UPDATE: The Playhouse announced Thursday afternoon that this show will be postponed to April 17-18, 2026 due to illness.
If you ran into Brandon Ogborn and asked him what he’d been up to lately, you might get many answers: producing scripts for sitcoms and comedy routines, writing a play about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and Scientology, podcasting about Michael Jackson’s criminal cases, or spending nights bartending.
However, for sure he is going to tell you he has been parenting - as in being a full-time stay-at-home dad for his two children, ages four and six.
“When I’m not raising my children,” said Ogborn, “I’m writing and bartending.”
The fruit of Ogborn’s parenting and writing is his one-man comedy show, “Cry for Help: Life and Death as a Stay-At-Home Dad”, the world premiere of which he brings to the Playhouse at White Lake Aug. 8-9 at 7:30 p.m.
“In the last few years, I’ve been posting on Instagram about my kids, kind of fly-on-the-wall commentary on parenting,” said Ogborn. “And over and over people were like, you’ve got to do something with this stuff with your kids.”
Ogborn is a Muskegon native, and after high school and a stint in college in Kalamazoo, he ended up in California, and then in Chicago, where he spent a decade doing improv at the Annoyance Theater and Second City and trying out for Saturday Night Live. This is a reunion of sorts for Ogborn, as he appeared on the Playhouse stage in the summers during his Chicago years.
It was in Chicago that Ogborn’s path changed.
“Shortly after I showcased for Saturday Night Live a couple of times, I wrote a play about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and Scientology,” said Ogborn. “That play was called The TomKat Project, and it went on to sold-out runs in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.”
After years spent in comedy and improv, Ogborn had found a new direction.
“I found I was better and more interested in true stories than writing sitcoms,” said Ogborn. “I wrote a movie about Oprah Winfrey (Young Oprah) that got options, and I did a podcast about Michael Jackson’s criminal cases (Telephone Stories: The Trials of Michael Jackson) that got a lot of attention.
Along with his parenting adventures, his own parents inform Ogborn’s “Cry for Help”. Without giving too much of the story away, Ogborn’s father’s perseverance while trying to create a board game based on Rush Limbaugh, and then the accidental death of his father back in Muskegon figure heavy in “Cry for Help”. Upon his father’s death, he returned to Michigan to care for his mother and deliver his father’s eulogy.
“I documented the entire thing on Instagram Stories as it was happening,” said Ogborn. “And the response was so heartfelt of how sad and funny it was, and it went viral, and I was approached about doing a documentary about it with Judd Apatow.”
The turns in his life were piling up.
“It was just one thing after another,” said Ogborn, “And I was like, there is something here, and my agent said I should really think about doing a live show about of all it. Out of nowhere, Cindy Beth (Dykema-Davis, the Playhouse’s Arts Education & Marketing Director), who I knew while growing up, reached out and told me there was a slot open here at the theater.”
And now Ogborn finds himself back in West Michigan bringing the world premiere of “Cry for Help: Life and Death as a Stay-At-Home Dad”, in his old stomping grounds on the stage of the Playhouse of White Lake, presenting his hilarious and heartfelt take on the joys and madness of being a parent, of being a son.
“I joke that 10 years ago I looked like Ryan Gosling,” said Ogborn. “And after having two kids I look like Alec Baldwin now after just three years of being a stay-at-home dad. If you really want kids, do it, because it is the hardest job there is, and it is loud and it is annoying and it seems to never end, but if you give yourself over to it, it is really, really rewarding.”
Brandon Ogborn’s ‘Cry for Help: Life and Death as a Stay-At-Home Dad’ will be presented Friday, Aug. 8, and Saturday, Aug. 9, both shows at 7:30 p.m, at the Playhouse at White Lake.
