Joy Vandervort-Cobb has never been one to mince her words.
“Growing up in my family, I had to be funny because my parents’ rule was if I made them laugh, they wouldn’t punish me,” Vandervort-Cobb said as she chuckled at her childhood memories.
Beginning tonight, Vandervort-Cobb will bring that same brash but poignant brand of humor to the University with the premiere of “Moments of Joy,” a play she wrote and stars in.
The show opens tonight at 7:30 in the Studio Theatre in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building. The show will run through Sunday, Sept. 19, and tickets are $15 for faculty and $12 for students.
“Moments of Joy” chronicles her life’s journey from her teenage years in Los Angeles to motherhood and everything in between.
“The play is basically me doing a lot of talking and a little singing about my life as a parent, a wife, a teacher, a nonstop talker,” Vandervort-Cobb said. “That’s been my experience, and it just so turns out that people have related well to it.”
But Vandervort-Cobb said she was not always so sure her story held any relevance to others.
“I’ll never forget leaving the last run through before the first run of the show at my home in South Carolina,” Vandervort-Cobb said. “I thought it was going to be awful, and I broke down — I mean, just lost it — crying on the way home that night.”
Vandervort-Cobb said she is anxious to see how the show will translate for a different audience because she has only performed “Moments of Joy” in South Carolina.
“Baton Rouge has been very much like a second home for me since I first visited [in 2003],” Vandervort-Cobb said. “So I really wanted to bring this here and take in the response from a place that I love.”
Vandervort-Cobb teaches theatre at the College of Charleston and said she tells her students that theatre is both unique and universal.
“I feel like I never truly believed in that saying until I began performing this show,” Vandervort-Cobb said. “There is something about this production, which is really just my story, that transcends me and reaches people in their own lives.”
While she admits her story is often ridiculous, Vandervort-Cobb said she will be more uncertain than any audience member watching her up on stage.
“As unsure as any student her might be about whether this show will interest them, listen, I am way more anxious to see how college kids will respond to me,” Vandervort-Cobb said.
____
Contact Chris Abshire at [email protected]