Kate Berlant just wishes everyone would trust the audience a little more

At this point, comedian and actor Kate Berlant has taken her one-woman show, Kate, across both the country and the ocean. What began as a late lockdown-era challenge has become a piece of theater, blurring the lines between standup set and performance art in sold-out theaters in New York and London before landing in Southern California, where it recently opened at the Pasadena Playhouse.

As its poster says, Berlant is Kate, a performer excitedly putting on a show in hopes that an important producer is in the audience and that she can get herself to cry on queue. Directed by Bo Burnham, the production has the surreal hallmarks of a Berlant set, but differs in an important aspect; while her standup has always been a least a little improvised, Kate is as written as any other piece of theater.

When we spoke earlier this month, Berlant was in the midst of tech rehearsals for the show’s imminent opening in Pasadena. Talking with The A.V. Club, the opened up about working with Burnham, trusting your audience, and Jeremih.

KB: It’s changed. Although I will say those changes are not structural or anything huge but, you know, I’ve done it in New York, London and I’ll do it in L.A. and so there will be changes but, nothing, no overhauls.

AVC: Do you feel like doing it in a different place changes your vibe?

KB: Yeah. There’s some text changes that happen—references to, you know, the city that I’m in—or there’s some text changes that happen. But I mean, yeah, every theater has a different energy. This is in Pasadena. This is the biggest theater I’ve done it in. 650 people. So that’ll change it.

AVC: What is a good audience to you? What do you want and expect out of an audience?

KB: It’s probably obvious but I love an audience that’s quick to laugh or like generous with their laughter. But then also something can happen where I think because there is something kind of unpinnable about the show … I think sometimes people, in a way that I think is very sweet, but like sometimes they—I mean, this makes me sound insane—people laugh too much sometimes. It’s funny, sometimes I’ve had that happen almost where people are laughing too much, and I’m like, are they really laughing? It’s almost, like, throws me. I almost can’t even say this on the record. I mean, it’s so obnoxious. But I love a crowd that’s paying attention, that’s there. I’ve been so lucky. I’ve had really great crowds. Of course, sometimes there’s crowds that are more quiet and it can put me in my head. But then I hear it later like, oh no, they were just paying attention. They were like, interested. I feel like I’m not answering your question.

AVC: No, that makes sense. I mean, when I go to a concert of an artist I really like I’m not always singing along necessarily. I’m quietly watching because I wanna pay attention.

KB: I think it’s like the natural self-consciousness of you want people to laugh and have a good time. But this show is challenging, it’s like an acting challenge in ways. And I got to be kind of comfortable with some sort of uneasy moments or moments that are more difficult to define or things that. There are moments in this show that sometimes are uncomfortable for me to perform because I worry people think that that’s what the show is. Like, in New York, I just remember some parts early on in the show where sometimes I can see people and I think that they’re going, like, “Oh, no.” I kind of have to, instead of turning it into a joke and going for the laugh, I have to sit in that discomfort for the greater good of the show, even if in the moment it’s uncomfortable.

AVC: Do you still get uncomfortable this far into the show’s run? How much are you actively clocking that night to night and how much of it has kind of started to feel more normal.

KB: The show still feels, thank God, very alive for me. It still changes. During the show in London, I kind of had this new, there’s like this different thing in the show which, again, I’m not trying to think it’s some kind of overhaul, but these little things make huge differences for me. And there is kind of, for me, a big change in the show that kind of makes it more challenging for me, in a way that I think is generative. I can’t really zone out in the show. I mean, there’s like a couple parts maybe, from doing stand up for so many years—you know that feeling of autopilot, maybe. This is my first time acting in a play where I have to really resist that, because my stand up is so improvised. I haven’t traditionally fallen into the trap of, like, saying the same thing the same way again and again. Although of course, I’ve repeated things in the past—never like this. So that’s a challenge for me, to make it new for myself because it’s very easy. You just get locked into a certain way of saying things and doing things and it deadens the show. So that’s my biggest concern.

AVC: Right. And I didn’t mean to imply that it had become rote…

KB: No, no, no. But it is like a real thing. It was like small things, like you don’t even feel it. And then you’re like, oh I’m just saying this thing. These three words I say in this intonation every night. And part of the joke of the show, part of what the show is, is also this girl has done this show a million times. So it’s this thing of I never wanted to be like, oh, I’m making a spoof of a one woman show or something. That was always my greatest nightmare. But there is, hopefully, this woman putting on the show, like she does wanna show that she’s a good actress? So she kinda has to be a good actress, which is the challenge. To actually act it well.

AVC: So is the woman putting on the show you?

KB: That’s the big question. It’s like, so ridiculous. It’s insane to me how much I struggled with that in writing it. I would have like diagrams where it’s like, okay, this is Kate and then this is Me Kate and then this is Me Kate Making The Show. There’s like three Kates, is kind of how I’ve come to think of it. There’s like Me Kate Berlant Making The Show, there’s Kate on stage and then there’s the Kate that is also me. It shouldn’t be complicated, but for some reason it really is. It’s just kind of porous.

AVC: Okay, I’m really switching gears, but why did you pick “Planez” by Jeremih as a focus in one of the bits? And do you still use it?

KB: That’s so funny. So the answer is yes. That was on a playlist that Sasha Spielberg had made for me and I just loved the song. There’s so many things in this show that I kind of put in there as temp. I was like, This will be temp, I’ll make this better, and it just sticks. Which is a great lesson in doing the show, or making anything. It’s never gonna be perfect. That song, I put that in there, and it just stuck. I think the kind of emotion of it, it goes against the grain of the rest of the show in this way, I think is funny and unexpected. But then the song just—sorry—hits. It’s manipulative, like I’m trying to actively manipulate the audience constantly in this show. And so it almost generates this feeling that I haven’t earned, maybe. But somehow, maybe, there is a feeling that’s roused in people, even if it’s unearned, which I think is also just kind of a broader reality of like all entertainment or all media.

