CANCER IS TREATED WITH HUMOR IN FRINGE FESTIVAL

The 11th Annual New York Fringe Festival features a comedy about cancer.

There’s nothing funny about cancer but in The Fringe Festival in New York City now in it’s 11th year, no topic is off limits. Two-mur Humor: He’s Malignant She’s Benign written by and starring Jim Tooey takes the dreaded ‘C’ word and turns it into a comedy featuring his true survival stories.

Twenty-one characters in 26 vignettes are shared by Jim and stand-up comic Kelly Chippendale.

“It’s a fast change, the lights go down and we come up as a different character with a pair of glasses, a coat, a different accent. And then the character changes and they’re all believable. And they’re taken from different walks of society and people that I’ve met along the way. It’s a true story and all the people in it are people I’ve met through my life. I think I like Dr. Lee the best and Dr. Lee is an Asian doctor and he’s very animated and fun and funny and something totally new that I’ve never experienced before so it’s definitely a great introduction to some of the symptoms that occur to Jim during this process.”

Jim talks about the trick in treating something so serious with humor.

“You have to laugh at yourself. If you can’t laugh at yourself and you can’t laugh at sickness you won’t get through life. And laughter and comedy is the cure for a lot of illnesses.”

The production directed by Charles Messina debuts August 11th at The Fringe Festival and is sponsored by The Tumor Humor Fund, a non-profit organization helping children who survived cancer.