The comic Jacqueline Novak wears the same outfit each time she performs her solo show, “Get on Your Knees”: a loose gray T-shirt, jeans, and a broken-in pair of white-and-gray sneakers. The clothes allow her a kind of anonymity and neutrality, as well as comfort. “Get on Your Knees” is part standup act, part coming-of-age story, and part philosophy lecture. It is also an athletic feat, so she often wears a sports bra, a practical choice that nonetheless warranted extensive consideration before a performance one evening in the summer of 2021. Novak had dedicated the previous four years to the show, but she was still tinkering, refining, and annotating each creative decision she made, particularly as she anticipated taping the show for a Netflix special. “I love sports bras,” she said in front of a mirror in the greenroom at the Cherry Lane Theatre, in the West Village, where she was doing a ten-week run. “But there’s this belief, inherently, that I’m not supposed to be wearing a sports bra. Do you know what I mean? It’s too athletic.”
Novak, who is prone to self-narration, doubled back: “But then I’m, like, why do I feel the audience is owed a separation of my breasts?” Novak is forty-one, but she has a girlish face and a long-standing interest in elaborate skin-care rituals that, to an audience member, might make her look like the high-school version of herself she explores in the performance.
This story is from the January 22, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January 22, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Consolation
Five years before my mother died, we had a violent argument—a thing that had never happened before.
THE INSTIGATOR
How Miranda July starts again.
A CRITIC AT LARGE - OFF THE LEASH
The wacky and wonderful world of the Westminster Dog Show.
LOADED
We used to think the rich had a social function. What are they good for now?
BLAME GAME
“Baby Reindeer” and Under the Bridge.”
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Zemlinsky, Schulhoff; and other neglected Jewish composers of Central Europe.
BOOKS - FORGET IT
A neuropsychologist says that we're thinking about memory all wrong.
A REPORTER AT LARGE - CONVICTION
Lucy Letby, the most notorious nurse in Britain, was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it?
PERSONAL HISTORY - TABULA RASA
THE WORDLE PHILOSOPHY
NEIGHBORLY
My name is Margaret Jo Stinson, and I’d like to share my own perspective on this sort of thing.
