Julia Masli comes to D.C.’s Wooly Mammoth Theater with a holiday rendition of her popular comedy show, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Her holiday version, ho ho ho ha ha ha ha, is here until December 21st. Between a group of around 80 GW students, the show had a lot of mixed reviews, but I personally left looking at tickets for her next showing. In my professional opinion, the best way to prepare for this show is by not preparing at all. My best advice to those who are interested in attending would be to stop reading this article and buy tickets as soon as possible. However, for those who are more excited by just reading about the show, here are my favorite moments and best takeaways.
Julia came onstage with a flashlight in one hand and a foot for the other. In eerie silence, she walked around and started to laugh slowly and creepily. Eventually, she began to talk to some of the audience members, asking for their biggest problems. She managed to cover everything like the overuse of technology, the emergence of fake news and harmful media outlets, and the loss of loved ones. The whole show was punctuated with comedy, community, and the quest to get ice cream for an audience member’s grandmother. In this way, Julia used cooperative methods to solve these issues that people brought up, even those that seemed comically large.
With a lot of crowd work being part of the show, the audience ended up collecting socks and phones, doing homework at the desk onstage, distributing candy, and impersonating Al Gore (who was forced to take a shower towards the end of the show), with only one chair being broken (and rebuilt) in the process. In the Christmas and holiday spirit, Julia also gave away a full size, front loading laundry machine and two orange tripod ladders to her audience members. If you’re on the search for any of those things, I’d recommend attending the show, just in case.
I thought it was incredibly inspiring to see a group of strangers come together to offer their advice into today’s big issues- whether it the increase in division among the public (where one audience member suggested simply listening to one another and practicing empathy), the question of how to take care of children (more candy!), and well wishes for family members in care centers in the area. Where a large amount of people went into a performance not knowing what to expect, came a group laughing at the same time and all offering their coats for the cold weather. Julia’s show is an amazing reminder of teamwork, empathy, solution, and of course, comedy.