When you first meet Amy Marcs, you could call her “a sexy hot New York Jewess with a great rack” and she would not find that the least bit offensive. You will see her as an actress filled with a wonderful blend of vulnerability and comedic timing. What you won’t see from her magnetic blue eyes or vivacious laughter is a cancer survivor who underwent a double mastectomy.
But rather than focusing on the gloom of that near tragic moment in her life, Marcs is sharing her experience in a one-woman play, Nice T!ts. For the third year, her critically acclaimed show is coming back to The PIT Loft for five performances this fall beginning September 25th.
I recently met with Marcs in the Flatiron district to talk about how she continues to share her story using the stage to transform and heal. She told me, “Nice T!ts gets people in my audience talking about the stuff in life that’s hard to talk about. And I say, let’s talk, let’s have these conversations.”
So Amy and I did just that.
VM: “So, Nice T!ts.”
Amy Marcs: “Thank you!” (laughing)
VM: “Love the title. Obviously, I’ve seen it before. Before we get into the play, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what led up to the events that inspired you to write this kind of play?”
Amy Marcs: “Well I wrote this play because it’s an autobiographical story about what happened to me when I went through cancer. Everything in the play is completely true. So when you see it and think ‘Oh my God, that’s crazy’, it all really happened…So I wrote it because I’ve been an actress for years and I feel that art can be really healing. When I was healing from my double mastectomy and not working, I started writing. At first I tried journaling everything then went to a writing coach [Peter Michael Marino] after that to put it into play form. I felt compelled to tell my story.”
VM: “Your choice to make this a one-woman play, what led you to make that decision?”
Amy Marcs: “I don’t know. I just knew that’s how I wanted to do it. I just felt it was me, it was my story and I play about seven other characters in it.”
VM: “One of the things I have personal experience with having been in the audience…you consistently speak to the audience so you’re breaking the formidable ‘fourth wall’. How would you say that changes or alters the experience for the audience?”
Amy Marcs: “It alters the experience for the audience and it alters the experience for me. I have a lot of people who have seen it more than once … and [they say], ‘Every time I see the show it’s different.’ I see the audience as my final scene partner. So depending on what I get from the audience and what they give me because I’m breaking the fourth wall so much, the show is always different. When I was doing it the other night there was a woman in the front row and I was making really strong contact with her and something she was giving me altered my moment. So I don’t feel like I’m alone up there because I have a whole audience and it changes all the time … People call out things quite a few times and I just talk to them and respond. It’s never the same and I love that. I love that for me too because it just keeps me on my toes because I don’t know what people are going to respond to or what’s going to happen next. And then I have to go from improving with the audience to coming back to my script and maintaining my focus.”
VM: “That’s one of the more fascinating things about this play. It is scripted, obviously, but there is a contingent of improv. How difficult is that to do?”
Amy Marcs: (Knocking on wood) “I studied improv, I studied at UCB. I feel like I have really, deeply prepared myself for this. I’ve been an actress for over 20 years. I teach acting. I‘ve done a lot of improv so it’s just like every thing I do, came together.”
VM: “This is such a personal story about your struggle with Breast Cancer, yet you tell it with humor and with optimism. How did you and your director … collaborate to achieve that?”
Amy Marcs: “Peter Michael Marino is my director and he’s brilliant, he’s a genius. As I was writing, because he helped me develop it so we worked together on the development of the show … he made me put a Post-it note up on my computer as I was writing with the word ‘Hope’. So every time I wrote, I always knew to get back to the [narrative] thread that I want to give people hope. I wanted people to know that I’ve been through a lot in my life. I had just turned 17 and my mother died of breast cancer. How do you deal with that? For me, we’re all different, I make it through life with a killer sense of humor or should I say a kick-ass sense of humor. Everybody has their own way of coping and I feel in a show like this, I’m allowed because it’s my life. I’m the one who went through it, I’m the one who lost my breasts, I’m the one who lost my mom. So I can do whatever I want and I believe that humor is, I have a quote in my program, one of the best healing tools we have. Laughter helps us. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel awkward, it doesn’t mean it’s not dark. It just gives room for breath. And what’s so important about my story is we all have the capacity to heal and to overcome and that’s really powerful. I think we all need to hear more stories about people who overcome … My show is 100 percent about service, letting other people know, ‘Yes, you can get through this. Yes, you can make it through’. It’s awful but you can be better in the end. So my goal of my show is to inspire and to give hope and not just for people who have had cancer. Life is hard, but if we know that we are resilient and have a way to make it through, it’s important.”
VM: “I know Nice T!ts is for a limited run. Where are you playing?”
Amy Marcs: “So, I’m doing it at the PIT Loft … I did my first show on September 25th then I’m doing my run in recognition of Breast Cancer Month, so it’s a special run. This is my third year of doing the show. I keep selling out every time. People keep coming back to see it again and the great thing is they keep sharing it with friends. They’re like ‘this is the show you should see, you want to see.’ Then, hopefully, I’m going to go on tour. I’m going to go to Florida in March to a place called Theater Conspiracy. So I’m doing a special four-show engagement there. My hope is to start spreading the word and to travel. You don’t just have to be in New York to see my show.”
VM: “For some many people who have been touched by breast cancer or really any kind of cancer, for those people, I expect that those are the people you really want to come to your show?”
Amy Marcs: “Actually, I want anyone to come to my show. I had one guy come to my show, young guy in his late thirties, and three weeks after my show his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He sent me an email saying ‘Thank you so much for you show because I would not have known how to talk to my mother, but because of your show I was comfortable talking to her.’ So, it’s really for anyone and unfortunately every one is touched by someone who has cancer.”
VM: “And you leave [them] with a little touch of humor.”
Amy Marcs: “Oh we need the humor. But I think, again, I can have the humor because I’ve been through it.”
To purchase tickets go to:
amymarcs.com or
See Amy Marcs’ trailer for Nice T!ts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaUCg1h5X-s
NYC 6th Borough 