Hilarious, unflinchingly honest, and moving, Julia Sweeney's autobiographical one-woman show God Said, "Ha!" wowed critics and audiences in Los Angeles and on Broadway. Now she has expanded her show into a memoir of one disastrous year in her life.
In 1995, after an amicable divorce, Julia Sweeney bought a bungalow in Hollywood, settling in with her three cats to begin a rich, independent life of blissful solitude and personal growth. Her new home, she thought, would be a haven of domesticity and a cozy venue for fabulous dinner parties, and her new life would be the envy of her neighbors.
But then, God said, "Ha!"
One month after her move to Los Angeles, Julia's younger brother Michael was diagnosed with terminal lymph cancer. Julia's new home became Michael's, and
then transformed into the Sweeney family center, as their parents moved from Spokane and took up residence in Julia's bedroom. Suddenly Julia's days revolved around Michael's chemotherapy sessions, and the gracious details of her dreamed-of life crumbled under the reality of sleeping on her sofa bed and
finding her own kitchen filled with her parents' favorite beer and convenience foods.
Julia coped by sharing the daily travails of the Sweeney family in poignant and hilarious detail at the Uncaberet in Los Angeles--from the minor disasters of
everyday life, to the adjustments of living in close quarters with the people she'd spent half a lifetime growing up and away from, to the terrors and heartaches life-threatening illness brings.
Then when it seemed things couldn't get worse, they did. Just weeks before Mike died, Julia was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer--her "sympathy cancer," as Mike called it--bonding them in a giddily black-humored club of two: the "International House of Cancer." Within days of burying her
brother, Julia underwent a radical hysterectomy and began her solo journey through this house she'd never expected to move into, a house she had until now
seen only from the outside looking in.
Profoundly inspiring and courageously funny, God Said, "Ha!" marks the debut of a remarkable young writer.
In 1995, after an amicable divorce, Julia Sweeney bought a bungalow in Hollywood, settling in with her three cats to begin a rich, independent life of blissful solitude and personal growth. Her new home, she thought, would be a haven of domesticity and a cozy venue for fabulous dinner parties, and her new life would be the envy of her neighbors.
But then, God said, "Ha!"
One month after her move to Los Angeles, Julia's younger brother Michael was diagnosed with terminal lymph cancer. Julia's new home became Michael's, and
then transformed into the Sweeney family center, as their parents moved from Spokane and took up residence in Julia's bedroom. Suddenly Julia's days revolved around Michael's chemotherapy sessions, and the gracious details of her dreamed-of life crumbled under the reality of sleeping on her sofa bed and
finding her own kitchen filled with her parents' favorite beer and convenience foods.
Julia coped by sharing the daily travails of the Sweeney family in poignant and hilarious detail at the Uncaberet in Los Angeles--from the minor disasters of
everyday life, to the adjustments of living in close quarters with the people she'd spent half a lifetime growing up and away from, to the terrors and heartaches life-threatening illness brings.
Then when it seemed things couldn't get worse, they did. Just weeks before Mike died, Julia was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer--her "sympathy cancer," as Mike called it--bonding them in a giddily black-humored club of two: the "International House of Cancer." Within days of burying her
brother, Julia underwent a radical hysterectomy and began her solo journey through this house she'd never expected to move into, a house she had until now
seen only from the outside looking in.
Profoundly inspiring and courageously funny, God Said, "Ha!" marks the debut of a remarkable young writer.
