The influential, very offline comedian perfects her self-described clown show.
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Kate Berlant was due onstage in 15 minutes.
The actor and comedianJohn Early, her frequent collaborator, sat nearby holding a green notebook.
Berlant leaped onto the stage, curls bouncing, and flashed a bright, straight-toothed smile.
Wow, she began, turning on her heel.
Already crushing, I would argue.
Her tone was elevated and self-congratulatory; she might have been about to give a self-help seminar.
Puzzled, she pointed to an empty seat.
Empty seat thereand again, what happened?
She gave a searching look.
Already, I cant really perform, thinking about the people who were turned away.
The youngchildren,who are … she searched for a wordkids.
The persona appeared to fissure, as though shed caught herself off guard.
She fought a smile.
Im actually worried now!
she went on over laughter, for the safety of She paused again, portentously.
A large timer set to one hour was mounted on the wall opposite the stage, draining bright-red seconds.
Berlant had no built-in refrains or segues, and between pockets of material, the milliseconds of silence sizzled.
she said at one point.
It just seems crazy I have to literally fillevery single second?
Theres noKate Berlant Showout there to solidify her.
She is cautious about vehicles, refusing invitations to go on late-night shows.
She doesnt have a TikTok.
(I mean, Ive seen them!
she said, comparing the addictive pleasures of the platform to the fullInfinite Jest.)
Ive doubled down on Stand-up is live.
Its a live art.
Thats what Im invested in, she told me after the show.
Of course, thats also the reason Im looking forward to having the special.
DeYoung mimicked a comedy crowd seeing a new face aping a Berlant-esque bit: Oh, youre copyingthatgirl.
She regularly careens from one side of the stage to another via mock tap dance.
Her physicalizations evoke archetypes rather than specific peoplethe chatty friend, a self-obsessed diva.
Typically, its someone hyper confident yet underprepared, with a tendency to spin out into verbal freefall.
She doesnt do callbacks or talk about herself; she refuses to pretend shes not pretending.
Im constantly dissolving whatever meaning Im creating the moment its being created, Berlant said.
Specials are typically released before topical material grows dated.
But after filming, the connection sat on the project.
(A representative for FX blamed the pandemic.)
In her worst moments, Berlant fantasized about releasing the material herself online.
He said, What would it be if you actually wrote a show?
I developed a comedic style to avoid sitting down at a desk and working, Berlant told me.
Its as though two versions of Berlant are being unveiled at once.
Berlant lives in Silver Lake in a small white house.
She grew up nearby, in Santa Monica, with artists for parents.
It got this huge response of laughter, she recalled.
She spent a year at Bard before transferring to NYU, where she threw herself into performing.
At first, she wrote down her jokes.
Then one day, Berlant decided to film herself ad-libbing out loud in her apartment.
It was a way to try and generate new ideas, she recalled.
I started doing these pseudo-confessional, stream of consciousness monologues.
She began trying it onstage.
In 2014, the influential improvisational comic Reggie Watts saw her perform and told her, Youre an improviser.
I was like,Oh!
Soon, she stopped writing entirely.
Her slippages of persona could elicit genuine hostility.
Itd be like, Where isshe?
It was also where she started to make a name for herself.
She was just effortlessly funny in her bones, Burnham recalled.
The day after the UCB show, Berlant, Early, and I went to lunch in Los Angeles.
In conversations about her work, she often doubles back to contradict or qualify a bold statement.
She seems concerned about coming off as pretentious rather than simply devoted.
She often insists that she is basically a clown.
I want tightness and clarity, but no script, she told me.
Its the tightest one Ive had, right?
There wasnt a lot of air.
I didnt get offstage and go, Hell yeah, baby.
Maybe it was just good in the context of all these runs, Early said.
Berlant had performed 13 hours of stand-up in the past few weeks.
Its always been about striking the balance between preparation and being free.
He extracted Berlants notebook from his tote bag and flipped through the pages.
Its also my fertility diary, Kate said sweetly.
The expectations are crushing, was the first thing you said, he read from the notebook.
I wrote it down because I thought it was a perfect opener.
Good opener, yeah, she said.
Comedic free fall as an improviser can be terrifying.
She raised the bottle until it was right in front of her face.
I love this cap because it uses less plastic, she said into the microphone.
Gimme a minute, okay?
I have to get my bearings, okay?
She pleaded over their applause.
Then she did an elaborately fake near fall, complete with a slapstick Woooah!
sound, as though seeking solid ground.
Were you running out of material at the end?
said the opener, who was standing nearby.
I mean I sense that, he said, growing earnest.
That you have hours of everything.
But you gave this feeling of, like, youre running out or something!
So fucking cute, she said to me once hed walked away.
The only thing worse than a bad show is a good show, shed told me earlier.
Its like,What happened?
Why was it so good?Why?
she said, doing a clownish stumble after the lost object.
Thats something I did once, but to re-create that would be almost crazy, she continued.
I guess you could repeat it.
I feel like there are some things you cant repeat.
She regularly discusses attempting to wean herself from the feed.
Kate,by contrast, winkingly prepares viewers for a self-aware embrace of social-media readiness.
(Her refrain: Your crass style of indication has no place in front of the camera!)
As a consequence, Kates fear of the camera and desire for it become inextricable.
A real Kate interrupts the action frequently to comment on the action.
At the top of the show, Kate suggests that a traumatic personal revelation may erupt from the parody.
She tells us she has a secret that makes me feel broken inside that Ive never told anyone.
This is going to be a different kind of show, it signals.
Berlant is eventually going to tell us something badabouther.
But the trauma never comes.
There is no childhood experience that can be used to neatly explain the artists psychology.
(Or, there sort of is, but its not what you think.)
She works herself into an emotional frenzy, building a monologue around a suggested word from the crowd.
Her eyes well; There!
It feels liberating and exotic to knowthisis going to happen, she said.
Even on film, a sense of liveness crackles.
At first,Katewas looser, too; she would just bring a list of scenes with her onstage.
When she began workshopping the script in L.A. in front of crowds, Burnham came to almost every show.
He forced the script into structure, Berlant said, which she needed so you can risk genuine failure.
The previous evening, her tearful moment had come too quickly.
Bo was like, You should take longer, because its a better payoff, she recalled.
What is real is Berlants desire to weep for us.
She doesnt have an interesting narrative.
She just wants us to watch.
Berlant ends the show in supplication, crying, as the lights go out, Come back!
For some, it will be genuinely frustrating that she spends so much time elaborately evading our grasp.
For others, its euphoric when you realize how fully she does.
Thats the triumph, Early said.
Production Credits
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*An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated thatCinnamon in the Windis available on FX.
While it was produced by the data pipe, it is only available to stream on Hulu.
