Letters/X’s Jessica Jane Childs on heartbreak, heartache, and dead flies
Now in its ninth year, Letters/X captures real-life heartbreak and shittiness live, in person. Through audience submissions of letters, e-mails, texts, or whatever, the show’s creators come up with a fresh set of sketches, songs, dramatic readings, and art pieces every year just in time for Valentine’s Day. This year, the show kicks off tonight, Feb. 2, at the Apollo Studio Theater, running Thursday through Saturday until March 10, with a special Valentine’s show Feb. 14.
Of course, The A.V. Club had to know some of the dirtiest and saddest stuff that’s been featured in the show, so we reached out to co-producer Jessica Jane Childs for some of the biggest sucker punches of the years, as well as the scoop on how the show’s handled these lovers’ laments.
“I’m sorry I came on your cat.”
Jessica Jane Childs: We ask for submissions from the public, though the way it began was more with friends. Most of the letters are sent anonymously, so sometimes I don’t know the background behind the stories. We’re not supposed to focus on the background in the show, though.
Our composer and adapter takes all the submissions through the year and picks out the best pieces. He makes them either into monologues—some of the pieces, especially if they’re [instant messenger] conversations, we set those up onstage as a scene. In the past we’ve added a method of sending, like “I’m sorry I came on your cat, send.” For this year, we use some Facebook stuff. We have a song about it.
This one, I think, was part of a call and response. It was a collection of “I’m sorries.” We all said a different one. He pulled this quote from a letter. “I’m sorry I came on your cat”; “I’m sorry I slept with your sister,” whatever.
“I bet you are wondering why there are dead flies enclosed with this letter. Let me tell you. There is one fly for each line of shit you fed me. One fly gave its pathetic little life for each one of the heartless, cruel, selfish, shitty things you said, or did, or otherwise.”
JJC: This is from a handwritten letter that I know that was sent to a girl in high school. It’s terrible, right? And obviously very volatile.
The funny thing is that one time someone asked us a couple years back, “Is this making fun of heartache?” Heartache is obviously a very serious thing that everyone goes through and, although it’s funny, we really try to emphasize these letters coming from a real place. The concept of this letter is funny, but whoever sent this kid dead flies in an envelope was obviously disturbed. But, from his point of view, it was obviously very real to him. Our director makes sure we emphasize that these are real pieces and not created by a writer. Someone actually came on someone else’s cat. It’s so interesting to me—the act of so desperately trying to get someone back—and so interesting how this stuff comes out.
“Watching you parade around my bedroom in a thong was a little bit like watching sea lions mate. Thought you might like to know.”
JJC: It’s funny because I’m a co-producer, actor, and this is my seventh year in the show, but every year it makes me question everything I write, because I think the show points out just how permanent today’s technology and media is. If you break up, your words are really permanent. And not just in terms of a show but, like, 50 years ago, when everything was handwritten, you could tear up the only version of something out there. A lot of these e-mails, though, like this thong one ... that one was submitted as part of a mass forward. Whoever wrote this e-mail, after they sent it to the girl, he forwarded it to everyone he knew and said, “P.S. I BCCed this to about 100 people.” It says that at the end of the letter.
I mean, that’s just devastating. The fact that it was not only sent to the girl, but that the sender thought about how much he could ruin this girl—that’s an added “fuck you.”
“I hope you can forgive me. I hope your wife can forgive me!”
The A.V. Club: A lot of these letters are kind of heartbreaking in their seriousness. They’re funny, but then beyond that, they’re kind of soul-crushing.
JJC: Right. Like this “I hope your wife can forgive me,” letter, a friend of mine wrote that to a guy. She says all this stuff in the letter, and then she goes on and says, “I know it’s been three years since we’ve been together.” Not all the letters we get are breakups, as much as they are personal diaries that people have sent or personal information they send to their ex way later. They’re these heartbreak letters instead of breakups.
So, for that one, it’s like, “It’s been three years and I haven’t talked to you and I can’t get you off my mind so, in an effort to move on, here’s my letter to you.” In this, even before this line, though, there’s something to the effect of, “I’m attaching nine pages of journal entries written over the past three years.”
What makes this work as a performance piece is that it kind of opens up. There’s more information as it goes. Once you get to the end of the letter, you realize that not only is this relationship way over, but he’s moved on and she hasn’t. And she bombards him with journal entries!
Luckily, for this girl, it’s funny to her now, and she submitted these pages herself. At the time, though, you have to have a lot of heartache to send a letter three years after the fact. She’s married now too.
“I’m sure you don’t want to hear about how loudly my biological clock is ticking!”
JJC: A lot of the letters are sadder than they are angry. A breakup letter, when you first think of it, can be angry, like the dead flies. But something like the biological clock—that’s something we all go through as 30-year-old single women. That’s a real thing. To confess that in writing is more from the heart and less from anger.
When we first get the script as actors, we start pieces with more anger, but then you think more about where is this person coming from, and we take a lot of time to create a background just from a letter and the situation that happened. Sometimes that’s shown on the stage through scenery, or whatever. This quote ended up becoming a rap song, though. It went, “Tick tock, my biological clock.” There were three women in the show, and we all took lines about all the reasons about why we needed babies right now. It is fun to take very real things and make them funny.
“I did have a good time over the weekend—almost half the time.”
AVC: Have people come to the show who have submitted letters? Have they been pleased with the results?
JJC: I’ve had people on both ends. I remember someone who came saying specifically, “I remember getting this letter and it being such a hard, devastating time in my life, but to see it interpreted in a different, comical light, that really helps me move on.”
On the other hand, we’ve had people who have submitted letters—like we had this gentleman who submitted a lot of letters from his psychotic ex-girlfriend that just went on and on and on. He at first thought it was really fun to see, and then later he thought that all that turmoil can be kind of hard to see. He had thought this woman betrayed him, that she was a total bitch, and he came away feeling bad and sorry for her. It was a moment of remorse.
