Yemima Cohen's 'Anchor Baby' and Lee Minora's 'White Feminist'

Everything free in America

Friday night, comic Yemima Cohen (a Jerusalem native) performed her hourlong Anchor Baby standup show, presented by PHIT. Cohen, who came to the United States two years ago, is a sociology professor, a former Orthodox Jew, and an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces.

She now lives in West Philly with her husband and their U.S.-born toddler. In her current show, she’s “six months gorgeous” with her second baby (even though, she says, in Hebrew the concept of a “baby” inside your body makes no sense) and flabbergasted by our healthcare system (where the birth of her first child cost $42,000).

Americans have trouble placing her, Cohen says. “I look like some kind of educated Italian. Or a disappointing Latina.” Israel is different from the United States, she says: it doesn’t really have a constitution or a history of slavery: “Just war.”

And her name (which she calls the Israeli equivalent of “Brunhilda”) is “Yeh-meem-ah,” not “Yeh-meen-ah” (with an "n"), or, even worse, “Jemima.” If you’re confused, she suggests trying “Dr. Cohen.”

As an immigrant, she’s sorry for stealing our jobs. She pushed out a lot of Pennsylvania coal miners who wanted to teach Introduction to the Society of Israel at the University of Maryland. But, she says, if miners worry their industry is dead, “try the humanities.”

Cohen, a comic I look forward to seeing again, positions herself as an outsider overhauling the American perspective. When she attended her first U.S. wedding, at Monticello, she was shocked after a little Googling: “I did not know you could have a wedding at a labor camp.” When a U.S. Postal Service employee congratulated her on being able to go abroad when she got her new passport, she thought, “Dude, we ARE abroad!”

But at least for a Philly audience, despite Cohen's comedy about otherness, everyone is on the same page, through riffs on reproductive rights, a collective terror of Trump, and menacing mothers-in-law. Cohen may be a genuine outsider to us, but it’s easy and rewarding to align ourselves with her.

White like me

Things got a little trickier at Lee Minora’s uproarious new solo show, White Feminist, which had staffers scrambling to fit crowds of waitlisted hopefuls into a standing-room-only, pay-what-you-wish, one-night-only show at the Wilma’s studio theater space. Alice Yorke (of Lightning Rod Special) directed.

Minora plays Becky, a self-consciously effulgent blond morning-talk-show host who turns the theater into an Ellen-style live studio audience. She asks everyone to stand, screech, and applaud: “You don’t have to, but I want you to, and it’s mandatory.”

Everyone in the audience is a “citizen hero," Becky says. “Check your privilege at the door and remember to take it when you go.”

Minora anchors a consummate balance between magnetic solo performance and brilliantly improvised audience interaction, ushering us through segments such as a corporate showcase dressed up as charity, a Chablis-fueled “Take a whine and make it shine” session, “The news from youse,” and identifying trends. The latter lobs yes-or-no propositions at individual audience members, who must instantly make the call on things like stepping down, leaning in, Cuba (“just as an idea”), getting married, regional Mexican and regional Chinese cuisine, or chunky sweaters.

In her position as a wealthy, famous, white tastemaker, Becky knows she has plenty to apologize for. She attempts to do so ardently and at length, because “apologies are like shits in the street. You can always tell if they’re human.”

But what about the rest of us? “Who thanked the black women of Alabama for voting?” Becky asks. “Who changed your profile picture to stand with a cause? Who added a letter to ‘LGBTQ’ this year?” Who’s brave enough to have a congressional office number saved in your phone? Is it Toomey’s? Wow. Yeah, it is, for almost everyone. "Give yourselves a round of applause,” Becky exclaims.

The show also explores more heartfelt territory and an uncomfortable sympathy for Becky. She faces viewers critical of a brand of feminism that really only represents “ladies like me.”

“It’s like saying sorry didn’t immediately work!” Becky mourns. “I try to say sorry more and say sorry less at the same time.” And she’s so sorry: sorry about Lena Dunham and Taylor Swift, sorry about Gwen Stefani’s culturally appropriative 1990s bindis, sorry moms made SUVs trendy.

Unlike Cohen, Becky epitomizes the ultimate privileged American woman insider, yet still manages to genuinely find herself on the outside. She’s “not hot enough for the men and not woke enough for the allies. What do I do?”

The audience (mostly but not all white folks), facing a wickedly funny portrait of our own racially and geographically siloed slacktivism, have to live with how well we relate to Becky, however little we want to.

After her bows, Minora said White Feminist will be back after more development and a visit to the Edinburgh Fringe. When it returns, I predict it’ll be one of the hottest tickets in town.