Writer.
Comedian.
Storyteller.
Dog and chocolate lover.
One of Circle Pines, Minnesota’s three famous people.
SSI Certified Scuba Diver
4.9 AirBnB rating.
Mary Jo is a writer and cast member of Emmy-nominated and Peabody award winning cult hit Mystery Science Theater 3000. She starred as Pearl Forrester and played various character roles.
Mary Jo currently co-stars with Bridget Nelson on RiffTrax, and hosts a monthly variety show online, the eponymous Mary Jo Pehl Show.
Part stand-up comic, part storyteller, Mary Jo has been featured at San Francisco SketchFest, 10,000 Laughs, and Out of Bounds comedy festivals. A headliner in her own right, she’s opened for Patton Oswalt, Jackie Kashian, and Laurie Kilmartin. She’s told her stories at theater festivals like Minnesota Fringe and FronteraFest, and was featured in the Twin Cities edition of Mortified. Her writing has been published in Minnesota Monthly, Austin Monthly, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Her funny and moving memoir, Dumb Dumb Dumb: My Mother’s Book Reviews, chronicles her late mother’s love of reading. Here’s the book and the audiobook read by the author herself. The stage adaptation premiered at Strike Theater in April 2025 to raves.
Depending on the Minnesota weather, Mary Jo also hosts occasional shows in her single-stall garage. The Garage For The Performing Arts is a small, hand-crafted venue (complete with a fake brick backdrop) for singers, comedians, storytellers, musicians, dog-dancing acts – and whatever ya got!
CONTACT:
Check out RiffTrax and The Mary Jo Pehl Show.
SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@maryjopehl
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/maryjopehl.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryjopehl
Sign up for the very occasional newsletter about Garage shows and other goings-on, what-not and what-have-you.