AVC: In an interview about a year ago you mentioned that there were parts of the show that you didn’t completely understand. Do you understand the show differently now?

KB: Yeah, I think I do understand it more, but I would still say there are parts I don’t understand. Which in a way, I think, is the only reason I can keep doing it, because I’m still exploring it and I still wanna make it better. It’s not like something you can master. I think it’s a balance of you can make little improvements—you should always try to make things better—but also you have to kind of like, take your hands off it at some point and go, well… Like the Jeremih song, it works. Well the Jeremih song, that I am pretty married to [laughs]. But yeah, I think, like, I’ll never fully understand it, but that’s like anything, I think. There’s always a level of mystery. The audience comes in and they respond to things in a certain way that you have no control of, even if you are trying to control their experience.

AVC: I like that you said mystery. You’re in Dream Scenario—which is a fantastic film, by the way—and I went to a Q&A with the director Kristoffer Borgli. Someone asked if they were ever gonna explain why Nicolas Cage was in all these dreams. And he said, “There was a draft, but I didn’t feel like explaining it. I thought just having the mystery was cool and there’s not enough mystery in the world right now. Everything is explained too quickly.” That was like six weeks ago he said this, and I’ve thought about it almost every day since. What kind of like role does mystery play in your work? How much do you want to not explain things?

KB: I think as much as possible. I agree totally with what Kris said. Let the mystery live. As soon as you start explaining something—of course, criticism is essential and it’s so important and I love talking about things that I see or things that I make with people and getting their perspective, that’s so rewarding. But also it’s like … I think that’s what I’m saying. I don’t fully understand my show. I wrote it, but I don’t fully understand it in the sense of like, I don’t really know what all of its parts are doing. There is something that you kind of just have to surrender. I mean, you have to make something ideally that is like, good, for lack of a better word. But making something that’s like, absolutely impenetrable and going, “Good luck,” is never the goal. I think, we can and should trust audiences more to make their own meaning out of something. The broader culture right now is objectively, painfully literal, and it’s only damaging to new ideas. There isn’t really pleasure in just having something mapped out for you. Trust audiences, trust individuals and their own interiority to, have their own experience. That’s what’s exciting.

AVC: Where do you look for non-comedy inspiration when you’re making something like this? Do you look at other works of art, music or visual art?

KB: When I started writing this show, I should say I’ve seen very little theater in my life. And I saw coming out of COVID, in New York, I saw Is This A Room? and Dana H. on Broadway. And though there’s no direct correlation in my show, I just was very inspired by seeing live theater. Going to see some actual plays as I was in early, early days was exciting.

AVC: Is it correct that you conceived of this during lockdown?

KB: Yeah, I’m trying to think of the exact—it wasn’t in lockdown—it was coming out of lockdown, like December. I have it written down somewhere. Things weren’t normal yet, but they were starting to be kind of normal.

AVC: Do you remember the germ of the idea?

KB: I really wish I did. I mean, I started bringing a camera on stage almost immediately, but I was filming the audience a lot. And filming myself with this like live feed to the screen behind me. So that was very early on, but the show changed, week to week. The show for a while started in the pitch black of me in the back of the theater with a flashlight, like calling out for my dad, searching through the audience … which might be something I use one day. But yeah, there were many, many changes and iterations of the show.

AVC: Were you writing it down from the beginning or was it pretty improv for a while?

KB: I was writing. I was really trying to write. So it would be like writing stuff going on stage, adjusting it, writing it. There was a script that I was constantly changing. It wasn’t that improvised. That was like the broader challenge of the show was to actually write and to kind of have more control over what was gonna happen.

AVC: That sounds very disciplined.

KB: Yeah, it was the most disciplined I’ve ever been. I’m not disciplined generally. I think of myself as, like, lazy and undisciplined, but maybe I’m not, I don’t know. But yeah, it’s almost like the only way to achieve discipline is to just be like, okay, I’m gonna write this show and put it up every week and figure it out. It’s hard. And I put it up before I felt like it was ready, for sure. It felt rushed at the end. Going to New York, I was like, “Oh God, it’s not ready,” and that’s kind of a big lesson. You know, you’re probably never going to feel ready.

AVC: Why were you able to put it up if you didn’t feel ready?

KB: Because I had the theater booked, and I just had to.

AVC: How did it feel when you put it up and then people were into it?

KB: Yeah, it was really liberating. Like Bo Burnham, this absolutely could not have happened without him. He was such a collaborator with me in this. It wasn’t this process of me alone just doing this. He was so early on a part of it and so encouraging. The show is the result of conversations we had. I always feel that collaborations are essential. You can’t do anything alone, that’s for sure. And yeah, it was very liberating to throw it up before I felt I was ready and just be like, okay, I guess it is.

AVC: Would you do that again if you had the choice to not put something up until you felt completely settled with it? Or do you feel like being pushed into it was something good that you did?

KB: I have to be pushed into it. I had to, I had the theater booked before I had a show for this because I knew it was the only way I would actually do it. I’m very lucky that I was able to do that. Mike Levoy and Carly Briglia, they were my producers for the New York run, I kind of don’t know how it happened, but yeah, I had the theater before I had the show and they put a lot of trust in me. They were just, alright, you’ll make something. And I was like, I will, I promise.