Three years ago, Cat Cohen was lying in a hospital bed feeling despondent. She’d suffered a small stroke — terrifying enough given she was only 31 years old — and the doctors discovered that she had a hole in her heart and needed surgery to repair it, and it felt, for a brief moment, like the end of the world. But then Cohen, an actress, podcaster, and comedian known for her blend of cabaret and standup, had an epiphany: This was incredible material. “It really was a spark,” she says. She started taking notes on her iPhone about what was happening to her, things the doctors were saying, how her family was reacting — all elements that, trauma aside, she says were genuinely funny.
While she was on her phone after the stroke, she also saw a piece of reassuring news. “I read that Hailey Bieber had the exact same kind of stroke that I had, and it was my first flash of, I’m going to be okay,” she says. “She was already okay! She had a baby, she had her shit together. I was looking through her Instagram like, this is going to be me.”
The experience eventually became the fodder for her new one-woman show Broad Strokes, which she’ll perform at New York’s famed Lucille Lortel theater from July 14 to Sept. 5. Though she’s a veteran of the stage, and the show will include a half-dozen songs in her signature style, it’s her off-Broadway debut and her first foray into work with a specific narrative thru-line.
