STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Comedian Sarah Silverman says she takes inspiration from a quote by the Catholic priest and author Father Gregory Boyle.
SARAH SILVERMAN: And it's basically, if you don't make friends with your wounds, you will be tempted to despise the wounded.
INSKEEP: Silverman grew up with an emotional wound, the shame of being a bedwetter. She wrote a bestselling memoir about this, which is now a musical currently at Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage. NPR's Elizabeth Blair talked with Silverman.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: "The Bedwetter" is a poignant musical comedy about healing. It takes place when Sarah Silverman is 10 years old. She becomes depressed when she's ostracized because of her bedwetting. Her father goes overboard trying to help her, taking her to a hypnotist and a doctor who overprescribes Xanax. Sarah's mother pleads with Sarah's father to stop trying to fix her.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "THE BEDWETTER")
SHOSHANA BEAN: (As Beth Ann, singing) You can't fix her. She's not broken. She's just having trouble coping. The ground underneath her has shifted a bit. The clouds overhead haven't lifted just yet.
SILVERMAN: He learns, you know, to stop trying to fix it and to just listen. And when he does that, he's able to relate to her on some level.
BLAIR: And when her father listens, Sarah opens up and shares with him how she misses being 9.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "THE BEDWETTER")
ARIA KANE: (As Sarah, singing) When I was 9, you and Mom had all the answers. When I was 9, we were one weird, cool family.
BLAIR: Silverman has explored the need to listen to each other before in her series from some years ago called "I Love You, America."
SILVERMAN: The biggest thing I learned was that facts don't, shockingly - and this is true for all of us - facts really don't change people's minds. Feelings do. And that's, you know, obviously why art is so important.
BLAIR: Because art is all about feelings. Sarah Silverman hopes "The Bedwetter" makes it to Broadway. It's at Arena Stage until March 16.
Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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