I Got Sick Then I Got Better

Written and Performed by Jenny Allen
Directed by James Lapine & Darren Katz

A comic riff on one woman’s adventures after falling down the medical rabbit hole. Diagnosed with and treated for ovarian cancer in 2005, writer and performer Jenny Allen tells her story of the harrowing tailspin she took following her diagnosis, combining biting humor with searing emotion in a witty, bittersweet monologue that limns the personal and family collateral damage a life-threatening illness brings.

I Got Sick Then I Got Better

New York Theatre Workshop
September 25, 2005 - October 9, 2005

Moved to the East Fourth Street Theater for an extended run through Nov 15, 2009

  • Written by Jenny Allen
    Directed by James Lapine & Darren Katz
    Artistic Director: James C. Nicola
    Production Stage Manager: Bob Going
    Lighting Design: David Lander

  • Jenny Allen as Herself

Reviews & Features

“Directed by James Lapine and Darren Katz, ‘I Got Sick’ presents the one-person show as an alternative… to therapists and support groups: a way to make sense of the inexplicable and to reconnect with a human world that seems to be receding all the time.”

Ben Brantley for The New York Times, 2009

“Allen’s one-woman show about simultaneously coming down with two different kinds of cancer is a lot funnier than one would expect, given its dire subject matter, and co-helmers James Lapine and Darren Katz have given it enough pizzazz to forestall the inevitable question, which is: haven’t we seen most of this before?”

Sam Thielman for Variety, 2009