Playwright, actor and writer Valerie David (Photo by Rick Dewitt courtesy Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
Valerie David has a lot to say about superheroes. A playwright, actor and writer, David is best known for her critically acclaimed show, “The Pink Hulk: A One-Woman Play About the Journey to Find the Superhero Within.” The production is a comical and heartwarming take on an experience most people wouldn’t associate with either of those words: cancer.
It would be apt to characterize David’s experience with cancer as a fight — one she’s won three times. David was diagnosed and successfully treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1999 and Stage 2 breast cancer in 2014 and 2015. Last year, life threw another challenge her way when she was re-diagnosed with breast cancer. This time it was Stage 4 metastatic that had spread to her bones. This April, she beat that one, too.
“You have a curveball, but what do you do?” David says. “You just keep going. Your trajectory is forward. Find that superhero.”
It’s no accident, then, that the show’s name, “Pink Hulk,” is a nod to a character in pop culture who, after a radiation accident, develops the ability to transform into one of the strongest and most relentless fighters in the entire Marvel universe.
David keeps a frenetic schedule — “It’s like juggling 20,000 balls in the air,” she says — as she prepares for a tour of “The Pink Hulk,” which includes a stop in Richmond at the Weinstein JCC on Oct. 27.
David is delighted to return to Richmond, where she spent part of her childhood. Her family moved to the area from New York in the 1970s, when she was 6 years old. “When I moved to Richmond, Short Pump was basically a gas station,” she says. She recounts fond memories from her time here: celebrating her bat mitzvah, participating in cotillion, birthday parties at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour in Regency mall.
Richmond was also the first place David performed onstage. “My shaping as a person and as an actor was in Richmond,” she says, chuckling as she recalls her first stage experience as a young girl cast in “The Three Little Pigs.” “I was the fourth little pig — I got demoted,” she says.
David eventually landed in New York, where she struggled with the choice of becoming a journalist or an actor. She wound up pursuing drama because it married her love of acting with her love of writing. That decision was validated with “The Pink Hulk.”
“It’s been the joy of my life to perform this show,” David says. “The audience inspires me.”
Valerie David onstage in “The Pink Hulk” (Photo by Dixie Thamrin)
Her ability to add levity to a heavy topic is part of what sustains her. “I credit humor with saving my life,” she says. She’s been on a number of New York improvisational comedy teams, notably Cronuts and Cherub. Performing gave her a sense of normalcy during tough times. “Doing improv was an ‘I’ll show you, cancer,’ moment,” she says. At one point her hair fell out, but she kept performing, wearing wigs and then scarves. Still, she says, “It’s not like during cancer I [go and] do tap dancing. When I felt okay, I performed.”
David’s battles with cancer have left scars, though. “I don’t want to sugarcoat what this is,” she says. “There are still a lot of challenges, there’s still fear every time I have an appointment or scan. That’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life, but it’s not going to stop me.”
David stresses that she doesn’t want to be treated differently from anyone else. “I don’t want your pity. I’m alive,” she says. “When people see me, I don’t want to them to see me as a cancer patient. I want them to see me as me. I want people to look at anyone who had any type of illness or disability, look at us as us. Cancer doesn’t define who I am, I define who I am.”
For David, heroism is less about standing out and more about standing up against the things that paralyze us. That’s one of the reasons she says “The Pink Hulk” resonates with so many people, even if they’re not dealing with medical issues. “It’s not just about cancer,” she says. “We need to have hope and live the life we want to live. We all should be able to live on our own terms.”
David holds that her journey through cancer made her more empathetic and strengthened her family relationships, too. “We’ve had a war, they’ve been in the trenches with me,” she says. “We appreciate each other more. My life is better because of these experiences, even though it doesn’t seem like it.”
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