re half Norwegian, one-quarter German, one-quarter Swedish. We grew up with the dilemma of whether to put brown sugar or white sugar on our lefse.

Greta: Our mother was a music teacher, but there’s nothing on our dad’s side to explain us. No music, no arts, no theatre, nothing. Our dad is very practical; he taught us about changing a tire and…

Heidi: Powertools.

Greta: But our mom said, “You have to take piano lessons and be in choir.” So we grew up singing.

What does explain the two of you?

Greta: Back in 1971, when I was three-and-a-half and Heidi was seven, our parents made a decision that affected the course of all our lives. They gave everything up and went to Ethiopia as volunteers. That sent these messages: “At any time you can quit what you’re doing and do something else, because there’s always something else. Money doesn’t matter. Do what you love.” It’s funny, because now Heidi and I live our lives that way, and our parents wonder about us…

Heidi: I think living overseas had a lot to do with our learning to perform together, because we often only had each other to play with.

And the name?

Heidi: We got a lot of practice at family gatherings. It was, “Ask the girls to do a song, do a little something.” And our cousin Steven, who was five or six at the time…

Greta: Five.

Heidi: Said to us once, “Oh…”

Unison: “You sisters are so silly!”

Heidi: I remember I was working at the Ordway, and I used to sing to keep myself occupied during the show – I was out in the lobby, not actually in the theatre – and I made up this song about the Silly Sisters, and I said, “Hey Greta, I have a theme song for us.”

Are you together too much? Do you ever just want to break away from the sister act?

Heidi: We’re both still single and all of that – we will be “the girls” to our family until we die. And I’m 40! It cracks me up to think that I’m older than most of the mothers in our crowds, that I could even be the grandmother of these children, and here I am, clucking like a chicken.

Greta: Because we’re so similar and always lumped together as “the girls,” we grew up thinking that we’re alike. It took a long time for us to figure out how we were different.

Heidi: That was an exciting thing to realize.

Greta: It’s ridiculous – we’re grown-up, adult people, and we remind ourselves,

Unison: We’re different!

Heidi: But we enjoy being with each other.

Greta: If Heidi and I are working well together during a show, it’s brilliant. It doesn’t matter if the story’s good or not. Our goal is to instill play and creativity in the audience and if we’re on the same page, wonderful things happen.

Heidi: We’re lucky. I like to shovel snow and Greta likes to do taxes. It’s a really good partnership.

What’s the worst thing a kid has done at a performance?

Heidi: We used to have kids yell out words instead of using the bag. Our theory was that any suggestion works. If they gave us a word, we were going to use it. We weren’t going to say, “Well, no, not that …” And some kid, probably in 5th or 6th grade, yelled out the word “antidisestablishmentarianism.” And I said, “What?”

Greta: So we just went with it. It was fun. It was a great moment. It was a huge big word that then became alive.

Heidi: I do have one little story… you can interrupt me if you wish…

Greta: I would never interrupt! That’s rude!

Heidi: But if you have an additional thing to say…

Greta: You should never interrupt! I would never jump in and say, stop talking! That’s wrong!

Heidi: Yes, it is. OK, now I can’t think of my story.

Tell the truth… when there’s no audience around, is there a surly sister?

Heidi: No. We’re both friendly, but I’m much more social than Greta.

Greta: Heidi gets her energy from the audience. Another difference is that I’m more direct.

Heidi: I’m subtle.

Unison: We’re different!

Greta: If I have an opinion about something, I state it. Heidi… Heidi gets weepy.

Heidi: Because I was born in April. In an old book of my grandma’s it says that April babies are weepy, so it’s not my problem.

Do you remember many of the stories you’ve told? The number must be in the thousands.

Heidi: There’s one about a blue painting and the dinosaur that I really liked. Mainly because it had “pfffffft” in it, and anytime I can say “pfffffft,” I enjoy that.

Greta: There are no bad ideas. You can take any two objects and make them interact, and something will happen. There’s no right way to tell a story.

2004 Interview by Julie Schuster