How bathroom graffiti inspired this Jewish comedian and singer

(New York Jewish Week) — The graffiti scrawled on public toilet partitions might not appear to be the very best type of artwork. However for Jewish comic and musician Caitlin Cook dinner, a specific phrase she noticed on a rest room stall turned the catalyst for a decade of artistic inventiveness. 

“Since writing on toilet partitions is neither for crucial acclaim nor monetary reward,” it learn, “it’s the purest type of artwork. Focus on.”

“I simply knew that this was one thing I did need to focus on,” Cook dinner informed the New York Jewish Week. “I really like artwork historical past, I really like discovered artwork, and I beloved the way in which that [graffiti] broke down the concept of what artwork is and might be. So, I began photographing toilet graffiti everywhere.” 

A couple of years later, Cook dinner realized she might flip her in depth assortment of discovered phrases into lyrics for songs. After which, after a number of extra years, she discovered a strategy to challenge the unique toilet photographs behind her as she sang her songs. The challenge then developed right into a one-person musical, “The Writing on the Stall,” which is taking part in on the Soho Playhouse via Sept. 23. As implied by the title, the musical takes place completely in a public toilet; the track’ lyrics are nearly completely quotes from precise graffiti Cook dinner present in restrooms throughout the globe. 

“I believe everybody has seen one thing humorous or unhappy written within the toilet stall after they’ve sat down,” stated Cook dinner, including that the present “actually hits this common human expertise.”

Cook dinner, 33, who moved to New York in 2016, grew up in Los Angeles, the place she was raised by her mother and father and grandparents in a culturally Jewish however atheist residence. “Each my grandparents have been from very massive households who escaped Poland and Belarus and grew up very poor within the Jewish tenements and within the Bronx, then moved to L.A. and made one thing of themselves,” she stated. “My grandma would at all times say, ‘We’re Jewish, it’s crucial that you already know that, however we don’t consider in God as a result of [the Holocaust] occurred.’”

“I believe that was a quite common perspective for Jews in L.A.,” she continued. “Consequently, I by no means went to Hebrew faculty and typically I really feel like I’m not Jewish sufficient to be Jewish. Then, different instances, I really feel I am very Jewish.”

Cook dinner addresses her sophisticated Jewish id head-on in “The Writing on the Stall.” Early within the musical — after the present opens with Cook dinner sitting on a rest room, asking the viewers for some bathroom paper — she talks about being a “Jewish atheist,” and the seemingly inherent contradiction therein.

“I come from an exquisite, artistic household that basically prioritized training, intellectualism and considering past the floor degree of issues,” she informed the New York Jewish Week, “That seek for deep that means feels very inherent to the way in which I expertise Jewish id.” 

To Cook dinner, this Jewish intuition to sense a deeper message in one thing seemingly mundane is, primarily, how she got here to search out graffiti to be so profound within the first place. For instance, she cites a message — “Do what scares you, even when it’s all the pieces” — she present in a stall. It turned “a part of my life philosophy,” Cook dinner informed the New York Jewish Week. “Placing myself exterior of my consolation zone, exploring why I’m the way in which that I’m, coping with fears and nervousness … of rising up as a Jewish one that’s at all times considering past the floor degree.”

The quick musical (roughly 60 to 75 minutes, relying on viewers participation) options songs like “The Distinction,” which explores the varieties of graffiti present in males’s, girls’s and non-gendered restrooms. “Lady, maintain ya head up,” and “ Love such as you’ve by no means been ghosted,” the ladies write, whereas males’s stalls function traces like, “roses are tits, violets are tits,” and lots of, many drawings of genitalia. 

One other track, referred to as “Conversations With Strangers,” depicts the distinctive interactions created when strangers reply each other’s contributions to toilet graffiti. “Observe ur desires,” one individual scratched right into a stall. Beneath it, in Sharpie, somebody solutions, “I actually solely have nightmares.”

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“There’s a track about confessional toilet graffiti [in which] I confess some issues about myself and get the viewers to admit some secrets and techniques, whereas speaking about how intimate bogs might be,” Cook dinner stated. “[The show also goes into] graffiti that bullies and the attractive, poetic, unhappy, fantastic issues that folks have written.”

Cook dinner, whose earlier credit embody New York Comedy Competition and SF Sketchfest, alongside iconic venues like The Comedy Cellar, crafted this model of “The Writing on the Stall” with the help of two chief collaborators: Director A.J. Holmes, finest identified for his efficiency as Elder Cunningham in “The E-book of Mormon,” and Ali Gordon, actor and alumna of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade.

Cook dinner and Holmes met on the Edinburgh Fringe Competition, the place the 2 have been acting at close by theaters. (Cook dinner was performing an earlier model of “The Writing on the Stall.”) “My quick impression was that the songs crush,” Holmes informed the New York Jewish Week. 

The duo introduced Gordon on board, they usually developed “The Writing on the Stall” so it touches on a bigger message about discovering magnificence and that means within the on a regular basis. 

“It appears like everybody desires to cover within the friggin’ toilet proper now,” Gordon stated. “Whether or not it’s on a political degree or a private degree, all the pieces has turn into an excessive amount of of a large number, the will to bury our heads within the sand is stronger than ever.”

“Within the present, that’s what we discover our hero doing — hiding from the celebration exterior,” she continued.  “However the viewers will get to see how she finds her method out …  as an alternative of staying in a disgrace spiral and beating herself up, she finds magnificence within the darkest corners. She makes use of that to shine a light-weight for the remainder of us.”

Cook dinner agrees. “It’s a present about shared humanity and discovering that means in surprising locations,” she stated. “It’s about sharing weak tales and connecting with strangers unexpectedly, whether or not it’s writing one thing in dialog on the wall a WC, or assembly in a rest room line, or simply sharing slightly bit about who you’re with somebody at a bar.” 

“The Writing on the Stall” might be foolish or salacious at instances, however amid the projected photographs of crude drawings of genitals and cheery, if oversimplified, “you go, lady!” scrawls, Cook dinner is looking for solutions to life’s large questions. She’s inviting audiences to attach with themselves and with each other by reaching out previous the sting of the stage. She’s fascinated about who she is, definitely, but in addition in who we’re to one another as members of a society that so usually appears torn past restore. 

“The Writing on the Stall” is taking part in at Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam St.) Wednesdays via Saturdays via Sept. 23. Click on right here for tickets and information.