For over a decade, comedian Alicia Dattner has riffed on topics from spirituality and sexuality to family and friendship. Yet her 4-year-old show “Are You Dressed for the Apocalypse?” is what’s bringing her back to The Marsh. Since its presentation at the renowned San Francisco spot known for solo performance, it’s garnered a reputation as a hilarious (if bleak) ponderance on a world ravaged by climate devastation, political turmoil and whatever’s trending on social media.
Why continue to do a show that’s such a downer that she calls it “noir comedy”?
“I guess I’m a glutton for punishment,” says Dattner, who opens the show at the Marsh in Berkeley on Sept. 21. “Honestly, I love doing the show repeatedly because I get better at it every time. And strangely, this show about our collective journey has been emotionally easier to repeat than the shows about my personal journey. In a way, there’s a hopeful ending, so maybe that’s part of it?”
Dattner has found The Marsh to be fertile testing ground for her deep-cutting material. Her acclaimed shows “The Oy of Sex” and “Eat, Pray, Laugh!” also were Fringe Festival winners, and she has won “best comedian” honors from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and SF Weekly.
She extensively researches her subjects, making them seem like hilarious TED Talks. In “Apocalypse,” her topics include Instagram influencers, mustachioed men of Valencia, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
When she performed the show in 2022 during a state of panic, The Marsh had only recently returned to live performances, and audiences were required to mask.
But those pandemic-era shows weren’t its first presentations, says Dattner.
“When I first started doing the show, the apocalypse hadn’t yet happened. It premiered in February of 2020. I was afraid to do the show because I thought people would be too upset by it or think I was crazy. Now, it’s sort of old hat to think about the world ending,” she adds. “I’ve had people laugh, then cry again and find it a powerful experience of catharsis and healing. I actually do talk about trauma a bit and try to address how we’re all traumatized by it all. But yes, often, it’s shock mixed with chuckles— ‘shockles’ as we call it in noir comedy circles.”
She obliges when asked about: Doomsday bunkers (“I might be able to afford a Doomsday shoebox I could fit a pet mouse in”); “dark future” movies (“The dystopian future in ‘Back to the Future 2’—they really predicted it!”); and whether a certain presidential candidate is really beyond satire (“Pretty much!”), all the while noting that news headlines have replaced jokes today.
Her show’s most unorthodox prop: a ukulele.
“Back when I was cool, I started a punk rock audience participation circus called ‘The Latest Show on Earth.’ For that show, I picked up the uke and I never looked back. My show ‘One Life Stand’ ends with a song we all sing together, which I play on the uke. This show, too, ends with a singalong. It’s a great balm for everything we’ve been through and a fun way to send folks on the next leg of their journey.”
News about the dire state of the world, she says, indeed could be punched up with light musical accompaniment: “I definitely think the Doomsday Clock reports could use more island-based instrumentation. Deep bow to the Portuguese and Hawaii lineage of the uke. Perhaps we could add the hakgediya, the conch shell flute of Sri Lanka? These island-based instruments could then warn of rising sea levels and tsunamis.”
Her prediction for the “worst-case scenario” for the world as it stands now: Results of the election being overturned lead to civil war, numerous nuclear strikes and China tweaking the TikTok algorithm before survivors descend into fundamentalist rule.
In her upcoming work, she’ll take a more upbeat view. She promises, “The next show in development is about inflation, tantric sex, becoming an expat, then a re-pat and the interconnection of all beings.”
She reiterates, though, that “Apocalypse” is not without hope.
“I think optimism for the future is great!” she says. “Seeing the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is what allows it to become possible. I think we forget, too, that while so much is wrong, so much is right. We forget the impossible chances that the Earth is the perfect distance from the sun and oxygen fills the atmosphere. It’s mindbogglingly awe-inspiring that the spark of life arose, and life always finds a way. Humans, too, always find a way. We adapt, we survive. We’re the cockroach of the mammal kingdom.”
Alica Dattner’s “Are You Dressed for the Apocalypse?” runs 4 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays from Sept. 21-Oct. 6 at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. Tickets are $20-$100 at themarsh.org.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED and San Francisco Examiner. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man’s Idiot.wordpress.com.
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