A Dose of Humor 

There are moments in comedian Cameron Esposito’s latest stand-up special, Four Pills, that play with your mind. They start more than halfway into the set, while Esposito is perched on a stool, firing off jokes about, among other things, mental health, a recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and the medications—hence the show’s title—used to treat it.

Suddenly, mid-sentence, the red curtains that surround Esposito disappear, along with the audience and its laughter. They’re replaced by Esposito sitting in an empty, silent, stark white room, performing to no one. The punchlines land differently: self-reflective and somber. Then—flash! It’s back to the red room with the live crowd and the raucous laughter. These jarring back-and-forths continue for the rest of the show, yanking viewers between two very different moods, and two very different ways of experiencing the same material.

It’s an artistic approach to film editing that Esposito uses to capture the duality of living with bipolar disorder. “It’s hard to describe mental illness to folks who don’t deal with a slightly different brain chemistry,” Esposito explained. “It was important to me to give people an opportunity for experiential learning. I wanted to juxtapose the loud stage performance with the quiet interiority of being medicated and facing oneself.”

Esposito has turned to comedy as a salve since first discovering a love of performing through My Mother’s Fleabag, the Boston College sketch comedy troupe. Since then, and over the course of an explosive career that includes books, tours, and podcasts, Esposito has used frank humor and deeply personal storytelling to discuss everything from surviving sexual assault to seeking rehab for substance use to understanding their gender-fluid identity. “I’m at war with my body,” Esposito cracks at one point in Four Pills, which is now streaming on the comedy platform Dropout. “It’s a lot to walk through the world with the body of Sofia Vergara and the jawline of Kevin Bacon.”

Through it all, Esposito, who majored in theology at BC and once wanted to be a priest, stays motivated by the belief that laughter is medicine and stand-up comedy a kind of ministry. At the end of Four Pills, those red and white rooms merge together, a metaphor for finally reconciling personal struggle with success. “Bipolar disorder has also been my superpower,” Esposito said. “Mania is a hyper-color experience. When you walk down the street, you notice and absorb so much. I think that’s what helps me connect to people through humor." ◽