Pittsburgh Fringe 2025
Widow
Cup-A Jo Productions/Joanna Lowe
Genre: Poetry-Based Theatre, Storytelling
Venue: The Mr. Roboto Project
Festival: Pittsburgh Fringe
Low Down
This show premiered as a part of the 2025 Pittsburgh Fringe Festival. From the Pittsburgh Fringe website: “Cup-A-Jo Productions founder and artistic director Joanna Lowe performs an autobiographical one-woman show on love, loss, and what comes after, in a piece that blends theatre, story-telling and poetry.”
Review
Widow, by Cup-A-Jo Productions and Joanna Lowe, is a moving piece of autobiographical theatre that tells a heartbreakingly tragic story in a beautiful and raw way.
Joanna, clad in her wedding gown, is processing the untimely and tragic death of her husband, Karl, who was killed in an auto accident just months after they married. She is extremely vulnerable, she cries, and she admits that her pain has overtaken her. Her grief dominates the story and pulls you in, bringing you right to the most horrible aspects of the story: initially hearing the news, having to continually process the event, and being reminded of him constantly, both by herself and others.
The show is not all doom and gloom, despite its subject matter. Joanna’s performance is phenomenal, and her love for her husband shines through. In many ways, the show was a celebration of life, if only with a theatre audience at a punk bar. Karl seems like he was a loving and passionate man, and getting to hear Joanna gush about him was a real treat, one which only made the overall point of the show sit even heavier in my heart while watching.
The set was bare – aside from a large pad of paper, a chair, and a few odd props here and there, the show is driven by its excellent pacing and writing. The highlight of the show for me was Joanna’s recounting of the “Top 5 Things Not to Say to a Widow”, a list that included “he’s in a better place now”, “how are you feeling?” and, worst of all, “at least now you can go love again!”. Joanna takes humorous stabs at all of these points, in a way that felt cathartic both for her and us as the audience. To the last point “at least now you can love again”, she ties the show together by saying that she can’t, that her heart is and will forever be tied to Karl’s.
As I’ve said above, Joanna’s performance is captivating. She’s a great storyteller, and it took a massive amount of courage to pour her heart out in the way she did to a room full of strangers. I thoroughly enjoyed her show, and I hope she continues to develop it.
