On Sunday, April 20, 2008 - Loretta LaRoche, HUMORIST ‘Women in Comedy with Loretta LaRoche and Friends’ performed at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts located at 2 Southbridge St. in Worcester, Ma.
Oh no! This reporter was supposed to call Loretta LaRoche at 9:30 a.m. last Monday for a telephone interview. But he’s got his times and timing mixed up, and looking at his watch he sees that it is 10:15 a.m. And he hasn’t touched his coffee yet, let alone a telephone. This is the sort of thing that can make a reporter feel STRESSED. Fortunately for him, LaRoche is an international stress management consultant as well as humorist and comedian. In those last two capacities, she will be at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with her show “Women in Comedy with Loretta LaRoche and Friends!” So when the late call was made, LaRoche proceeded to make the interview stress-free. Apologies, of course, were proffered. “We’re all gonna still breathe,” LaRoche said reassuringly. She was right about that. And one knew she was right, too, when she said the world needs more laughter in this age of war, foreclosures, a threatening recession … you name it.
The show featured LaRoche and two other woman comics, Kelly MacFarland and Christine Hurley. “It’s really an idea we tossed around, because definitely people need to see more women in comedy and laugh more,” LaRoche said. “The misery index has increased significantly in America. There really is a misery index, believe it or not. … Whether it’s toxic dumps or chickens that have been recalled. I don’t like to lump it all together because then I’d say, ‘Oh my God, I’d better bury myself in the yard.’ ” What’s the antidote? Humor, LaRoche said. “I think we need it.” After her shows people have told her, ‘I haven’t laughed that much in a long time.’ I find that sad. I tell people, ‘become the fun person you’re looking for. You’re waiting for Friday, what if you die on Monday?’ ” And a healthy dose of optimism doesn’t hurt, either. “I always thrive on hopefulness.
In the context of humor you can find some solutions. Especially with stress.” LaRoche’s bread and butter in terms of her career is teaching stress management — through humor. She lives on the South Shore and has given seminars around the world. May 2008 Loretta was on the Hay House cruise ship — working. Her approach through humor has had other nice spin-offs, including PBS award-winning specials, books, a weekly newspaper column called “Get a Life” and her live performances. “This was one of the things I wanted to do. I love the performance part of who I am,” she said. In her performances she focuses on human foibles, but stays away from politics. “If I get into it (politics) I’ll probably be taken to jail,” she said. “I’d rather stay on the lines of poking fun at behavior.”
LaRoche is from Brooklyn, N.Y., and has a somewhat deep New York voice along with a very infectious laugh. As she talked she often asked, “What do you think?” or “Do you agree?” LaRoche was asked when she first realized she could make people laugh. “I think when I was born,” she said. “I was very young when I figured that out, 4 to 5 years (old). I used to be able to imitate people. My family would encourage me. I think some humor is genetic. You really have to be a keen observer of human behavior and be able to hold that and juxtapose it with something incongruous.” She has lived in New England a long time, coming first to Maine with her first husband after his job as a sales representative for an oil company required him to move. There have been a couple of relocations of a different sort. “I’ve been married twice. I call them my ‘was-bands,’ ” LaRoche quipped. At a time in the 1970s when she felt stuck in her career working behind the counter at a department store, she started holding classes at night, teaching people how to exercise to music. These proved to be popular. Meanwhile, LaRoche evolved to mental as well as physical counseling.
She is on the Mass. General Advisory Council for Anxiety and Depression. These are not laughing matters, per se, except that, in this context they are. LaRoche talked about Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl and his book “Man’s Search for Meaning.” “He was in the concentration camps. He talks about humor and the soul’s preservation. It’s gallows humor. But I don’t think people write about how elegant and profound humor can be in terms of lifting the spirit. Without it you are clinically depressed.” Her travels have suggested that, in the words of her column, Americans may need to get a life more than Europeans. She recalled that she was in the South of France last year. “What a difference. People sit by cafés, they enjoy their food and they enjoy their time off.” Across the channel, she enjoys British humor. “I love the humor. It’s so sarcastic.” One of her favorite TV shows is “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” At the theater she has loved “Spamalot.”
But back in Massachusetts LaRoche has made several appearances in Worcester that have always been well received. “People know me from the PBS specials. That market in Worcester really seems to like what I do,” she said. “So I count my blessings in that I’ve still got an audience that comes and sees me. Otherwise I would rant in my kitchen at my cat.”
