“The sound of laughter to me is better than sex,” performer Marcia Wilke says, laughing herself. “I’ve been working on the road as a stand-up comedian for about a year now, and I really enjoy it. But the problem I have with it is that you really don’t get to make a statement or say anything that’s in your heart. You have to concern yourself with making people laugh because that’s what you’re paid for. There’s pressure to not let too much time go by before you get that punch line in there.”
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Wilke studied improv at Second City in 1987, and she’s has done stand-up routines at several clubs, including Catch a Rising Star and the Improv. She started writing monologues about a year and a half ago, while she was with the troupe Chicago Women in Comedy. Her material was geared to female audiences, and she has continued to focus on women’s issues.
“Theirs Is the Kingdom,” for example, is the story of a nun who wants to go to some faraway place like Rumania or Ethiopia, so she can help people who are truly suffering. Then she gets assigned to a cushy job teaching on a worship committee at a private Catholic college.
In her monologues, Wilke uses minimal props and gimmicks. She prefers to think of herself as a storyteller. Her main goals are to make people laugh and to make them realize things about the human race as a whole. “I just want everyone to see that, you know, we are an odd people–the way we handle relationships, the way we grow up, how we view our peers, all the way through life. It’s funny.”
