EDINBURGH 2022: Kylie Brakeman Guest Blog

Guest Blog: Stamptown presents LA comic Kylie Brakeman in Edinburgh Fringe comedy debut

Kylie discusses the development behind her hilarious character Linda Hollywood; agent to the stars

Kylie Brakeman blogs for Broadway World about bringing her character comedy Linda Hollywood's Big Hollywood Night to the Fringe, how she creates her characters and why she's given Linda her very own show

Hi, I'm Kylie Brakeman! I'm a comedian, actor, and writer from Los Angeles, coming to Fringe for the very first time with my show "Linda Hollywood's Big Hollywood Night."

I came up through the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater before it closed during the pandemic. I started making videos as a way to prove to myself that I was still working, and then somehow, they blew up online. I gained a hundred thousand followers on Twitter almost overnight. was connected to the world in a whole new way. It was a surreal experience that feels like a fever dream, but it got me far more eyeballs on my work than I would have otherwise. A lot of these videos were topical, but some of them were just very dumb characters- sillier, weirder, and much closer to what I had been doing onstage before the pandemic.

One of these characters I posted was Linda Hollywood; a one-minute bit about a highly strung agent taking calls as she drives down Sunset Blvd. She's taking phone calls that sound real at first, but soon become clear that it's just showbusiness gibberish and word salad. Nothing she says means anything, but she says it with confidence. And now she's live! Linda Hollywood's Big Hollywood Night follows Linda as she guides the audience through a masterclass on how to make it in Hollywood, while trying to work through her own career setbacks to sign her dream client. We meet a lot of other characters from her life along the way.

I had a lot of fun developing this show with her as the focal point. I knew I wanted a vehicle to showcase a lot of characters I've done in the past, and Linda felt like the perfect host for it. I love character-driven sketch in particular because you get to go deep into someone's point of view and really parse them out from smaller details. I usually start the creative process from a certain phrase or line I find funny, and then expand out from there. Usually that involves asking "if this is true, then what else is true?" For example, "okay, so if this lady believes the Queen of England is a hot dog, what else does she believe?"

Going through that process with Linda was exciting because I've never adapted one of my bits into something long form, so it was a really great challenge to find her backstory and really develop her philosophy and core beliefs and let that drive the show. In the video, she's just a cartoonish caricature of Hollywood in general-and I think I've stayed true to that-but it's been fun and surprising to see what else about her I can find. I'm really happy with how it's all coming together. The show is an hour of comedy, characters, and Hollywood fun-and I hope you'll see it!

Kylie Brakeman: Linda Hollywood's Big Hollywood Night, Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose (Nip), 7pm, 3-28 August (not 17)

Sponsored content

To post a comment, you must register and login.