Kate Berlant

Kate Berlant, who grew up in Los Angeles, started doing stand-up at 17 at Archer School for Girls—or at least, she told one-liners while wearing a kimono and sitting in a wheelchair. She no longer brings props on stage, but her definition of comedy is still expansive. Berlant doesn’t tell jokes so much as she riffs on the metaphysical, turning a set into a strange stream of consciousness that leads nowhere, and is simultaneously disarming and satisfying.