About as funny as a…. stroke?

Words: Michael Whitham
Picture: Dev Bowman

Catherine Cohen is no stranger to dramatic timing. The day before she was meant to debut her new Fringe show in Edinburgh in 2023, she had a stroke.

“I got so lucky,” she says. “It happened when I was at home, before I left for Edinburgh, so I was able to go to the hospital immediately and they diagnosed me right away.”

It was, in her words, “a total freak thing” – a bizarre, unexpected catastrophe to endure at just 31 years old. But even in the uncertain first hours at the hospital, she found moments of humour. “I remember calling my boyfriend to tell him I was in the hospital, and finding it so funny that my phone was also telling me to remind him it was National Girlfriend Day.”

She returned to Edinburgh last year with Come For Me, the show she’d had to cancel in 2023. She wasn’t yet ready to write about the health scare. “I needed some distance from it. I already had the previous show that I was proud of, and it was helpful to throw myself into something that had nothing to do with what I’d just been through.”

As that tour wrapped, she began to shape a show about the stroke. “It’s the first time I’ve had one story with a through-line I wanted to tell. Usually I’m like, ‘here’s all the funny stuff I wrote this year — maybe there’s a theme.’ This time it was much more intentional.”

Was it hard to write punchlines about something so scary? “I got to go on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast – and I feel like he’s the master of making shows like this – so I was like, oh my god, I need your help. The first thing I asked him was: how do you drop something so heavy without alienating the audience?”

It took time to find the right rhythm for the show, but it all came together once she wrote the final song. She suddenly felt “okay, I know what this is now”.

How does Cohen feel returning to an experience that was so intimate and frightening every night during the Fringe. “Even being two years out, I still feel really close to it… I think performing the show is bringing up some of those old anxieties. I’m kind of working through it in real time.”

“Right now I’m still hesitant to let there be any moments in the show that aren’t, like, joke after joke after joke. But I think the truth is that the more I lean into the reality, the better the show will be,” she says.

Has the experience changed her? “I think I just believe in myself more than ever before. Maybe I’m more delusional. But every single show, I’m like: thank you, thank you, thank you.” The work means more to her now than just getting laughs. “One of the first thoughts I had when I was on my way to the hospital was: what if I can’t perform anymore?”

“I think if anything, going through something just makes you want to do the things you love even more.”

You can see Catherine Cohen in her new solo show Broad Strokes at 21:00 every night until August 25th, at Pleasance One.