Usually when someone says to me during an interview, “So that’s a really long-winded answer to your question and I hope you don’t have to transcribe it,” I’m thinking to myself, “You’re right and that’s the first time anyone has considered whether or not I’m transcribing this conversation.” When talking last week with Sandra Tsing Loh, who told me precisely that sentence, I was challenged to connect the dots and keep up with the whirlwind of ideas that she offered.
It made me realize how much is going on inside her brain. Whittling her articles, books or shows down to a manageable length must be a challenge. As it was perhaps when she wrote The Bitch is Back as an essay for The Atlantic, published in the October 2011 issue. A challenge that paid off.
Loh adapted that award-winning essay into a solo show, also named The Bitch is Back, which debuted at The Broad Stage in 2015. It was filmed and this version is going to be available on demand beginning on Wednesday via the Broad Stage (with a more family-friendly title that invokes asterisks The B**** is Back: An All-Too Intimate Evening).
What follows are edited excerpts of my conversation with Loh in which we discuss the show’s theme of menopause, life pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic and whether or not there is humor in heaven.
You started this year with polar plunges into the Pacific Ocean. You stated on your Instagram account (with a nod to Madeline Kahn) that you felt “veefweshed.” Has that feeling stayed with you?
Okay, this may not be a short answer. I think the pandemic, well, to go even a year earlier than that, it was a hard year for so many people. The plunging into the ocean was the beginning of a shock therapy treatment to start feeling things, sensing things. I’d never done that before. It was just to normalize myself and feel like myself. I felt truly out-of-touch with my body.
I went to the doctor and they threw me on a scale recently and it was like alarms went off and police helicopters were circling. I just came in for a check-up and I saw a number that made me traumatized. They took my blood pressure and it was like I was going into cardiac arrest because I’d just seen my weight. So I think that whole journey of plunging, I think it was my personal journey of coming back onto my body and psyche and space.
Before you wrote the essay that inspired this show, you wrote another story for The Atlantic called Should Women Rule? where you talked about being in a perimenopausal stage. Ten years later, presumably post-menopausal and after doing this show, how has your relationship to menopause changed?
To a certain extent I still regard it as not having to take care of anyone – using those hormones that fire during taking care of children. There was this really expensive diaper cream, I can’t tell you how amazing it smelled and the hormones it inspired. It felt like I was on a fantastic acid trip – not that I have done many acid trips. I felt like I was on drugs [her voice changes and she impersonates being high] “I’m on drugs now and I’m going to bake a pie and I’ve never made one before.” Everyone was shocked I was a mother in these filthy paint-splattered overalls. I didn’t look like a mother and I still don’t.
There’s the freedom of thank God I’m not fertile anymore. Boo-hoo. It’s not really boo-hoo. I got my first period and my mother said it’s going to happen every month. I could not believe it. I wasn’t very well-informed. There are all these different phases of “oh not this” or “oh not that.” I felt initially freed when I thought about being out of it.
The press release positions the streaming of this show as a fascinating look at what a night in a cabaret was like for audiences pre-pandemic. You discuss menopause as returning one’s body back to normal, do you see a parallel between the themes of this show and the concept of us returning to normalcy and attending live events again?
I think when I look back at that show it’s amazing how much body contact there is and serving of wine. I’m bringing them wine, sometimes spilling it on them. I remember how tactile it was. I remember being able to chat with the audience and they were part of the show.
This is an interesting moment of transition back out. I think as the pandemic is lifting it’s mixed for many people. There’s a bit of euphoria to go to a restaurant and order a cocktail. Some people who are more introverted are saying “There are things I liked, but sorry about the deaths.” Someone texted me recently, “Oh no, I have to do brunch again.”
I think Bitch is a look at some of the things we had before the pandemic and are actually going back to in some form and maybe we can sift through them and find the good stuff and the joy and maybe not do things we don’t want to do. That’s the theme of the show: now that I’m 50, I don’t have to do this anymore. I’m 59 now. Do you have to go to brunch? No, you don’t.
Mark Twain said, “The secret of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” Is he right?
Wow that really does resonate. Yes. YES!!!! Our days are glued together with these small tentpoles: the coffee my partner gets me, doing the New York Times crossword, going to Trader Joe’s or Stater Brothers – the good one – that cheers me up. It’s like our phones going off with news alerts and the adrenalin rush of would Giuliani be going to jail or something related to Trump in trouble. These little tentpoles get us through the day.
This show is based on this moment when I was driving. This grave opened up below me. That was the moment I thought something was wrong with my physically. This is a totally new thing of being pitched over and I don’t know what this part is. That was the start of my menopause journey. We can all laugh about it now because we’re in a room, but when we’re in it, we don’t know. It’s funny how perspective flips a bit.
The B**** Is Back: An All-Too Intimate Conversation by Sandra Tsing Loh is available for streaming June 23rd – 30th. Tickets range from $10 – $75 based on your ability to pay. For tickets go here. There are two happy hour events (June 24th and June 26th) hosted by Loh that will be available with the purchase of a ticket. The first will feature special guest Marlo Thomas with the theme Women 45+ and Relationships. The second one looks at the work of playwright Wendy Wasserstein with guests Caroline Aaron, Marilu Henner, Melanie Mayron and Jobeth Williams.
Photos of Sandra Tsing Loh courtesy The Broad Stage