Originally from Canada and Australia, but a New Yorker at heart, KATE RIGG's comedy career began the second she graduated with a degree in acting from New York's prestigious Juilliard school. A notorious culture and subculture vulture, the allure of the club scene in New York drew her to Caroline's Comedy Club where she quickly caught the attention of the New Talent Booker who slotted her for a series of appearances and features showcasing her particular brand of character based comedy, edgy socio-political commentary, asian american slanted jokes, and in your face dirty girl talk. Her career includes four major elements: comedy, music, acting and writing/producing original work. Thematically these elements are linked by a hunger for new ideas, iconoclastic imagery, challenging ideas about cultural stereotyping and a quest for expanding form and content to open up discussions about pop culture, race, comedy, media images of A/Pis and women, tolerance and linking diverse communities through art. She has brought this funky urban asian sensibility to performances at The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institute, Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art, NYC’s Public Theater and countless engagements internationally.
Within 2 years of graduation from Juilliard and while juggling theater and TV comitments, Kate was invited to the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, the Toyota Comedy Festival, The Marshalls Women in Comedy Festival, and developed her first comedy and music revue for NBC's PSNBC in New York, and the HBO Time Warner workspace in Los Angeles. This show "Kate's Chink-O-Rama: featuring the chinkorama dancers" is a New York city favorite at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, and has toured extensively to comedy festivals, colleges and special events around North America. Her follow up "Birth of a nASIAN" a collection of characters, stand up and trip hop spoken word, was part of the Mark Taper Forum's Summerfest, was developed at La Mama ETC in New York, then toured to MACLA in San Jose, and New World Theater in Massachussets, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, Women in Theater Conference Toronto, ConWorks Seattle, OutNorth Alaska, MACLA, CCE Portland and the Comedy Central Theater L.A as part of their 2007 season.
As a standup comedian Kate has appeared on NBC Late Friday, CTV Women of The Night, NPR, CBC Radio, Sirius Radio, STAR TV, National Lampoon's International Comedy DVD, Comedy Central, SEX TV, PBS, Latin American TV, vH1, as well as being profiled in the film Race is the Place Alongside Amiri Baraka and Danny Hoch (aired at festivals and on PBS). She has produced various comedy shows including Desi-licious the southasian comedy gurus, Yellow Fever an all asian comedy revue, Comedy Invasian, Gonzo Girlz for RIPE TV and Time Warner on demand, and The Naughty Show Bad Girls of Comedy Show which is in international release on DVD by Eagle Rock Entertainment.-
Her Nuyorasian Hip Hop band, Slanty Eyed Mama, (with electric violinist Lyris Hung) has toured the US, Canada and Australia, notably at the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia, the Eurasian Nation Festival, the Asian Film Festival at University of Michigan, the A/PI heritage fest in Union Square NYC, LA’s GRAND Performances at City Center, The Asian American Jazz Festival in Chicago, Girl Fest Hawaii, Soundfest NYC, The Philadelphia Fringe Fest and the Women in Performance Conference. They continue to bust out the funky urban asian rhymes on stages all over America and recently were honored to be invited as the Smithsonian Institutes’ keynote 2007 Asian Heritage Month Performance
Kate was a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellow as well as a 2005 NEA playwriting grant recipient to develop new work. In 2006 she won the Urban Arts Initiative Grant through the Asian American Arts Alliance, the Ludwig Vogelstein Award to develop a new play and one of the Asian Women’s Giving Circle’s Inaugural Grants to Artists for her arts advocacy work in the Asian American community. She has been awarded grants commissions, and prizes by The Toronto Arts Council, The Canada Council, The PatsyLu fund for women in Music, Dixon Place, The Australia Council for the Arts, The Norma Epstein Foundation, The Juilliard School Interarts Program, and the University of Melbourne
As an actor she recurs on Law and Order, Fox’s Family Guy, and starred in the New York premieres of Dogeaters at the Public Theater, and BFE at Playwright’s Horizons. Off Broadway she was also seen in the Vagina Monologues at the Westside Theater, The Most Fabulous Story Every Told at Minetta Lane, Sez She at the Mark Taper Forum.
She is frequently asked to host events and benefits some of which include: The Coalition of Asian Children and Families Benefit (NYC), The Asian Women’s Giving Circle Awards (NY), The Asian American Recovery Services Mentor Luncheon (San Francisco), The Sistering Shelter for Homeless Women Benefit (Toronto), Eurasian Nation’s Launch Party (NY), Queen’s Pride, The Dinah Shore Weekend VIP Pool Party, The Heritage of Pride NYC’s Rally in Bryant Park, The NYU Asian Heritage Month Fashion and Arts Show, the A/PI Heritage Month Conference Smith College, A/PI Heritage Month New York in Union Square Park,
Kate has spoken on/written about Asian American culture and representation in Time Magazine, The Globe and Mail, On and Off magazine, BUST, The San Francisco examiner, NPR-Pacific Time, THIS magazine, NOW magazine, CBC Radio, SOHO Arts Journal and A magazine.
this is from Birth of a nASIAN at the comedy central theater in L.A.
CLICK the DVD cover to get an autographed copy of my Naughty Show DVD which also features a whole lineup of badass chick comics talking total trash alongside me and DVD extras
CLICK for a link to see some clips CLICK HERE
I'm a mixed breed multi cultie cross referenced twinkie. I like to speak in aphorisms and make up stupid rhymes. I believe anything can be funny. I have a website: katerigg.com. I feel homeless all the time and am hoping for that to end. I wish I had a puppy. I am a pan sexual polymorphous perverse drag hag fag hag gender dysmorphic dyke mike bon vivant. I am an agnostic taoist and I love high culture and lo culture. I am very very a.d.d. which to me means equally bored and fascinated by everything. I like friends. Probably more than anything. I was born in Canada and educated in Australia and New York. I love shiny things.
Diverse fan base inclusive of all races and sexualities and procilivities, not for the faint of heart.
Called "A star on the Manhattan Comedy Scene" In TIME magazine, "A modern Lenny Bruce" in San Francisco Guardian, "A festival unto herself" in the Georgia Straight, "At full throttle an urban machine" SF Chronicle, "Fierce" Curve Magazine, "Fearless" AK Daily News and featured on Comedy Central, Vh1,Sex TV, City TV, Star TV, CTV's Comedy Now, NPR, CBC Radio, NBC Late Friday, Fox's Family Guy, Law and Order, and PBS's Colorvision.
also known as a deviant prude, member of the poverty jet set, speaker of many languages, drag hag fag hag PFLAG gendery dysmorphic dyke mike, bi cultural bi coastal linguistically cunning flyer of many freak flags and friend to all misfits
check me out on youtube for more the account is called Slanty Eyed Mama.
