Rachel Bloom on confronting death and combining grief with humor in her new off-Broadway show

At the Lucille Lortel Theater in downtown Manhattan, Rachel Bloom storms onto the stage in a sparkling pantsuit, dribbling a basketball to the accompaniment of “Space Jam.”

It’s a mix of confidence, silliness and bravado, as Blooms throws the ball to an audience member and then begins her planned monologue, which includes a joke about her college essay entitled “Use the Cape,” which details her time as a witch in her work is described. high school production of In the woods.

Then, suddenly, the spotted lanternflies that have been hovering around her begin to swarm and Bloom ad-libbed, saying that these flies on wires cost $5 million and were invented by her experimental director Julie Taymor (who famously worked on the Broadway -show Spiderman: Turn off the darkwith a high price tag and decorated actors flying through the air).

“Spider-Man: Eliminate the Dark is never far from my thoughts and my heart,” Bloom said the next day in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

The ability to pivot (and deliver deep musical theater references) is something Bloom knows well. The co-creator and star of The CW’s musical television series Crazy ex-girlfriend had written a musical stand-up show in 2019 and planned to take it on tour in 2020, but the pandemic put a halt to her plans. Then, days after Bloom gave birth to her daughter in March 2020, she received the news that her friend and… Crazy ex-girlfriend songwriting partner Adam Schlesinger had died after contracting COVID-19.

Her original show, which she said included a segment about a nursing home resident singing a pop song in the style of Billie Eilish, no longer seemed to make sense amid the grief for her friend and events during the pandemic. And so she created a new production, titled Death, let me do my show which only features one song from the previous show, and follows Bloom as she tries to forget the events of the past few years and is ultimately forced to talk about the death of her friend, complications after the birth of her child, and other related trauma (in addition to a mix of humorous, original songs in Bloom’s characteristic style).

Bloom has now brought the show, which is directed by Seth Barrish, to London, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as other cities in the US, and said she is happy to have the opportunity to be creative in theater, as Writers Guild. of America and SAG-AFTRA member who is currently on strike and banned from most film and television work. (Pre-pandemic, Bloom collaborated with Schlesinger on a musical adaptation of The babysitter, a project that Bloom says he cannot talk about because it is owned by an affected company).

“I just feel happy and also perpetually scared for the world of television and film as I remain baffled by the responsiveness and slowness of the AMPTP,” Bloom said.

The actress and writer spoke with THR ahead of the show’s Off-Broadway opening on September 14 about how the show came together, the idea of ​​balancing sadness with comedy and morale on the picket lines.

What made you deviate from the original idea for the show?

I had a whiteboard in my office with a list of all the parts. This is from when I was pregnant, because the plan was: I would give birth, go on maternity leave and then I would do this show in 2020. And I remember one day I was playing with (my daughter), very early in my grief for Adam, and I’m just looking at this list of things. And when you put stand-up bits in songs, it looks particularly weird because it’s like “cum, pregnancy, teen song, old lady pop.” And I remember thinking, “This is all moot. The world is exploding. This is so stupid.” How stupid would this be if I thought I was going to keep working on this special. And then I thought, ‘Oh, what if that was the show? That I started doing it, and then the very thought exclamation that I had, namely, “Can you do this? Is there any room for foolishness when something bad has happened?”

Do you think there is room for foolishness?

That’s always there. When I was going through this, the only thing that saved me was doing silly things, watching funny movies, reading silly books. It helped me. There used to be a whole part in the show about how death hates comedy, because comedy makes you forget that death is coming. And that’s why the show ends with (the song) “Darling Meet Me Under the Cum Tree,” (the only song left from the original show), where at the end of the day it seems like this whole thing is absurd. So who are we to say this is serious and this is not serious?

Does the process of performing help with the grief?

I notice that when I talk about painful things in my life, the more I talk about it, the more it grates on the wound. And in fact, Ben Folds once said this about his songs, that when you turn your experiences into art and share them with people, it almost becomes something else. I think it’s very healing. So it doesn’t feel like a retrigger, and in fact our drummer in the band, Ethan Eubanks, has known Adam for twenty years. There’s a joke towards the end of the show about, “What does Adam know about lockdown, he wasn’t even in it that long,” which is a really dark joke that Ethan suggested, and I was like, Adam, would it be great find that joke.

How does it feel to perform this show about the pandemic now, amid a surge in COVID-19 cases?

I think that’s why it’s important in the show. I say, ‘It’s not back to normal. We are still in a pandemic.” In fact, I might add tonight: “There is a wave, you are all wearing masks. I might get sick during the show. I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s weird.

You can also run this while a WGA and a SAG-AFTRA strike is in progress. How does that feel?

In a world where Off-Broadway theater is more stable than film and TV, I feel very fortunate. I just feel very lucky to be able to create. I now get to do something that I am passionate about and I just feel happy and also constantly scared for the world of television and film as I remain baffled by the AMPTP’s response and slowness. It’s just really mind-boggling.

You were regularly present at the picket lines. What do you think morale is like right now?

I’m biased because I have a lot of friends who are on the negotiating committee. I have a lot of friends who are strike captains. So I’m in a group of people who are very pro-union. Pro-strike is a weird thing to say because no one wants to strike. No one involved with the WGA or SAG said, “Woohoo, I can’t wait for a strike.” So it is not in favor of a strike, but in favor of “this is important what we do.” So from my point of view it is moral, I would say firm, and ultimately the ball. I believe. is currently in the AMPTP court. So you know, all you can do is keep doing what you’ve been doing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.