In Praise of Julia Sweeney

I have been singing Julia Sweeny's praises for a while now. People often ask in disbelief, "You mean that person who played the character Pat on Saturday Night Live?" Well, yes, but don't judge her for that, because she is so much more. Several years ago, my friend Greg and I saw her perform "God Said Ha," her touching but funny show about her brother's death from cancer and her own fight with ovarian cancer. (Yes, it doesn't sound that funny, but it was. You can see for yourself in the movie version.) After that we dreamed about writing a road movie to star Sweeney and Janeane Garofalo, with a sound track by Jonathan Richman. (Because Jonathan Richman wrote a song for Sweeney, with the lyrics, "Just because I'm Irish doesn't mean that I know the name of every bar in Manhattan.") The moment for that has probably passed, but Sweeney keeps turning out the goods. Almost four years ago, I saw her perform "In the Family Way," her account of adopting a little girl from China--also wonderful. And now Sweeney has been getting a lot of attention for her show "Letting Go of God," concerning her "conversion" from Catholicism to atheism. I missed it when she performed it for the first time in New York a few years ago, because the tickets were sold out. She received a huge response to it when she appeared on "This American Life," and now she is releasing a CD of the entire show. She is also coming back to NYC with it and this time I hope to get tickets.

Greg recently sent me this information:

She's so awesome.

Speaking of which, the NPR show This American Life recently re-broadcast a 10-year-old episode featuring recordings of Julia Sweeney at comedy clubs as she was developing the material that eventually became "God Said Ha."

Ultimately, GSH is a more accomplished piece of art than these bits (of course), but there's an immediacy and urgency to the original monologues. You can hear the hysteria lurking just below the surface as Sweeney serves up hilarious one-liners about the extremely scary and sad things that were happening right then -- sometimes the same day she's talking about them. This is as raw as it gets.



If you're interested, you can listen to it online here:

http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/96/9.html



So if I have sold you on Sweeney, can read her blog or visit her website to learn more.