About the project

Christina Catherine Martinez will be researching and workshopping new material for a multimedia comedy show inspired by her love of movies and her love for America.

Update #2 - November 26, 2021

Update #1 - November 1, 2021
What I Talk About When I Talk About Comedy

I’ll do this anywhere. Since March of 2020, I’ve performed stand up comedy or some approximation of it at a park, a tennis court, an outdoor amphitheater, the patio of a fish taco restaurant, the patio of a bar, the patio of a wine shop, the patio of a barbershop, the backyard of a stranger, the backyard of a friend, a carport, the top floor of a parking garage, and, in April of this year, at an airplane hangar. I texted my friend Jesse, who writes about comedy but will not brook the word critic anywhere on or near his person. He knows a lot. There is no trend in humor media that does not ping him back to some place on the weirdly comprehensive history of comedy in his head. I have texted him, at times desperately, childishly, over this past year, seeking the kind of reassurances none of us get to really have right now, least of all in the arts; the loving arms of context, the balm of precedence. 

How am I supposed to perform at a private airport? In Orange County???? I asked.

I dunno he texted back. Seems like a good place for you. 

ahahaa why is that

It just seems to vibe with your whole.. obsession? With America?

***

I performed my first half-hour of stand up in January of 2018. My friend Steve asked me to headline the weekly Chatterbox Comedy Night, in my mind the Platonic ideal of a bar show. A half hour was everything I had at that point and then some. The minutes still left over I filled with a song-and-dance number, kicking off a chronic prickle of doubt that every time I pepper my act with props or music or technical cues, I’m not really being a stand up comedian. After my set I sat at the bar in my little sailor outfit, covered in fake blood, and he asked me how I felt. I wasn’t sure. The Catch-22 of flow states is that they’re difficult to remember. I talk to comics all the time who seem to black out when they are truly present (this is why we record our sets on our phones—it’s a way to capture the ghosts of eloquence after they have deigned to pass through us at the two-drink-minimum function). The fun thing about doing longer sets, Steve said, is you start to see what it is that you really talk about. 

“So what is it that I talk about?”

“You talk about money.” he said “and what it’s like to be a woman.”

***

They’re right. Stand up is such a relational act it’s hard to know for yourself what you’re doing. Other people have to mirror it back to you. I’m obsessed with this financial system (capitalism) and this country (the United States of America) and how they find expression in this body (which I am not always a fan of) and others like it (which are always better than mine). But more than that I have been obsessed with about-ness. I’ve tried to make my comedy do the work of op-eds and finger wagging when subtext has always done her thing whether I wanted her to or not. So this show will take the form of my obsessions. I will share details of them in the coming weeks. As for what it’s about, that’s not for me to decide. 

About Christina Catherine Martinez

Christina Catherine Martinez is a writer, actress, and comedian based in Los Angeles. Her work has been described as "a great bridge between many different disciplines, including performance art, stand up, and clowning." She can be seen in the short-form series TWO PINK DOORS and LAST DAYS on FXX and heard on the forthcoming Audible Original scripted series HAUNT THE JOHNSONS. She writes for a number of art and culture publications all over the globe, and was a creative consultant on season five of THE ERIC ANDRE SHOW on Adult Swim. She is a 2018 recipient of the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and was named a Comic to Watch by TimeOutLA in 2020, as well as a Comedian You Should Know by Vulture / New York Magazine in 2020. Her book of essays, titled Aesthetical Relations, was published in 2019 by Hesse Press.