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NEW MUSICAL is now being written by an award winning
team.
Due to be mounted at the Ivy Sub Station in Culver City,
the musical theater production is based on the documentary
"NOT AFRAID TO LAUGH" which won top honors from
the Communicator Awards and was a finalist in the Peabody
Awards.
NOT AFRAID TO LAUGH (the true story
and its fictional musical counterpart) is about a woman
who when confronted with a terrifying diagnosis of breast
cancer discovers something scarier than breast cancer --
stand-up comedy. The project has both artistic merit and
social relevance in that it challenges our ideas about family,
body image; women as professionals, women as artists, women
as wives, mothers, and performers. What is the cost of "being
a doing machine?" What is the cost of "being a
mother to everyone and not a mother to oneself?" What
is the coast of the female "do it all" juggling
act professionally and personally "one for all and
no one for me?" The musical (and hopefully the documentary
about it) will explore how we as women are still in the
process of a larger recovery -- "coming out of hiding
with our artistic voices." Ironically, it is through
illness that we as women can learn (re-learn) our value
as creators (re-creators) of our lives.
The musical is about a dysfunctional family
that becomes functional through trauma. Although the 'mother'
has the cancer, there is a 'cancer' in the family, and it
takes an illness for the family to pull together and help
each other.
The musical comedy will also address what
do we say when someone we love gets in an 'accident on the
freeway of life?' How do we react appropriately as spouses,
co-workers, and children when our "take charge, together
mom becomes untogether" and suddenly needs help? By
going into the darkest of places within us, women emerge
with the knowledge that laughter can be the best medicine…
"You have to cry so hard you have to laugh!" The
production team, mostly women whose lives have been affected
by illness, hope to bring a positive message not only about
the benefits of humor, but also about how to survive any
tragedy with grace and humor. It is our hope -- all of us
who are collaborating on this -- that NOT AFRAID TO LAUGH
- the musical comedy will be a powerful portrait of how
one woman became a role model within her family demonstrating
"It's not what happens to us, but how we laugh about
it that counts!"
We have Tony Award winning talent involved
in putting this together. The musical theater production
and the making of the documentary "NOT AFRAID TO LAUGH"
will ultimately be used to educate and a percentage of sales
of course will go to help those families and people newly
diagnosed with cancer in an outreach program as part of
the theatrical presentation.
THE DIRECTOR/CREATOR - "I am a breast
cancer survivor, exec producer and former Columbia Pictures
Exec. I have been chronicling my adventures on videotape
since being diagnosed in late 1998, including my discovery
to use stand-up comedy as a healing modality. I now perform
my BC standup routine at the Improv, the DMV, Sav-on, schools,
breast cancer fundraisers, etc.
"When I was first diagnosed there
was nothing that really looked at the situation while it
was happening - a film that spoke to the experience with
a sense of humor and kindly pathos. Most of everything I
saw was incredibly depressing. My point of view is that
if I laugh at this terrible thing and get others laughing,
someone who might have been too scared to check out a problem
will still be here five years from now to laugh themselves.
People seeing the musical, and/or documentary would laugh
their way to an early diagnosis. My slogan became, 'Everyday
can be breast cancer awareness day -- feel up a friend!'"
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