More 'Joy'

After its successful run in last year's Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Joy Vandervort-Cobb's "Moments of Joy" will return this year for a limited time during the first weekend of the festival.

Joy Vandervort-Cobb is a vibrant member of the Charleston community, and her autobiographical one-woman show, "Moments of Joy," displays her comedic talent. Vandervort-Cobb's work has been praised as "courageous" for her openness about her life, sparing no detail about "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

Inspired by comedians such as Lucille Ball, Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg, Vandervort-Cobb has brightened the stage for nearly 30 years. She began auditioning and performing at The Freedom Theatre in Upstate New York and later received her BFA in theater from the University of Southern California. After moving to Charleston, she began her work with The Company Company. Along with directing, acting and working as a professor at the College of Charleston, Vandervort-Cobb narrated the Emmy Award winning documentary "Where Do We Go From Here? ... The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

"Moments of Joy" is the brainchild that stemmed from Vandervort-Cobb's earlier work with The Company Company. As a performer in The Good Time Variety Hour, she wrote short monologues that often were "too raw" for the show. In late 2008, Vandervort-Cobb began writing "Moments of Joy," leaving all the raw parts in.

Vandervort-Cobb said that "there is an adage in the theater, that what audiences respond to is a play's 'unique yet universal world,' " and that "Moments of Joy" has proven this to her. Though "Moments" is about her life, conversations she has had with strangers and friends have led her to discover that many aspects of the show resonate with the members of the audience.

Vandervort-Cobb has to maintain sharp concentration for the back-and-forth dialogue between characters to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. She confesses that "the show was advertised last festival as a 90-minute show. It ended up going for two hours because the audiences forced me to have a good time, and once I started rolling, I couldn't stop. It's a two-hour show because the audiences taught me what was funny, what was effective, and I figure, hey, it's their show, too!"