(UNION, NJ) -- The Theater Project presents Too Fat For China from July 17-19, 2026 in the DMK Black Box Theater. Comedian Phoebe Potts' one-woman show follows the surprises and painful realizations of her adoption journey with humor and candor.
A native of Brooklyn, where everyone was indignant before breakfast, Potts learned to tell stories to get her family to like her and to understand thorny issues. In Too Fat for China, Potts uses humor and honesty to tell the irreverent story of the terrible things she did for love.
Too Fat for China follows Phoebe Potts, comic storyteller and professional Jew, as she tries, fails and eventually succeeds to adopt a baby. After a US adoption goes horribly wrong, Potts finds herself surprised, disgusted and ultimately resigned to the role she plays as a middle class white lady in the business of adopting babies in the US and internationally. Potts’ tragicomic journey is about looking for more, more love, more life and more family and will do anything to get it, including having her morals and values fold in on themselves.
Performances take place Friday, July 17 at 7:30pm; Saturday, July 18 at 7:30pm; and Sunday, July 19 at 2:00pm. Tickets are available for purchase online. DMK Theatre is located at 1980 Morris Avenue in Union, New Jersey.
Her comedic theater performance is a sequel to Potts’ graphic memoir, Good Eggs (Harper, 2010), which charts her travails with infertility and the endless rounds of treatments and miscarriages she and her husband endured. Roz Chast, the New Yorker cartoonist, called Potts’ memoir “sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always honest, intelligent, and completely involving.”
The Theater Project was founded in 1994. Under the leadership of Mark Spina, Artistic Director, we have provided well-rounded programs on a relatively small budget to audiences who relish and seek out stimulating, new theater.
Providing a forum to express ideas that spark the imagination, and challenge the mind is what they strive to do. Encouraging their audiences to think beyond the status quo and elevate the discourses around important contemporary issues is germane to their purpose. Most importantly, their audience is willing to take a chance on a title or author they have never encountered before, knowing they will be engaged, challenged and entertained.
Made possible in part by funds from the Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and by the generosity of our many sponsors and donors, especially Ms. Stephanie Fein.
