Emilio Madrid
Kate Berlant scrunches her face up in close-up, her features creased and extended on a screen in front of us, immersed in a self-generating pantomime of willing herself to cry. It is meant to be funny; the facial gymnastics, the desperation to look sad so quickly, to wring teardrops, hell just one teardrop, for the camera—her lust object and tormentor. She is trying to ace an audition, and also trying to ace herself after a lifetime of trying. But she can’t, or can she?
Like a lot in the exquisite one-person show Kate, written and performed by Berlant and directed by Bo Burnham (Connelly Theater, to October 8), the joke is not isolated but threaded into a subversive, engrossing comedy of ambition, character, and the nature of storytelling and performance itself—and who the Kate in front of us, and the Kate she is playing, and the Kate who plays characters for a living, really is. Yes, that’s a lot of Kates, and Berlant is an illuminating riot burrowing into every layer of them.
Berlant first appears before the beginning of her own show. She watches us. She comes in and sits for a few minutes near the front of the stage. She slinks away. There is an absurdly funny countdown, and then the first blatant purpose of Kate is made clear in one of the cards that flash up on the large screen in front of us: the details of her agents and representation. Berlant wants her career to go to the next level. This is a comedy show, and the best, most unapologetically shameless of audition-meets-resumés.