Comedian Gabe Mollica brings his Off-Broadway comedy, “Solo: A Show About Friendship,” to the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA from April 16-21st. He dives deep into what it means to have friends in your 30s, his special relationship with Stephen Sondheim, working at a summer camp for children with chronic illnesses, and what happens when you break up with your best friend. Theater Mirror caught up with Gabe recently as he prepared for his Boston engagement.
By Mike Hoban
Theater Mirror: The basis for this show was that your best friend from college started dating your ex-girlfriend. Not only did he not tell you, but he explicitly said he wasn’t sorry, so you “broke up” with him. Can you tell us about that?
Gabe: We were best friends in college. We lived together, staying up really late studying, writing, playing video games, drinking, smoking, and doing all that college kid stuff, and we were pretty inseparable. Then we started working at a summer camp together, the Paul Newman Camp for Kids with serious illnesses (The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp), and that brought us really close together because it’s a pretty intense thing to do with someone. I started dating somebody that we both met at camp, and it eventually turned into a long-distance relationship after I moved to Scotland. And when I was over there, they fell in love and basically told me, “Hey, we’re together, and we’re not sorry.”
TM: And that was the catalyst for writing this show?
Gabe: When something like that happens, you need to laugh about your life a little bit. (Doing the show) allowed me to write about myself in a way where I was making fun of myself because I felt like when something like that happens, everyone you know knows, and people pick sides. So I thought, “I’m just going to get out in front of this and talk about myself because I don’t want people talking about it.’ It was like crisis PR but for my own life.
I think (in the telling of the story) the “I’m not sorry” part was the real issue. As you can tell from the show, it’s pretty clear that I’m not mad. Far be it for me to be mad at other people’s love. But it’s more about how it happened than that it happened. And then I was able to turn into a pretty positive thing.
TM: So that was really just the jumping-off point for the show?
Gabe: Yeah.I start the show by walking out on stage and saying, “I don’t have any friends,” which is sort of the hook. Then I tell the story about how my mom got sick, and the friends I do have are mostly bros I know from high school, and when I told them about my mom, they didn’t know what to do; they didn’t know what to say. I mean, they would kill for me, like Matt Damon’s friends in “Good Will Hunting,” but they’re just not really emotionally available. And that starts the whole narrative.
TM: How did you get started as a comedian/storyteller?
Gabe: I was living and teaching in Scotland and started doing open mics and shows. I was sort of this nice, anonymous American, and it started to go well, but I knew right away that I wanted to do long-form solo stuff, the sort of show like Mike Birbiglia and Alex Edelman do.
TM: You were a theater kid anyway, right?
Gabe: Yeah. A big part of my show is about my correspondence with Stephen Sondheim. We were pen pals, and I have about five or six letters from him. I have been in shows my whole life, so the idea of eventually turning my comedy into theater was a pretty obvious one. And it’s fun when you go from stand-up to making a theater show. You hire a lighting designer, a graphic designer, and a director, and it becomes a lot more collaborative, which I like because stand-up can be pretty isolating. And theater is not that way. Theater is intensely collaborative, so I loved that immediately.
TM: What’s the best reason for people to see this show – men or women?
Gabe: If you’ve ever been through a friendship breakup or if you’re 30 or older and counting your friends, I think this is the show for you. It’s definitely not a negative piece; the show is very positive. There’s obviously drama, but without it, there would be no stakes. It’s an analysis of friendship, and there are a lot of jokes and stories, so it’s a pretty joyful piece of theater. I’m pretty proud of how I was able to turn it into something that makes people feel good when they leave.
To see a trailer, click here. To get more information and tickets, go to: https://www.bostontheatrescene.com/shows-and-events/solo-a-show-about-friendship/
