Lympho Bob on Stage

Despite the title of this post, I'm not going to be performing on stage anytime soon (though my family can tell you that I think I would absolutely kill as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.  As long as the director went with my interpretation of "Do You Love Me?").

It also doesn't mean that my life story is going to be performed onstage anytime soon, either. Two years of watching and waiting doesn't make for riveting theater. Plus, Waiting for Godot pretty much covered that already.

But I found out yesterday that Lympho Bob made it into a play that was performed Off Broadway earlier this year.

The play is called God Said This, and it was written by Leah Nanako Winkler. It won the 2018 Yale Drama Series competition. Nanako Winkler's own website describes it like this: "James, a recovering alcoholic seeks redemption from his family when his wife is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer. John, a thirty-something single dad searches for a legacy for his only son while Hiro, a single NYC transplant struggles to let go of the demons she inherited. Sophie, a born again Christian, confronts her faith as she comes to terms with the inevitable death of her parents, her own shortcomings and some broken dreams. This is a play about five Godless and God-loving people in Lexington, Kentucky who face mortality in very different ways."

The introduction to the written version of the play talks about the identity issues that it brings up -- how the labels that are put on us can affect us as we accept, reject, and come to terms with them.

In one part of the play, characters read from what others have said online about having cancer. That's where Lympho Bob comes in:

If you can't see the image, it includes the character James reading the quote "Right now, I'm scribblin' in the sunshine on a notebook littered with bumper stickers from Gotcancer.org -- thanks for the rec Lympho Bob. My favorite? The one that says CCKMA: CANCER CAN KISS MY ASS!!!!!"

So it's not like I'm a character or anything, or even that a character talks about me. It's a character reading from someone who talks about a website recommendation that I made on the blog. Like, five levels from actually being me.

Still, how cool is that?

It gave me a lift. I've been in one of those periods lately where I'm a little overwhelmed with other things, and I can't give the blog and my other cancer advocacy the time and attention that I'd like to. So that little reminder that I'm reaching people was really nice.

Plus, the play sounds great. So many connections for me -- I go to a Yale hospital, I grew up in and now live in the northeast, but I lived in Kentucky for 5 years. And, of course, the whole idea of thinking about Identity is something I've been kind of obsessed with for a few years -- what it means to be a "cancer patient" or a "survivor" and how the words we use to describe ourselves, and the words others use to describe us, can affect the way we deal with the disease. It's something I write about a lot in small ways. I'm working on a big piece that looks into it more deeply, but it's a ways off. Still thinking it all through.

I wish I'd known about Lympho Bob the reference in the play earlier. I'd have brought the whole family to see it. We're a very easy train ride from New York City, and we see shows there all the time. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will be performed nearby again sometime soon.

(In the meantime, cancer really can kiss my ass.)