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Talk about a friendly room.
For her recent stand-up comedy special, Maria Bamford decided to forgo the traditional overly stage-managed theater show, and instead taped an hourlong performance in her Los Angeles living room, for an audience of two — her parents.
“My mom just says how I look so beautiful, and my dad has a hearing problem, so I almost don’t think they were listening,” says Bamford, who spelled her name in Christmas lights and stuck a piano-playing pal in the corner for the show, dubbed “The Special Special Special!” (It’s available online for $4.99 at chill.com.)
In performing for the people who love her most — and who actually laughed quite a bit during her set — Bamford did take a risk, since she jokes about personally sensitive topics such as mental illness and even suicide.
“I did give my parents a beer before I went into the suicide chunk,” says Bamford, who’s been open about her battles with bipolar II disorder, and her brief 2011 hospitalization after suffering a breakdown.
Her routines — which she’ll perform March 4 at Carolines — often deal with the stigma attached to mental illness, and the lack of adequate services for those afflicted. In her special, she mentions that more than 7,000 US veterans commit suicide each year, and that “it must be funny, because no one’s taking it that seriously.”
Another bit addresses how people often condescend to those with mental illnesses. She imagines a scene in which a man reacts to the newly diagnosed cancer of a friend as if it were a mental illness: “Steve has cancer? We all have cancer, right? I go to chemotherapy, I get it taken care of, I get back to work!”
As if to illustrate the need for such open discussion, Bamford herself fell prey to insecurities about discussing her disease when she was hospitalized for several days in 2011, saying she initially kept the news very quiet.
“I was on the West Coast, where it’s like, ‘Totally groovy man, whatever, talk to your spirit animal about it.’ It’s so accepting here, and I still felt ashamed to tell anybody that I was having serious problems,” she says. “In retrospect, I go, ‘Oh my God, that’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t I wanna tell people?’ ”
Bamford — who for several years played the wacky Christmas lady in commercials for Target, and will appear as a meth addict in the upcoming season of “Arrested Development” on Netflix — realizes that mental illness is not the easiest topic for comedy audiences to digest. By performing at Carolines on a Monday, she basically guarantees that the audience will be her fans, so that tourists seeking random light-hearted fun aren’t taken aback.
“It’s like if people don’t know they’re coming to see a saxophone concert,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I thought it was gonna be music I liked, but it’s a saxophone concert.’ ”
(When asked if she’s the saxophone in that analogy, she replies that she’s more like a didgeridoo, or Tibetan throat singing.)
No matter who shows up, Bamford believes that the benefits of talking openly about this important topic far outweigh the risks.
“The great thing about comedy is that if people laugh, I can assume they relate in some way,” she says. “There’s also the selfish thing that the only reason I do this job is so I can say whatever I want. So why limit myself now?”