If Sara Davis couldn’t sing, she’d have had to figure out some other way to deal with the emotional ramifications of having a total hip replacement at age 31–write a memoir, rack up a massive telephone bill, mix Vicodin with gin. Instead she put together a cabaret show about her experience.
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“I’d tell them I’m writing a show, and the nurse is passing it on–‘She’s writing a play.’” To which Davis would respond, “No, no, it’s not a play!”
Davis first started having hip problems in 1987, when she was 17. She woke up a little stiff one morning. By evening the pain was unbearable; she couldn’t walk. A blood test indicated she had an infection, but after doctors ran her through practically every other test available, they still couldn’t identify what it was. Nevertheless antibiotics seemed to cure it, and Davis wrote the whole episode off as “a freak thing.”
During her monthlong run, Davis’s audience consisted mostly of friends from Internet chat groups such as “Surfacehippy” and “Totally Hip.” At the time, she was only five months past her surgery and still feeling the effects. She couldn’t cross her legs or bend over, and if she dropped something, too bad. “But it was much harder emotionally than physically,” she says.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Stephen Serio.
