Comic Francesca D’Uva on How Her Dad’s Death Inspired Her New Show
Comedian and songwriter Francesca D’Uva is the one-man band of Brooklyn comedy, if one-man bands had sneakily powerful emotional through-lines and killer stand-up instincts. D’Uva uses her Max Martin–level pop-production abilities and surreal sense of humor to craft and perform musical numbers that veer in truly unexpected directions, playing every role, whether that means a love duet with herself or a Shakira impression. On November 24, she’ll take her hourlong show, This Is My Favorite Song, Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons.
This Is My Favorite Song tells the story of me as a comedian before and after my dad died of COVID in June 2020. He got put on a ventilator in March 2020 and then he was in a coma for a couple months. That was kind of the first very bad thing that had ever happened to me in my life and affected what I found funny and whether I even wanted to be writing or performing at all. I came back to the city to try to get back into performing, and I was hating performing. But then I wrote this song, “I Don’t Want to Do This Show,” and it sparked something new. I had always done these really elaborate one-person musicals that would go on for around seven minutes. But this new song was about how I didn’t want to perform anymore because I was too depressed, and it got me thinking, Maybe I should write a show about this.
Back when I was just doing comedy shows, rehearsing just meant that if someone was in the house, I would sing the song I wrote under my breath until I generally knew what I was going to perform. And I’d make a track. On the way to the show, I’d listen to the track, sing it in my head, or even just mouth it. I really was not diligent about rehearsing before performing comedy shows where I was only doing a song. But in 2019, I was doing another musical that I had written, and I had a tradition where, on the day that I was performing it, I would rent rehearsal space. There was a music rehearsal place in Ridgewood that was like $10 an hour, so I’d rent it for three or four hours and actually practice it all out loud. But even then, like now, my “rehearsing” is a lot of me writing last minute. I rarely have things solidly written before I’m rehearsing, because if it’s solid, then I’ve gotten to that place by doing it over and over already.
For this show, I don’t do a full run-through that often. Even when I have rehearsal days with my director, we’ll generally go over sections. For the workshop days that we’re doing this month, we’ll do one run-through in front of people who are directly involved with working on the show or with the theater, workshop it, and have another run-through for an invited audience. I only do run-throughs in front of people. Even two people. I’ve never done one alone, not really. It’s tough with comedy. I don’t know what other people do. I don’t know if my comedian friends, like, rehearse jokes out loud. I can’t imagine they’re doing that.
Something that’s been on my mind a lot is the feeling that I’m pushing my luck, not warming up vocally. I never warm my voice up before I perform. All of the songs are fine, except “I Don’t Want to Do This Show,” which has a death-metal chorus. I do not do it correctly. I know that people who are in screamo bands have a technique so that they can go on tour and not destroy their voice. But I don’t know how to do that. I’ve never taken a vocal coaching lesson, so that’s something I’m actively dealing with, leading up to the show. I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do! I feel like I’m going to lose my voice. And I’m in a place where I can’t afford to get a vocal coach this month, because I have to pay rent. How do I prep for the show if I don’t have enough money to prep for the show? (Generally, I have not quite figured out how to maintain financial stability as an artist. I nanny, but I have to take long breaks when I have gigs, and it’s hard to keep long-term jobs that way.) I have a friend, Tim Platt, who has a nodes issue. He’s a musical comedian, and he tells me, “Francesca, you’re gonna regret not warming up.” I know that I will. You know what? I’m gonna start warming up. I’ve decided, right now, that I have to do that.
I usually don’t get nervous until an hour before a show and then in the last minutes leading up to it, I get a lot of adrenaline. Onstage, as long as people are laughing, I’m having fun. I also have this issue where a lot of the songs, even though I’ve been doing them for years, have sections where I haven’t completely finished writing them. Every time I do it, I try something new to make it a little better, like I think, Maybe this time I’ve found the best possible version of this section. It keeps it fresh.
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