As if one experimental, debate-sparking Kate Berlant solo show directed by Bo Burnham weren’t enough, FX is getting ready to premiere a second Berlant solo show directed by Burnham on September 15. Kate Berlant: Cinnamon in the Wind, Berlant’s first stand-up special, was filmed in 2019 before she began work on KATE, her current Off Broadway show, and it will be available to stream on Hulu. It follows the release of her hour-long sketch special, Would It Kill You to Laugh?, a collaboration with John Early released on Peacock earlier this year.
Executive produced by recent Emmy winner Jerrod Carmichael and Chris Storer (The Bear), Cinnamon in the Wind features Berlant performing an “absurdist set, in an intimate space, shared not only with the audience but the mirror reflection of herself,” according to FX. It will reportedly distort “audience expectations of her comedy, while also exploring her clairvoyant connection to the crowd and her inability to stop performing.” It’s a much kinder description of the show than the League of Their Own and Don’t Worry Darling actress jokingly offers in the promotional material for KATE, in which she refers to her previous work as “a pale shadow, a humiliation, an impotent suggestion always gesturing toward, yet never quite arriving.”
Cinnamon in the Wind and Byron Bowers: Spiritual N***a, also arriving on Hulu on September 15, mark FX’s first foray into the world of stand-up comedy. It’s a first for Bowers as well, who has performed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Comedy Central’s This Is Not Happening and acted in series such as Irma Vep and The Chi. Recorded in his hometown of Atlanta, Spiritual N***a covers Bowers’s “long journey to his first comedy special, the stigma of mental health, and how tripping on mushrooms made him understand his schizophrenic father and altered the way he feels about his Blackness.”
