La Egoísta
Philadelphia Theatre Company
Suzanne Roberts Theatre
480 S. Broad St.
Philadelphia
I was happy to find front row seats for a local theater show — until I noticed a solitary mic hanging out center stage in front of a faux-brick, red-curtain, round-spotlight set. “Oh, god,” I thought as the lights dimmed — had I accidentally signed up for stand-up?
La Egoísta, a 2022 play written by Erline Ortiz and put on by the Philadelphia Theatre Company, starts off with discomfort: The protagonist, Josefina, jokes about men cumming in her mouth during a raunchy, solo stand-up routine. I was ironically relieved when the backdrop lifted to show a hospital room: I was at a play, not a comic catastrophe, afterall.
Stand-up makes me anxious beyond reason. I am a reformed control freak and there are few performers I trust to get up on stage and poke fun at people. There’s an intense vulnerability to the art of stand-up; the audience gives into a high-tension atmosphere because they believe that relief is on the way in the form of a wisecrack.
La Egoísta brings its own share of raunchy laughs while introducing the audience to some heavy realities. The opening stand-up set that had me frozen in my seat, for example, was interrupted by an emergency phone call, prompting Josefina to rush off stage. We then see her in a hospital room with her sister, Betsaida, who was brought in for severe abdominal pain. What follows is the long route to recovery; Betsaida is diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and forced to go through multiple grueling surgeries to repair her leaking intestines, and Josefina is required to step in as her sister’s caretaker.
The script explores not just the highs of humor, but its harms. It does so successfully by building up trust between the actors and the audience by modeling the development of trust between family on stage. While Josefina makes jokes in attempts to distract both herself and her sister from the pain of their situation, Betsaida has to examine her own boundaries around what’s funny and what’s not. Both siblings have to give each other the benefit of the doubt in order to trust comedy as a kind of care — even, and sometimes especially, during serious and sensitive times.
Over time, the audience becomes part of the family. We feel safe knowing that humor is intended as a means of connection rather than deflection or control.
Towards the end of the play, the fourth wall is broken; Josefina asks an audience member to come on stage and “drive her to the hospital.” Upon their arrival, Betsaida questions the audience member: “Do you really think my sister is funny?”
Instead of sighing with relief that I wasn’t the comic’s target from the crowd, I was able to laugh along. The answer was simple — “Yeah, I do,” the audience member responded.
Josefina’s story took me somewhere good in the end, even if it was uncomfortable along the way. By taking open accountability for when humor misses the mark, the show reminded me that comedy is ultimately another coping mechanism. After seeing the relief laughter can provide, I was a lot more comfortable submitting myself to someone else’s tight five.
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Buy tickets for La Egoísta, playing through Oct. 20, here.
