Comedian Kate Berlant Satirizes An Actor’s Sense of Self In Pasadena Playhouse Show

Kate Berlant has a gift for absurdist, physical comedy fueled in part by her fantastically articulated facial expressions.

You may recognize her from roles in the film, Don’t Worry Darling, the TV series A League of Their Own, or from her comedy special Cinnamon In the Wind where she riffs on topics from growing up in L.A. to what it feels like to be an actor in the spotlight.

In her work which some describe as experimental stand-up, Berlant sends up the performer’s ego, the absurdity of performance, and the irony of when self-care is a product of privilege.

And these are themes explored in KATE, her one-woman-show in its premiere L.A. run at the Pasadena Playhouse.

I spoke with Berlant about what its like to bring her show to her home town of Los Angeles. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Why this is not your typical one-woman show

“It's sort of a one woman show about one woman shows, or any attempt to narrativize one's life or put sort of a clean story together about why we are the way we are, or our identities.

I'm a stand up comedian. This show is not stand up. This is more akin to a play but the themes that are often my stand up sort of orbit around of like persona and the performance of self. That's still definitely here.

I think this show is sort of about the performance of self and when that performance fails essentially, what new opportunities might open up through that failure?”

Her collaboration with director and comedian Bo Burnham

“Bo is a friend of mine. He directed my stand up special 'Cinnamon in the Wind,' which you can stream on Hulu / FX, I might add.

When we started working together on this, I was coming out of the pandemic and hadn't done stand up or been on stage at all. And he came to my very first time being on stage again. And we just really were talking after the show and this kind of idea came up. He sort of posed to me as like, what would it be like if you actually wrote something and didn't just kind of improvise and wing it so much?

So I started to write this show. Its just sort of my favorite way to collaborate, is with my close friends and it really just kind of comes out of that natural friendship”

KATE is a show about being an actress

“My own sort of need for attention or to be adored. And kind of the embarrassing reality of that and also maybe the sort of sincerity of that which is at times deeply humiliating, but also maybe allows for connection in the end.

I mean, this show definitely is about theater. I did the show in New York, which is, of course, a very traditionally a theater town. And now I'm doing it in L. A. Of course, Los Angeles is a movie town. It's Hollywood, and so what are sort of the implications and the tone of doing a play in a city like this where most people sort of get on stage in hopes of being in movies and TV?

I'm a stand up comic, I love being in front of crowds. I love doing theater. But there's no way around the fact that this is also my naked attempt to get into films. So the show is kind of about that because I could never pretend that it wasn't.

And the Pasadena Playhouse is beautiful and historic. There's kind of a new joke that starts to emerge once I'm in that space.”

KATE is at the Pasadena Playhouse through February 11th, 2024.