caregiver

This 45 minute/1 hour solo storytelling/standup show hits all the marks: it's got tragedy, rage, and more than a little biological, urological, and scatological comedy!

My father was diagnosed with ALS during the height of the COVID lockdowns. My family couldn't get qualified help to care for him as his body deteriorated, so I spent every other month of 2020 at my family home in Virginia feeding, dressing, and physically carrying all 270 pounds of the man I loved the most to the bathroom.

My sister and I had to fight the hospital system to get the care my father was entitled to, coping with a cruel physical therapist and willfully clueless hospital administrators just to get our beloved dad a bath.

When my fiancee and I weren't caring for my dad in Virginia, we were going through IVF treatments back in Brooklyn. I'm a testicular cancer survivor, and it took a lot of painful, disappointing, and dehumanizing treatments to make my remaining testicle stop smoking cigarettes on the loading dock and get back to work.

I wanted to absorb as much of my father's wisdom as I could because I knew I'd need it all if the baby ever came. He made loving his family look so easy, and nobody has ever been more afraid to become a father than me.

This sounds like a real dirge, but it's not! Somehow, despite overwhelming odds, I've managed to write jokes about this brutal experience and I want to tell them to as many people as possible.

This show is what comedy is for: taking suffering and transforming it into joy, or at least a few really solid poop jokes.