Maria Bamford, who is performing at the Taft Theatre on Saturday, is a comedian whose career is blowing up big. She stars in the Netflix series Lady Dynamite. Her 2017 Netflix special Old Baby has been praised. And others have noticed her good work: Stephen Colbert, Marc Maron and Judd Apatow, to name just a few in the comedy business, all say she is one of the best in America. Her humor has won particular attention for its truthfulness in confronting personal issues related to depression and anxiety.
As such, she is always inspired to raise the bar in terms of what she’s prepared to confront in order to address the sources of those conditions. “Recently, I acted out one of my premises,” she says via phone from Los Angeles. “You know comedians always have different ideas like, ‘What if we dropped porn in Afghanistan?’ I had this idea: Why don’t we file a restraining order against Donald Trump? So I did it.”
She was careful in her execution of the plan, though.
“I understand how it could be offensive to people who are actually filing restraining orders against people who are endangering them,” she says.
But she doesn’t feel the need to defend the joke, pointing out that she really does feel a true sense of danger concerning the president.
“As a result of his decisions, I do think there is genuine reason to be frightened,” she says. “He’s harmed the lives of so many people, not only with his policies but with the things he’s said: ‘I have the power to kill a huge group of people with just the press of a button.’ ”
The request for a restraining order, while a satirical statement, also had some legal legitimacy, according to Bamford. It was inspired by a sense of powerlessness. “As a citizen, I see a person in power who doesn’t recognize checks and balances,” she says.
Bamford sees the effect of Trump’s policies on America just by driving around Los Angeles.
“The massive discrepancy between rich and poor is only getting worse,” she says. “In Los Angeles, there are 100,000 people living on the street and gun violence has gotten to the point where I feel genuinely afraid to be in public spaces.
“These are not hilarious topics,” she admits. “And I don’t have any jokes about them beyond the restraining order.”
As many working stand-ups have found, anti-Trump political humor is well covered these days by late-night talk and comedy show hosts like Samantha Bee, John Oliver and the aforementioned Colbert. “So, it’s hard for me to find the funny in it,” Bamford says. “Also, I’m a person that’s doing well in this situation. I can write off things still, because these new tax laws aren’t negatively affecting me. But I have tons of friends that are struggling and being taxed more than I am. I’m not middle class, but I can see how people are suffering.”
But instead of talking about these issues onstage, she continues to talk about her life and her experiences with anxiety and depression, as well as general observations about her current relationships. That brand of comedy has translated into the critically acclaimed series Lady Dynamite.
While it isn’t directly about her life, Lady Dynamite does cover things she’s very familiar with.
“I was just glad that some sort of story about mental health could come out, and I could have some say in how that was portrayed. That was important to me,” she says.
She hopes the show and her stand-up help people with mental-illness issues be better understood.
“There has always been this idea that people have that, ‘You should have taken better care of yourself.’ When people get cancer, you’ll hear ‘Oh, well that person smoked, so there’s a reason for it.’ They blame the person with the health issue. I don’t know if that’s just some puritanical thing that continues through the centuries, but I definitely think it has gotten better in some ways in regards to mental health.”
Maria Bamford performs 8 p.m. Saturday at Taft Theatre (317 E. Fifth St., Downtown). Tickets/more info: tafttheatre.org