The Powerhouse Theatre UCLA alum Cate Cohen begins her
one-woman show, "Out of Line," tonight at the Powerhouse Theatre in
Santa Monica.
By Ken Ruda
Daily Bruin Contributor
For all those struggling actor/dancer types out there looking
for comedic reassurance of post-graduation success, there is the
one-women show “Out of Line.”
Performed by UCLA Theater alumna, Cate Cohen, the show opens
tonight at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica.
Cate Cohen emotionally bares it all in “Out of
Line,” as she shares her quest for a perfect life; she
recounts everything from the three weeks she spent committed in the
UCLA psych ward to her adventures on the kick-line with the Radio
City Rockettes in New York City, and everything in between.
Something that has helped Cohen in her journey is her tough skin
and positive attitude.
“You can’t be an artist if you’re worried
about what other people think of you,”Cohen said.
Cohen came to UCLA with a background in dance and with an
interest in acting and playwriting. She remembers some professors
as influencing her during her time in the theater department.
She recalls Professor Gary Gardner’s theater playwriting
class in particular, where she had her first theater-writing
experience.
“(Gardner) had a passion for theater, but more
importantly, he kept theater fun for his students, where some other
professors forgot to do that,” Cohen said.
For a while, things were going great for Cate Cohen at UCLA. She
was writing and acting in plays, had joined a sorority, she had a
job and was working on a UCLA sitcom called “Good News Bad
News.”
“One of the best things I got out of UCLA were the
relationships. We’re all still working together,” Cohen
said, referring to her classmates from the School of Theater, Film,
and Television.
Like many other students at UCLA, she experienced pressure to be
perfect and look great. These pressures took their toll on Cohen to
the point where she was no longer able to sleep or eat. She was
then checked into the UCLA psych ward for three weeks of
observation.
She said what mainly drove her into the psych ward was the
pressure to do too much at once, the competitive nature of school
and the atmosphere imposed upon her to compete with the looks of so
many of her above-average-looking Southern California female
classmates. All at once she lost her job, her relationship failed,
and the pressures and commitments finally overwhelmed her.
She took the experience of the ward as a wake-up call to stop
spreading herself too thin and to stop demanding absolute
perfection from herself. Now, she says she’s stronger for her
struggles in college and that they helped prepare her for the
outside world.
After UCLA she moved back up north to study with ACT (The
American Conservatory Theater) in San Francisco. Then she moved to
New York City where she struggled, performing with numerous
experimental theater companies in the East Village.
“New York is a theater town. You can be doing theater
anywhere in NY and people still consider you a working
actor,” Cohen said. “There is a vitality to the town.
There are people playing piano and singing out their windows in the
East Village … but it’s also exhausting to sustain such
vitality.”
“In L.A. it’s more about TV and movies but there is
also some really great theater, along with movies and television
which I’m interested in pursuing,” she added.
After struggling in the East Village, she finally hit it big
when she landed a gig with the world famous Radio City
Rockettes.
She came up with the idea for her one women show when she was
telling some friends about some of the surreal experiences she had
with the Rockettes, and they started to laugh.
“I guess I had a knack for making things funny that would
normally be uncomfortable,” Cohen said.
She then began writing and re-writing with her director Gibson
Frasier who wrote, produced, and starred in “Man of the
Century,” named one of the top ten independent films of 1999.
Two years after she began, Cate Cohen’s exploits are ready to
be performed in her one-woman show, “Out of Line.”
“The point of this show is that we really are all crazy.
It’s only when we try not to be that we get into
trouble,” said Cohen.
THEATER: “Out of Line” opens
tonight and will run through June 6 at the Powerhouse Theatre in
Santa Monica. The theater is located at 3116 2nd St. Tickets are
$15 for general admission and $10 for students and seniors. For
tickets, call (323) 467-3428.