Dani Klein Modisett, '84, shares how laughter has helped her through her darkest moments, and how it lead her to launch a business that would help others do the same
Laughing All the Way: Using Laughter to Love, Thrive and Survive
I graduated from Dartmouth in 1984. How is it that this is more than 40 years ago? FORTY YEARS!
I honestly can’t wrap my mind around this block of time. This June, I’ll be back on campus to witness my son getting his diploma. It’s surreal to me not only because I have an adult son, but also that he, too, will be a Dartmouth grad. Surprising, because I never felt like a natural fit for the steeped-in-New-England culture. Nevertheless, from my first boss, to my book editor, to my husband and son, the decision to go and stay has had a profound impact on my life.
After spending three years as assistant to Broadway director Jerry Zaks ’67, I put my theater major to the test and pursued performing. I did the requisite Law & Order episodes, and I then headed west. Initially, I worked in the restaurant biz where my acerbic style often prompted comments like, “Why are you waiting tables, you should be a comic.” Despite the possibility that this was more a statement about my service than my wit, I enrolled in a class at UCLA called Performing Stand Up Comedy. This twelve-week workshop, taught by one of Richard Pryor’s ex-wives, changed the direction of my life. In fact, ten years later, I went back and taught that same class for a decade.
Prior to that, I toured as a comic, appeared on various sitcoms, and did a Broadway tour that landed me back in NYC. It was then that my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was grateful to be in New York to spend his final months with him.
Like any comedian, a few years later, I wrote a show about it called “The Move.” This solo show (with puppets!) ran for six months in Los Angeles, and I was invited to be part of the HBO Comedy Festival. In the interim, I met my husband. This was pre-egg freezing, and I was thirty-eight. It was now or never if pregnancy was something I wanted to experience. In truth, I wasn’t dying to have a baby. I was, however, afraid that if I died without at least trying, I might regret it. Two weeks later, I was pregnant. And shocked. I spent my adult years with comedians. I knew one person who’d had a baby. After I got the news, I went to her house, and she handed me a yellow legal pad and told me to take notes.
Nine months later, I gave birth to my son Gabriel. Seeing my father take his last breath was profound in an “Is that all there is?” kind of way. Seeing my baby take his first breath elicited the exact opposite feeling. So much possibility. I used to joke about the awesomeness of birth, “All you do is have sex and eat a lot of food and BLAMMO! You get a whole other human being.”
Once again, I turned to comedy and storytelling to make sense of it. I created a live show called “Afterbirth stories you won’t read in a parenting magazine.” Every month, a handful of writer/comics would come together in a bar in Hollywood and tell honest, laugh-out-loud stories about the moment they knew their life changed forever when becoming a parent. Given the uniquely talented population of Los Angeles comedian/writer parents, the shows sold out. We toured the country, building community and bringing comic relief by having funny, brave parents say all the things people didn’t usually say out loud about the highs and lows of being Moms and Dads. In 2009, I edited an anthology of these stories, which was published by St. Martin’s Press.
Ten years into my marriage, now with two boys under six, life was feeling a little tense. Once again, it was time to do some research about how to find laughter – this time in long-term marriage. With my second book, “Take My Spouse, Please” (Penguin Random House), I set out to prove that couples who laugh together stay together. I did a fifteen-city book tour, meeting husbands and wives around the country who told me inspiring stories of resilience and perseverance, who relied on their sense of humor to go the distance. My suspicion about shared laughter and coupledom was right. Although the bigger lesson, and one that I would build on in the coming decade, is that laughter is often the by-product of all these other communication tools being in place. Like showing up, letting go of the moment before, paying attention to timing, and getting help when you need it.
When I was on tour with “Take My Spouse, Please,” my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I know, it’s a lot. After a few years trying to keep her cared for in New York City, I moved her to Los Angeles to be closer to my family and me. I found her a lovely place with a chandelier in the lobby that I thought would help her feel like she was on the Upper East Side. When she realized she wasn’t leaving, she became depressed. I felt terribly guilty about this. Despite my decades as a comedian myself, ten years teaching at UCLA, and my scintillating sense of humor, I could not make her laugh. When she looked at me, she saw her daughter. I had the idea to hire a professional, someone not me, to come and make her laugh. It worked. She started eating again, joining her community, even for the time the comedian wasn’t with her. Something I have since found out is scientifically proven in people with cognitive decline… they will forget why they are laughing but the good feelings stay with them.
I wrote an article about the experience for AARP magazine. It garnered hundreds of requests for comedians around the world. In truth, when I first saw my mother laugh with the comedian, I did think, “This should be everywhere. There are always comedians who need side jobs, and there’s an exponentially growing number of people with Alzheimer’s.” However, it was when I started reading through all these e-mails that I felt a real calling to make this service available to help more people.
I launched Laughter On Call in 2018 with the help of an angel investor. We currently run all kinds of laughter services for families, professional caregivers and one-on-one engagements with people facing Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Unexpectedly, during COVID, we expanded our services virtually and now, in addition to the senior population, we’ve run hundreds of team-building and morale boosting events for corporations around the world. I also coach everyone from congressional candidates to entrepreneurs on how to reach an audience with humor and authenticity.
I used to say I went to Dartmouth to meet people who would someday fund my theater company. Ah, life! Now it looks like I went there for reasons I couldn’t have predicted. Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate financial people who value the arts, and I look forward to connecting with more of you! But, the big takeaway was that my time there cemented my instinct to break through feelings of isolation, like the ones we have in the dead of winter in the White Mountains, by finding ways to make each other laugh, and keep laughing, until we can feel the sun again.
