SF Sketchfest is full of wonderful things that you might miss under the glow of the celebrity heavy headliner shows. Jamie Loftus’ Boss Whom Is Girl is one of those shows that I almost missed. On a whim, I watched a trailer for the show. Then I went down a YouTube rabbit hole, watching stand up clips of Loftus for the next hour. So, I think this means I wanted to go to this show.
As patrons entered the theater, we were handed an NDA to fill out. As we got situated, at 7:59 exactly (it was an 8pm show), the lights went down and we were treated to a video of “Cheryl Samberg” of Facebook talking about feminism in corporate America. Then Loftus took the stage to begin the show.
Boss Whom Is Girl, on the surface, is a simple send up of the Silicon Valley CEO. The primary inspiration seemed to be Elizabeth Holmes, the controversial leader of Theranos, one of the most famous tech start-up scams of our modern day. Loftus used a fake deep voice, and spoke in calm, self-assured tones, reminiscent of Holmes. She really dialed in the intensity and absurdity of this persona.
Loftus, as Shell Gasoline-Sandwich, CEO of Pee-Pee Smarthomes took us on a journey through what it takes to be a lead a company. Through this, we learned about how her products have created an island of DJs without contact with the outside world. We learned what a day is like. We saw her bounce between admissions of guilt and pride in her work. She owned this intensely complex character.
About halfway through the show, she brought on stage a male “ally” to discuss his job. He was a guy named Alex that started his workday at 11am as a software engineer. This is all pretty expected of San Francisco, and Loftus was having a lot of fun with him while in character. It was after learning he eats lunch at 1pm that things went a bit apeshit. Alex couldn’t go into detail about his day after lunch. Loftus kept interrogating him until eventually bringing up weapons, and he said he couldn’t discuss that. WhenAlex mentioned that he spends from “5pm – midnight or 2am with Mountain View City Council,” Loftus could no longer stay in character and said in her normal voice “you are the scariest person I’ve met!” Nervous laughter filled the room.
Her digital assistant, Patricia, was portrayed by a red jumpsuit on a mic stand, and spoke in the “text to speech” voice. Throughout the show, she became more actualized, and that’s when things went from good to full-on weird. We took tours inside the mind of a digital assistant. We learned that Jeremy Renner released a pop single. We even met her virtual dog!
A second ally came on stage towards the end of the set, to simply recite as many names of famous women as he could over “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles. Despite saying Tori Amos twice and missing EVERY BANGLE BUT NAMING TWO GO-GO’s, he was mighty impressive. Loftus broke character again, briefly, to state that he made it further than anyone else ever had, getting all the way to the end of the song!
Not to give away the big finish, but the show ended with Loftus and Patricia coming to blows, and it turned into a psychedelic wonderland of layers of blacklight panties and a wash of lights beneath the aforementioned Jeremy Renner song.
Boss Whom Is Girl is a deeply layered, highly sophisticated, and wonderfully weird send up of Silicon Valley culture, with a feminist bent that separates it from the bro-heavy tech comedy out there. Jamie Loftus is a comic genius, and I can’t wait to see more from her.
