Author, actress, musician, former public radio host and Pasadena resident Sandra Tsing Loh. (Photo by Ben Gibbs)
Author, actress, musician, former public radio host and Pasadena resident Sandra Tsing Loh is back, preparing to reprise her 2015 production of “The Bitch is Back,” on The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
The upcoming production is based on Loh’s Atlantic magazine article of the same title which was named a Best American Essay in 2014, and which subsequently became the book, “The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones,” one among 100 Notable Books of 2015 selected by The New York Times.
Accompanying Loh’s performances is something called “Bitch Week” (June 23-30) which celebrates the June 29 release of the paperback version of “The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem,” Loh’s follow-up to her first “Madwoman,” and which was selected as a New York Times New and Noteworthy book in 2019.
A graduate of Caltech and the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, Loh began her writing career with fiction and as a playwright. But she soon found there were logistical issues unique to both art forms. In the early twenty-teens, she tried to produce the play she was working on but found herself bound by the vagaries of that particular L.A. phenomenon known as “pilot season,” which made it tough for her to hang on to actors for any length of time. Then, as she was struggling with her novel, she wrote a column for a now-defunct Buzz magazine describing how difficult it is writing a novel.
“I was writing about what a difficult time I was having writing a novel,” Loh recalled. “And then an editor in New York said, ‘Well, I’d like to publish that novel, send it to me.’ And I sent the novel, and didn’t hear anything back. And then a few months later, she wrote back and said, ‘Well, the novel’s terrible, so we can’t publish it.’”
But the editor also offered a two-book deal — a collection of essays and then the novel, “with time to fix it,” Loh said.
She then wrote her original column for The Atlantic, “The Bitch is Back,” which eventually begat her 2015 book, “Madwoman in the Volvo…”
More as participant than observer, Loh’s work has chronicled Southern California life, suburban and otherwise, the mom experience, and now the menopausal experience, re-staging her hit play with five years worth of additional insight.
“My work started kind of in the nineties, which was a real flowering of public radio and personal commentary. So it kind of grew out of that background of writers and solo performance,” Loh said in a recent telephone interview.
“I came up through a mish-mosh of a piano cabaret act and writing a novel,” she continued. “I was an artist trying every different kind of form, but the solo form and the first-person form just at that particular time was just a really fertile time to start writing out of.”
And then there was menopause.
“My Atlantic editor wanted me to write about menopause literally for years,” Loh recalled. “And I just didn’t want to write about it, because I thought ‘I’m too young. I don’t know about it.’”
But, she admitted, “It’s a big, statistically huge demographic of women who are going through this, but I didn’t see the point in it.”
Said Loh, “It was only when I was myself in this kind of depression moment, that was the afternoon that I started writing out of that. So I think that’s always more interesting for me to write about in any case, because it’s like a journey and a puzzle. I don’t know. If something strikes me, I experience something, and it can be, you know, sad or upsetting. And so the writing journey is to see if I can write it and then make it relatable to other people”
The first book release led to wine parties with menopausal women, which Loh described as “having to hold the attention of about 20 sweating, menopausal women drinking a lot of Chardonnay, so, ‘You better just say exactly what we’re all thinking.’ “
“Those basically just became 5 o’clock bitch sessions,” she laughed.
“So this piece came out of just that material,” she continued. “I almost didn’t write it down until I was part way through. And that’s unusual. Usually I will write the script first because there were a bunch of riffs that I had told to hoards of drunk, menopausal women. So, I just put those things into this 70 minutes.”
For this event, Loh will be organizing women’s watch parties through social media, with gift swag like goddess pants, “Madwoman” wine glasses, free books, and specialty cocktails during the aforementioned “Bitch Week.”
The 411:
“The Bitch is Back,” written and performed by Sandra Tsing Loh. Streaming “on demand” June 23-30. Admission included with The Broad Stage Membership. Non-members pay what you can, $10-$75. www.thebroadstage.org.
All ticket holders (members and Pay What You Can) for “The Bitch is Back” may also join two special “happy hours” celebrating women 45+:
Thursday, June 24 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET, “Women 45+ and Relationships,” with special guest Marlo Thomas.
Saturday, June 26 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET, “Women 45+ and Theater: Thoughts on Wendy Wasserstein, co-hosted by New York Stage & Film, Chris Burney artistic director, with special guests Caroline Aaron, Marilu Henner, Melanie Mayron, and JoBeth Williams.
