Catherine Cohen: The Cabaret Diva of Alt Comedy

Catherine Cohen performs like a lounge singer who has just been dumped and wants you to know she looks incredible anyway. Her shows mix stand-up, original songs in the style of cabaret standards, and a constant stream of brutally honest asides about dating, ambition and the need to be adored. She won Best Newcomer at the 2019 Edinburgh Comedy Awards, made the Netflix special The Twist...? She's Gorgeous, wrote a book of comic poems, and in 2026 opened Broad Strokes, an Off-Broadway musical about the stroke she had at thirty.

Houston, Princeton and New York

Cohen was raised in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Princeton University, then moved to New York to do stand-up and sketch. She came up in the same downtown scene as John Early and Kate Berlant, a world where performers were increasingly mixing stand-up with music, character and theatre rather than chasing a tight five.

Her base became Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, where she has run a monthly show also called The Twist...? She's Gorgeous. She has hosted a weekly show, Cabernet Cabaret, and co-hosts It's a Guy Thing with Patti Harrison and Mitra Jouhari. Vulture and Time Out both named her a comedian to watch in 2018.

The style: confessional cabaret

Cabaret comedy is an old form, but Cohen gives it a millennial edge. The persona is a diva in sequins who is supremely confident about her looks and catastrophically insecure about everything else. Songs are big, belted and sincere; the patter between them is a rapid-fire monologue of overshares about sex, therapy, texting and being single in New York.

The key move is the swerve. A line will start grand (a statement of self-love, a romantic declaration) and then undercut itself with something small and devastatingly specific. The songs work the same way: the music is lush enough to take seriously, and the lyrics keep puncturing it. Underneath is a real subject, the exhausting work of wanting to be loved while pretending you don't.

If you like this mode, it sits next to Megan Stalter's characters and Early's Now More Than Ever, other examples of comedians using performance styles that are a little embarrassing and making the embarrassment the point.

Edinburgh 2019 and the Netflix special

Cohen took The Twist...? She's Gorgeous to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 and won Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, a significant prize for an American act. (Our guide to writing a Fringe hour explains why that festival matters so much for this kind of show.)

The hour became her first Netflix special, released in 2022. It is the best introduction: a filmed version of the cabaret show, songs and all, with the full arc from vamping confidence to something rawer near the end.

God I Feel Modern Tonight (2021)

Cohen's book, God I Feel Modern Tonight: Poems from a Gal About Town, came out in 2021. It is a collection of short comic poems, more like stage patter on the page than literary verse, about dating, wine, self-care, ambition and the gap between how she feels and how she wants to look. It is quick to read and a good way to hear her voice without the music.

Seek Treatment and other work

• Seek Treatment: since 2018 she has co-hosted this conversational podcast with Pat Regan, about relationships, sex, therapy and feelings. It is loose, warm and often very funny.
• Acting: she has appeared in Broad City, High Maintenance, Search Party, What We Do in the Shadows, Girls5eva and Only Murders in the Building, and in films including The Lovebirds (2020).
• Music: her debut album, Overdressed, came out in November 2024, a collection of original songs that makes clear how seriously she takes the singing side of the act.

Broad Strokes (2026)

Cohen's most ambitious project is Broad Strokes, a one-woman musical about her experience of having a stroke at thirty. She wrote the book and lyrics and co-wrote the music, and it is directed by Alex Timbers, whose credits include the Broadway hit Moulin Rouge!. It opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York on July 27, 2026.

On paper it is a big swerve. In practice it is the natural endpoint of the act. Cohen's comedy has always been about the body (how it looks, what it wants, how it lets you down) and about performing confidence through fear. A stroke at thirty is the most extreme version of that story, and the cabaret form, which lets her move from comedy to heartbreak inside a single song, is built to carry it. It also sits in the line of comedy-theatre hybrids such as Jacqueline Novak's Get On Your Knees and Berlant's Kate.

What performers can learn from her

Cohen is a useful model for anyone who wants to mix music and stand-up without becoming a novelty-song act.

1. Take the music seriously. Her songs are performed with real vocal commitment. The comedy depends on the audience believing, for a moment, that this is a genuine torch song.
2. Let the patter carry the jokes. The spoken material between songs does most of the heavy lifting, so the songs can be emotional peaks rather than punchline machines.
3. Build a persona with a crack in it. The diva who is plainly falling apart gives every line two meanings: what she says, and what she is trying to hide.
4. Run a regular room. A monthly residency like her Joe's Pub show is where an act like this develops, because it needs a band, an audience that knows the character, and room to fail.

The same principles show up across the cabaret-adjacent wing of 2020s alt comedy, from Early's band-backed specials to Bo Burnham's songs, which use music to say what straight stand-up can't.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Catherine Cohen?

An American comedian, singer and actor, raised in Houston, whose live shows mix stand-up and cabaret songs. She won Best Newcomer at the 2019 Edinburgh Comedy Awards and released the Netflix special The Twist...? She's Gorgeous in 2022.

What is Catherine Cohen's book?

God I Feel Modern Tonight: Poems from a Gal About Town (2021), a collection of comic poems in the same voice as her stage shows: glamorous, needy, self-aware and very funny.

What is Broad Strokes?

A one-woman musical about Cohen's experience of having a stroke at age 30. She wrote the book and lyrics and co-wrote the music; directed by Alex Timbers, it opened Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in July 2026.

Does Catherine Cohen have a podcast?

Yes. She co-hosts Seek Treatment with Pat Regan, a conversational podcast about dating, sex, therapy and feelings that started in 2018.