Superproducer Judd Apatow has yet another project, and this time it’s for the stage. Apatow will co-produce Chris Gethard’s off-Broadway debut, Chris Gethard: Career Suicide, a comedy about depression written and performed by Gethard. Before landing its off-Broadway run, the show originally ran in New York at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and has been developed at other venues, including Union Hall in Brooklyn and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where Gethard did the show for 26 consecutive nights. According to a spokesperson for the show, Career Suicide explores Gethard’s “experiences with mental illness, ethically questionable psychiatry, and finding hope in weird places” and is “a painfully honest journey into the mind of one of the most original and exciting comics at work today.”
Gethard hosts Fusion’s The Chris Gethard Show, co-stars in Mike Birbiglia’s feature-length dramedy Don’t Think Twice, and plays Ilana’s former boss on Broad City. He wrote on his Facebook page:
This is kind of a huge step for me. I’ve always been an underground guy trying to be honest and do work that I believe in. I’ve always been on the fringe and this is a big step to the mainstream for me, but I honestly think it’s less about me going legit and more about maybe the world at large being a little bit more ready to have this conversation.
“I think the show is hilarious but it is also about a topic that a lot of people are struggling with and are ashamed to talk about,” Apatow, who is co-producing with Brian Stern from AGI Entertainment, told Deadline in an email. “I had an instinct that what Chris is doing will have a big impact on people as well as entertain them. As soon as I saw it I asked Chris if I could help in any way.”
Kimberly Senior is directing, which Gethard described as “bonkers” on his Facebook page. “She is WAY out of my league and honestly I’m not quite sure why she agreed to do this,” he wrote. “She’s been working hands on with this thing and it has gotten so much better for it. If you’ve seen the show before, I promise, you haven’t seen it like this. She basically injected it with steroids – it’s funnier, more heartfelt, and better for her work on it.” Senior previously directed the play Disgraced, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The first preview of Chris Gethard: Career Suicide will take place on October 5, and tickets are on sale now.
[via Deadline]
[Note: Fusion, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]