The Brooklyn Rail

American talk shows have been a television staple since the mid-twentieth century, debuting alongside the dawn of Nielsen TV ratings, through which broadcasters better learned which hosts audiences prefer to watch. Radio and TV personality Joe Franklin hosted the first televised talk show in 1951, and, in the years that followed, many would combine this form with that of the variety show; The Ed Sullivan Show, with its Muppet, Hair, and The Supremes performances, had premiered three years earlier.

Talk shows’ entertainment value comes in many stripes—sparkling interviews with celebrities and civilians, as on The Oprah Winfrey Show; inter-host ideological sparring, as on The View; and political insights tinged with satire, as on just about any show with a man in the title that airs after 8 p.m. Relying on giveaways, games, and bite-sized moments of intrigue that morphed from water cooler to meme fodder, noteworthy talk shows let us better understand hosts and du jour stars. The best ones, however, let us better understand ourselves.

Most talk show hosts compose a homogeneous group: all six hosts of the world’s longest-running talk show, The Tonight Show, have been white, cisgendered, straight men. Combining data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census, and current job openings, Zippia found, as of 2022, that among nearly 8,000 US talk show hosts, 68 percent are men and 76 percent are white. Only 10 percent identify as LGBTQ. Talk shows, then, can be a media ouroboros: they are who a mainstream audience often wants to hear and who media corporations want audiences to hear.

Hosts beyond the mainstream do sprout and subvert.

In 2017, when Billy Eichner, on his roving talk show “Billy on the Street,” meandered New York City slinging late-night host John Oliver and a mic and cable in tow, he asked male passersby if they were gay (all were) and whether they’ve heard of Oliver (most hadn’t). Following up, Eichner asked one homosexual if he likes Wendy Williams. “She’s the best,” the man replied.

In these amusing interview blitzes, Eichner illuminated the mini gods audiences turn to: if we want to hear someone talk—literally, just blabber about the banalities and gossip and opinions swimming around in our heads, group threads, and internet feeds—why not turn to someone whose chatter we relate to?

Becca Blackwell confesses, in their play Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month, that they’re not sure how relatable they are. Take fart jokes, a favorite of the theater artist’s: when Blackwell was living as a butch lesbian, their flatulent jokes were seen, through a misogynist lens, as inappropriate, unfunny. Now trans and more masc-presenting, such gassy jests find greater humor. The joke didn’t change, just its perception. And, thus, its relatability.

Blackwell performs most of their theatricalized-talk-show-vulvaganza as an anthropomorphized vagina (we’ll get there), but, in its more human—or, at least, more personal—conclusion, Blackwell is themself: someone whose identity, they share, might not be fully witnessed by everyone they encounter.

Blackwell’s understanding of the self is both specific (they’re like “if Tilda Swinton fucked Carrot Top”) and universal (“I’m just a meat carcass with a spirit”). Talk show hosts, comedians, and autobiographers all present a curated version of themselves for an audience, and at the end of their play, Blackwell becomes each kind of storyteller. When our selfhood has many ingredients, how do we share our fullness?

But Blackwell’s intention is not to get us to better connect with them, but for all of us to better connect with ourselves. Now that’s a consummate host.

Blackwell’s coda—a nuanced confessional, stand up routine, and communal rite—is birthed from the migraine that is living in a world of binaries. In the first 90 percent of their play, this manifests as a bodily fluid-soaked talk show between a lip-flapping vagina, Snatch Adams, and an emasculated penis, Tainty McCracken. (The #MeToo movement left the latter shaftless so he’s now, well, a taint; in Blackwell’s script—co-written with Amanda Duarte and developed with Jess Barbagallo and Greg Corbino—Urban Dictionary can be a friend).

Given the performers’ genders, Blackwell’s embodiment of a vagina and Duarte’s (she/her) of testicles immediately queer the characters and talk shows’ cis-male roots. Be warned: this show, a voiceover states, will be offensive to any “age, gender, or astrological sign.”

By seemingly not appealing to its audience, as talk shows are wont to do, It’s That Time of the Month supplants and lampoons its medium. There are Capitalism Breaks (for poppers commercials) and a postage carrier (who brings hate mail: why, per a fifth-wave feminist, is Snatch not representing plant-based vaginas and vaginas of non-penetrative experience?).

A canceled comic, Tainty is a mansplainer who talks over Snatch, who lost her job at a Planned Parenthood and has struggled to find another as clinics shut down. Unemployed, the unlikely duo teamed up to host their show, It’s That Time of the Month, now playing at Soho Rep. in association with The Bushwick Starr.

Lack of job security, and how that must spark ingenuity, is not new to artists, but in fostering this show, Blackwell reveals how theatermakers (and producers) are adapting to a landscape that is increasingly withdrawing support from more experimental works.

In her stand-up show Penguin in Your Ear, seen earlier this fall at The Brick Theater, playwright Eliza Bent sardonically mourned that plays have become too expensive to produce, but one-person comedy shows might be more manageable. Changing up its regular programming and expanding on what constitutes a capital-P Play, Playwrights Horizons is currently presenting three solo works in rep, which differ from the multi-character shows that have dominated the theater’s stages since its 2003 one-person Pulitzer Prize winner, I Am My Own Wife. And now Blackwell, more popularly seen in others’ works in film (Bros), TV (High Maintenance), and theater (Is This a Room), crafts their own genre-pushing show. In their largely improvised play, rare for non-profit Off-Broadway, Blackwell says unscripted does not mean unshaped, and small casts can yield high generosity.

Blackwell’s choice of structure further distinguishes itself. For all their reliance on a live audience, talk shows have seldom been theatricalized. A sizzling late-night interview is the centerpiece of Broadway’s recent Good Night, Oscar, but it is only a scene from the play, not its form.

On televised talk shows, cameras pan over studio audiences to capture reactions and intro applause; It’s That Time of the Month, too, knows it is performing for butts in seats but practices a more radical, intimate welcome. Gay men are asked to find Snatch’s clitoris (the human-vagina reminds them this is useful when hooking up with trans men). Audiences compete in the game Hustle and Flow (how long will it take for two non-menstruators to put on a tampon of yore?). And each show brings on a surprise guest who may be an artist, sex worker, or LGBTQ fixture.

Through guest spotlights and audience merrymaking, Blackwell understands Snatch and Tainty do not have to be the stars of the show, no matter how much the latter wants to hog the mic and bro out. The play’s broader architecture wishes to welcome everyone—and rebirth them.

Entering the theater, audiences pass through a pink, uterine canal. What beaded curtains did for sixties parties, this passageway accomplishes for Soho Rep. visitors. Thrill—jumpy and irresistable—awaits on the other side.

Coming in and out of the theater each day, Blackwell creates a baptism for themself; there is no limit to the number of times we can rebirth ourselves.

As Tainty continues to focus on himself, Snatch turns the light on others. Snatch alone interviews the guest star, and, in a final question, asks if the guest could give the audience anything—Oprah’s Favorite Things style—what would it be?

That the gift is imagined, and can never be tangible, opens up its possibilities. This question is a precursor for one Blackwell, as themself, will later pose to the audience. Their question evokes memory and extends an invitation. Its pondering melds your past self with your present one—surrounded by dozens of witnesses, some wet from pussy juice—to, maybe, birth a future being, and community.

Don’t let this vagueness, or reach for meaning, detract. Blackwell’s is a simple question—but aren’t those the deepest?