Support “My Daughter, My Wife”

by Wells

First, the beg.  Please click that image or this link and kick in $1 or more for the production of “My Daughter, My Wife.”

Thanks.

I co-wrote this play with my friend Desiree Nash.  It’s based on a ridiculous sketch I wrote a few years ago that we could never produce because it required so many different locations and so much fake vomit.  

The sketch was a “flashback episode” of a sitcom called My Daughter, My Wife.  You know how in season three of a sitcom in the 90’s they’d get two of the characters stuck somewhere and have them look back over their crazy lives through a series of flashbacks from past episodes?  That was this.  The idea was that those episodes are dumb, and sitcoms are so dumb that it’s plausible that they’d produce a sitcom based on the premise that a man has to pretend his daughter is his wife whenever these mobsters are around, and he can never let his actual ex-wife know what he’s up to.  And now that stupid premise is the actual idea for this play.

The group producing the play, SidViscous!, is the improv comedy group that I’ve been on since 2007.  The opening night of MDMW is the same night as the group’s fifth anniversary.  At some point a thousand years ago we all got together and had a brainstorming session to discuss the group’s future.  We started as a house team at the Peoples Improv Theater and stayed together after we got removed from the theater’s lineup.  We’d become a sort of travelling festival group that would do improv shows here and there, and we wanted to come up with other projects for ourselves.  Putting on a play was one of the ideas I pitched.  I had some characters outlined for this thing but I knew I’d never get around to finishing it without a deadline or a partner.  So I asked Desiree to help because she’s hilarious and prolific.

We emailed chunks back and forth for a few months and when it was almost done we had an overnight writing session at my apartment and finished the thing over about a dozen beers.  We were giddy with the resulting script and even in the light of day and sobriety, it holds up pretty well.

It’s been a long process.  Between that first SidViscous! meeting and today one of us has left the group, one of us has gotten engaged, people have moved apartments, peoples’ other shows have had full runs, and the Peoples Improv Theater has transformed from a little black box above a Subway restaurant to the 99-seat comedy theater of the year of 2011.  I feel like we’ve built the Pyramids only to have them on display for three dates in February and then put on a shelf forever.  In the end I’d like everyone I know to have seen it.

What comes after this?  God, who knows.  I’ve learned a lot about what makes for good farces, especially from our director Joe Hendel.  Maybe I’ll write another one of these things.  Maybe I’ll just write some more poem parodies.  I don’t know what it is that attracts me to writing projects that have no chance of earning me a paycheck.  Hey!  Speaking of which, please do help us pay for production costs by joining our Kickstarter campaign.

See how I book-ended it with the begs?  Classy.