MADDY KLINE | STAFF REPORTER | mgkline@butler.edu
Katie Hannigan, an Indianapolis native and Butler alum, continues to impress with her career in stand-up comedy and acting. After graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre, she moved to New York City and is now a paid regular at many comedy clubs. She has appeared on The Travel Channel, MTV, Oxygen Network, and most recently on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” She will be performing at the White Rabbit Cabaret in Fountain Square tonight at 7:30 p.m. The event is 21 and older.
The Butler Collegian: Were you involved with any clubs or organizations on campus?
Katie Hannigan: I was in Alpha Psi Omega which was our gender-neutral theater fraternity. I did many different shows and plays while I was there. I also did my own independently produced performances and I did an internship with the Ruth Lilly Theater at the Children’s Museum. I was a part of the Butler Summer Institute in 2007 and created my own independently produced, one woman show about the female archetypes in Grimms’ Fairy Tales. It was exploration of the motif of violence against women in the stories, and I performed it at the IMA.
TBC: What did you do immediately after graduating college?
KH: I moved to New York the week after I graduated and ended up getting a job at an enrichment center as a dance teacher from someone who was also a Butler alum. Shortly after, they opened a preschool that was performing arts focused, so I got hired by them to teach there after about two years of teaching various classes at the center. Most of the people who taught there had a performance background, so we would teach letters and numbers but it was all through songs or games.
TBC: What made you stop teaching preschool?
KH: Teaching was always just a day job for me, I was doing it about 20 hours a week. I would basically teach until 1 p.m., come back to my apartment, take a nap, wake up, write, do stand-up until about 12 a.m. and come back.
TBC: When would you say you had your first big break into the comedy scene?
KH: In 2013, I did a video for MTV that was a little bit of a break, called “Inside Joke.” More recently, of course, I did the Late Show and that’s been more of a culmination of the past 10 years of work.
TBC: I noticed a lot of your humor is dark or self-deprecating, was this always your comedy style or is this what it evolved into?
KH: I think the darkness was always my style, I wouldn’t consider it to be self-deprecating, but maybe more just of a self awareness of my own insecurity. I think for me, I’m more interested in things that all people have in common, and I think a lot of people are deeply insecure so that’s one of the reasons I explore that.
TBC: Is there anything you want to say to current Butler students?
KH: I would just say that if you want to have a career in the arts, really push yourself to work as hard as you can. What I’ve realized over the past 10 years is that it is really hard, but it’s not the fact that it’s difficult— it’s that most people aren’t willing to put in the sheer amount of work it takes to develop yourself as an artist.
To learn about Katie’s upcoming shows, follow her on social media. Instagram: @_katiehannigan, Twitter: @katiehannigan.
