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Turning to comedy, actor Marilyn Pittman overcame tragedy
November 11, 2010
By Emily Wilson, ComedyBeat
SAN FRANCISCO - “Comedy and laughter are a way through the pain,” said comedian Marilyn Pittman. “I feel like I have the authority to say that given what happened to me.”
Pittman is referring to her parents’ 1997 murder-suicide, which would certainly make you something of an expert on dealing with pain. After being married for 49 years, her parents divorced. Soon after, her father, a World War II veteran, got a gun and shot her mother and then himself.
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| Marilyn Pittman |
Pittman is performing a one-woman show about what happened, It’s All the Rage, at San Francisco’s Marsh Theater. Pittman started developing the show as part of the Marsh’s Performance Initiative. She almost quit several times she said.
“I felt like I had no skin,” she said. “The first time I did it I walked off the stage and burst into tears.”
Pittman, the co-host of “Out on the Bay” on the NPR-affiliate KALW and a media consultant, says she didn’t feel ready to let everyone she worked with know her story.
“Since my parents died, I’ve moved from standup to education and training,” she said. “I didn’t want people in a professional environment to know about such a personal tragedy. I didn’t want them to see me differently or judge me.”
Working with the director David Ford, Pittman found a way to tell the story. She starts the show with a story about her road rage and a pedestrian beating her up.
“One of the most important parts of developing the show was to make sure I take care of the audience,” she said. “I want to let them know, I’m OK, I’m fine. In fact I’m going to take care of you. Let’s start with some laughs. Let’s all relax and have some jokes about how crazy I was.”
Pittman wanted to make sure there was plenty of comic relief in the show without being cavalier about what happened to her parents.
“What’s painful is funny,” she said. “Not the pain of losing my parents, but how to cope with it is.”
Besides humor, Pittman thinks the show has something to say about violence and our acceptance of it.
“I was very disdainful about this idea of a solo show,” she said. “It’s like here’s a solo show about my dysfunctional family because I’m too cheap to go to therapy. It was important to me that this have some sort of universal appeal. I want to get the audience to understand I am not different than you. These were nice people and nice upstanding members of the community.”
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| Marilyn Pittman |
Before becoming a comedian, Pittman was an actor, and she says she’s happy to go back to her dramatic roots.
“This took a lot from me,” she said about what happened to her parents. “It killed my career in a way. I was incapacitated for a good year and a half. This gives me my life back. It gives me a sense of standing in my own power and sharing that strength with others. And it gives me great pleasure to make people laugh their ass off.”
Pittman, who is working on a documentary about the history of gay comedy in San Francisco, also hopes to launch a radio talk show that will combine serious discussions about issues such as violence and posttraumatic stress disorder with comedy. She saves every story she reads about workplace violence, school shootings, and murder-suicides.
“They’re all about some form of violence and madness and our refusal as a nation to talk about this,” she said. “All of these stories reverberate into thousands of lives.”
As to her own life, in some ways comedy has saved her, Pittman says.
“I’m a student of how laughter heals the body,” she said. “I’ve always cultivated humor and laughter as a regular part of my diet.”
“It’s All the Rage” shows people they can survive and keep living after horrible events, Pittman hopes.
“This show has changed my life,” she said. “My relationship with my wife and friends is better, and I’m not as easily triggered or bothered. I’m more calm and centered and I feel a sense of peace.”