Based on writer-performer Sam Ipema’s lived-experience of finding she had a brain aneurysm at the ageof 20, and ditching her scheduled life-saving surgery until after her All-American Spring Break, Dear Annie, I Hate You is a duologue between Sam and her aneurysm. Visualising her rare brain aneurysm as an unexpected ‘other’ from the subconscious voice inside her head, Sam Ipema’s dark comedy explores the struggles of processing such a diagnosis at an early age, when most people are still figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their lives. She meditates on the events that brought her to the present after deciding that the best thing to do before getting the surgery was to go out with a bang at Spring Break, but intrusive ‘Annie’ had other plans. This is a true story, not necessarily a smart one.
Why did you decide to make this show?
I had to. My parents will be thrilled when it’s finally done because I’ve been talking about it for so long. For personal reasons (and what you find out in the show), it feels like the final, necessary chapter to closing this part of my life that the story centers around and moving forward in many ways. Beyond that, I think this show has a lot to share with other individuals who have had their own experiences of their lives blowing apart and how maybe we don’t spend enough time looking at those moments and figuring out together how on earth we’re supposed to pick up the pieces.
The original idea began in 2020, a few years after my recovery when theater had shut down and I was graduating school. So I wrote a pilot, which gained acclaim and had a hilarious journey of turning from a story about a brain aneurysm into the next ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ until I decided it was time to walk away and produce it the way I’d always imagined, as this play. We’re really excited about it, and we think that the piece has a lot to offer the public, especially after coming out of a global pandemic that it feels we’re still picking up the pieces from.
What are the highlights and challenges of performing such a personal story?
Oh boy. There are so many highlights and challenges to telling such a true story. And really unexpected ones. First and foremost, it took me a really long time (nearly a decade) to convince myself and let others talk me into sharing this story, mostly because I just didn’t think it was a story worth telling for a long time. That’s been the greatest journey by far with it, is growing as an individual alongside writing the piece. I think it really makes you confront the brightest and darkest parts of you, and you learn that telling the truth is really all that matters and is the most interesting option every time.
But the absolute incomparable joy to all of it is when someone comes up to you and feels as if you were telling a story about their life. I remember the first time I’d met someone else who’d suffered a brain aneurysm and it was like I could breathe again for the first time. The team and I really hope that this piece can now help provide that same experience to others that need that too.
What do you hope audience members take away from this piece?
I really hope first and foremost they walk away feeling affirmed about the beauty of life and how hard, funny, terrible, and random it can be. We want this to be a show that sees that and essentially, sees the individual and their struggles as they sit in the audience. I also hope that it sparks conversations with each other and within themselves about the sort of relationship they have with the voice inside their heads and their own ‘Annie’s’, so to speak.
How do you explore such a poignant topic with comedy?
I think comedy is the only way it’s possible, isn’t it? It took a long time, to be sure. But looking back, it’s very fun and funny to look at all the ways I thought I knew what I was doing, when really I had zero understanding of life and that I was in the wake of a disaster. But I can find the comedy now because luckily, it prompted me to change my life in extraordinary ways. To relate it to the show and my life particularly though (and to a key relationship in the play)- I have a brother, Micah, who has Down Syndrome and who has the brightest, more ridiculous, comedic, and optimistic outlook on life. And when mine got blown apart, it was ultimately him and his outlook that pulled me out of the trenches and allowed me to start finding the joy and comedy in life again.
Can you describe the show in three words?
Exhilarating. Weird. Life-affirming.