Within the span of 12 hours, comedian and actor Ivy Wolk posted these things on her Instagram: an AI-generated video of an animated wooden paddle spanking a woman with a wooden paddle; a video of comedian Nick Viagas’s mother asking people to “see my large disabled son on tour”; a video edition of her monthly advice column “Born Sexy Yesterday” for the Julie morning-after pill; a photo of Newt Gingrich’s wife “Cally” (in bright blue) posing awkwardly with a U.S. ambassador-at-large (also in bright blue); a clip from the show English Teacher in which Ivy played a high school student; a shot of the marquee for her latest acting project, the Broadway play Downstate; and no fewer than four pictures of a police horse outside the aforementioned Broadway theater. It’s no accident that a collection of Instagram Stories on a random day sums up Ivy’s unique résumé and singular point of view: brainy, absurd, charming, occasionally abrasive, very online, and thoroughly booked. Ivy’s internet isn’t just a vehicle for bald promotion; it’s an artistic medium.
This year, the media, as well as iconic, equally polarizing stars like Sandra Bernhard and Courtney Love, caught on to what Ivy’s online fans and haters have known for years: When she posts (or talks or acts or writes), we pay attention. Her name is Effie, and she is a bratty, steadfast girl who works at Staples in Southern Illinois. One of her coworkers is a registered sex offender, and she drives him to and from their job every day, and they have a volatile, funny relationship.
The play is a chamber drama, and it all takes place over the course of one day in a house where the coworker lives with other sex offenders. Effie is the kind of a girl who is just bored after work and wants to go somewhere, even if it’s in the house of four, you know, messy pedophiles. I think this show is going to be the zeitgeist-y ticket of the season.
I also hope that my inclusion in this cast will get young people who know me from the internet or stand-up comedy or TV out to come and, like, sit their asses down for two and a half hours and just fucking pay attention. There’s a misconception that Gen Z are not good, attentive audiences or they’re not interested in being audiences of live performance, and I think that’s just not true. I’ve always wanted to do theater.
It’s what made me fall in love with performance as a craft. I grew up in a children’s musical theater conservatory. I’m very accepting of lowbrow culture in all other facets of art, but theater is the one thing that I’m very pretentious about.
Primarily, I’m a stand-up comedian and the immediacy of the form is really important to me. It’s why I use the internet the way that I do—posting constantly, very quickly—it feels very intimate. That’s what I love for art to feel like.
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