Michael John Ciszewski: MOTHER, SUPERIOR at HB Playwrights Theatre

Fresh from an award-winning, critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe run—with recognition from The Times and The Scotsman—MOTHER, SUPERIOR returns home to New York for one special encore performance to answer the one question the critics couldn’t... DOES GOD TAKE CALLS FROM GAY GUYS!?

NYC comedian and award-thirsty Fringe favorite Michael John Ciszewski is on the line, desperate to make his mother proud of him. Join him in the ultimate act of diva worship: an attempt to canonize his living mother as an immortal saint in one hour—of comedy. Will THAT do? Does the Pope shit in the woods!?

Hailed by critics as “stand-up at its most theatrical,” MOTHER, SUPERIOR is Ciszewski’s singular brand of comedy theatre at full tilt: a five-act hero’s journey built from stand-up, storytelling, pop culture, papal bureaucracy, audience participation, and one increasingly consequential customer-service call.

Over the course of “a kaleidoscopic hour” (BingeFringe), childhood memories become evidence, the audience becomes a congregation, and sainthood becomes yet another order we demand status updates on before the clock runs out.

It’s high-concept, deeply personal, meticulously theatricalized, and profoundly stupid—the kind of idiosyncratic comic spectacle that has become Ciszewski’s hallmark. Beneath all the machinery is a surprisingly moving story about mothers and sons, queerness and faith, memory and legacy—and the impossible question of how you repay the person who made you who you are.

MOTHER, SUPERIOR left Edinburgh a Fringe Theatre Award winner, a BingeFringe Queer Performer’s Award shortlistee, and a show selected for historic preservation by the National Library of Scotland. The Scotsman named the show among the Best Edinburgh Fringe Comedy of 2026, while The Times listed it and Michael John among its Best Jokes & Funniest Comedians of the Fringe. Awards! Raves! Historic preservation! Surely that’s enough to get a woman canonized, right?