REVlEW: 'I Sh!t You Not,' Live at Logan Theatre
By Allison Kelley in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 31, 2014 4:00PM
“Stories not for the faint of fart” is the tagline to Chicago’s only storytelling show about shitting your pants, pissing yourself, vomiting, bleeding and generally having adult accidents. And it’s true; I Shit You Not is not for those with a weak stomach.
Last Thursday night’s show at the Logan Theatre had a little something for every masochist in the audience. Co-hosts Monte LaMonte and Michael Sanchez introed seven performers over the course of the night, each with a tale more vile than the next. But to say these stories were simply gross would be a great disservice. Sure they were distasteful, but they were also explosively funny and, at times, even heartfelt. And remember, we’re talking about secretion stories here.
Kicking off the night was Lia Berman sharing her story about being pulled out on a stretcher at her 10-year reunion. This was a story of heartbreak and revenge being presented as a barf story.
Erin Kahoa, co-producer of the new WBEZ podcast PleasureTown, pointed to his mom in the crowd and then proceeded to share how once, on a school trip, after a hot tub night, he lost control of his bowels in the hotel room. Danielle Puterbaugh, one half of the power comedy duo The Puterbaugh Sisters, presented her indiscretions in several vignettes. We followed her from being a fearful young pooper, to college, where, at a jam band festival in Ohio, she peed her hippie skirt. Finally we saw Puterbaugh post-college watching the man who would become her boyfriend attempt to flee the morning after from the sheets he pissed in the night before.
Performer Jennifer Mills drew the loudest groans of the night—a great honor at this show—with her story of shitting her skirt on the New York City subway, in the dead of summer, in an unfamiliar neighborhood. We followed along with Mills as she took us from her first mistake, eating Indian food in a heat wave, to the moment of public release, followed by sheer terror.
When the accident happened, Mills was on the subway in Queens. She knew she had to leave the train and get cleaned up, but the only person she “knew” was a stranger her brother had just started seeing. We winced as she made that fateful call to her brother and made the admission all big brothers would die to hear: “I tried to fart but it came out worse and now I’ve shit my skirt and I need help.”
Finally, Mills’ journey past horrified catcallers, ended at the home of her brother’s saintly friend. The girl had been sick the week before and they bonded over shared shit. “I still have the pair of shorts she gave me to wear,” Mills said. And then she held the Adidas running shorts over her head and the audience erupted in cheers.
I Shit You Not runs the last Thursday of every month at 8:00 p.m. at the Logan Theatre, located at 2646 N. Milwaukee Ave. They also have a weekly “poodcast” featuring even more bathroom stories from veteran writers and comics. If you have a shitty story to share, send it to ishityounotshow@gmail.com