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Brick Wall Comedy
Promotional art for Spadura
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Comedy Dynamics

Spadura

Daheli Hall

Comedy Dynamics · 2026 · 66 min

A baby shower staged around the wreckage of IVF.

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Released , on Comedy Dynamics.

Daheli Hall frames her hour around a mock baby shower, but instead of party games, she brings out the receipts from the fertility industry. She treats the exhausting machinery of in vitro fertilization not as a tearful tragedy, but as a grueling consumer nightmare filled with invasive stirrups, hormone injections, and staggering bills. Her set turns a multi-year medical ordeal into an exercise in endurance comedy, detailing the logistical absurdity of trying to conceive a Jamaican-Haitian-Filipino baby with her husband.

Hall spent years in sketch and television writing rooms, including a cast stint on MADtv and writing for Dear White People, before turning her fertility treatment into a solo show. She toured the material across seven cities over two years, winning Best One-Woman Show at the 2023 United Solo festival.

Filmed at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles in October 2024, the hour was co-directed by Hall and Allison Caviness before its Comedy Dynamics release in September 2026. Hall pulls out physical props and family anecdotes to outline the disparities Black women face in reproductive healthcare, setting the cold reality of clinical bureaucracy against the stubborn persistence needed to sit through another blood draw.

Notable bits & set list

3 bits

  1. Maternal advice from her Haitian mother

    Examines her mother's maxims ('It's better to be envied than pitied!' and 'Chastity, chastity, chastity!') that kept her ambitious and studious in Catholic school but childless and single into her thirties before confronting fertility struggles.

  2. Conceiving a 'Jamaican-Haitian-Filipino-American' baby

    Shares candid anecdotes about herself, her Filipino husband, their dog Carmen, and her Caribbean parents amidst their arduous journey to get pregnant.

  3. Navigating fertility gadgets, statistics, and anatomy

    Combines a vagina puppet with projected photos, videos, and educational data to satirize the multibillion-dollar fertility industry.

How it plays

Tone
Hilarious, vulnerable, poignant, deeply personal, and thought-provoking.
On stage
Candid, vulnerable, pragmatic, skeptical, and physically comedic.
Pace
An emotional rollercoaster that shifts swiftly between hearty laughter and poignant vulnerability, featuring dynamic physical movement across the stage.
About
Infertility and IVF, The baby industrial complex, Motherhood and aging, Fertility obstacles faced by Black women, Multicultural marriage and Caribbean parenting, Grief and resilience

What the critics said

Hailed as a tour-de-force of turning tragedy into comedy, lauded for its honesty, relatable humor, vulnerability, and deftly transforming difficult subjects into a hilarious and moving experience.

In the room: Intimate, highly engaged, and emotionally invested, with the crowd oscillating between laughter and tears while participating directly in audience interaction.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: paff2026.eventive.org, allmovie.com, daheli.info, blu-ray.com, dctheaterarts.org, entertainingchicago.com, hypehair.com, imdb.com, realblacknews.libsyn.com.

Backstory

Framed as an off-kilter baby shower, chronicling her real-life struggles with infertility, the brutal financial and emotional toll of IVF, aging, grief, the baby industrial complex, and the specific fertility obstacles encountered by Black women in America as she and her Filipino husband try to conceive a Jamaican-Haitian-Filipino-American child.

Details

Released
Runtime
66 min
Where
Comedy Dynamics
Director
Allison Caviness, Dahéli Hall
Honors
Winner, Best One-Woman Show, United Solo 2023
Topics

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