“Carpe diem” may seem like a hackneyed aphorism. Well, it wasn’t quite the day that Austin actress Katie Folger seized, but a piece of paper that led to an extraordinary moment: getting invited by Amy Schumer to give an impromptu performance of her own comedy.
The 2024 Best of Austin-winning star of films including Grow Up, Tony Phillips, The Honor Farm, and Zero Charisma was already on a roll after the success of her one-woman show, the raunchy comedy confessional Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man. After its initial run in Austin in 2023, last year she took the show to Los Angeles and then to the mecca of live theatrical performance, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. “I feel like I haven’t put my suitcase away in a few months,” Folger says. “I keep having these big experiences and thinking I’ll have time to fully understand and process them and, no, I don’t. It’s just on to the next big adventure.”
“I saw this little piece of printer paper on a barricade, and I went, ‘Wait, does that say Amy Schumer?’”
Schumer’s been in New Orleans recently, filming her Hulu series Life & Beth. On Dec. 29, the local Toulouse Theatre announced that she would be performing a standup set the following afternoon. That set went so well that Schumer added a second show on New Year’s Eve afternoon, and it was a flyer for that show that Folger saw.
Quietly convinced that there was no way there would be tickets left but still optimistic, they walked down the street to the Toulouse. As the comedian recounts: “The door is cracked open and there’s just a few people in the lobby, people who work there. They see us and wave us in, and we start talking to this very whimsical New Orleans theatre manager. [I said], ‘Hey, are there still tickets to the show? We’d love to be there. We love comedy.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, she just decided to perform a few hours ago, and the show’s only half-sold.’”
So a couple of hours later, Folger and her boyfriend are sat, front of stage, in the tiny theatre that only holds a couple hundred people, waiting for a surprise Amy Schumer set.
But what she got was not quite the surprise she expected.
As is the way, they ended up chatting with their seat mates before the show, and Folger mentioned she has a comedic stage show. “Anyway, the show starts, Amy Schumer’s doing great – and I have to stress, we had had some drinks, because it’s New Orleans – and about 75% of the way through her set, for no reason and I don’t know still why this happened, she stops her set and goes, ‘Does anyone do comedy in here?’ The lady in the front row who I had been talking to points at me and goes, ‘She does.’ So she walks up to me and goes, ‘Do you want to get up here and do five?’ I go, ‘I’m not a standup. I have a one-woman show that I do.’ And she goes, ‘Well, get up here and do it.’”
“I looked at the tech booth and went, ‘Hit the music!’”
The performance itself was a blur and, like every actor ever, Folger came off stage convinced that she had completely bombed. “I hid, and I didn’t go back to the audience. I went out to the street and I sat on a stoop for the last 15 minutes of the show. I could not face the audience again.” However, she left her phone and her purse with her boyfriend, so after the show finished she slunk back in. “I even put my hair up so people didn’t recognize me, but that didn’t work [because] I had yellow pants on. I go back into the lobby, and everyone is cheering for me and coming up to me and being like, ‘That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.’ We get in the Uber to leave and someone bangs on the window and goes, ‘Keep going, girl!’”
The bizarreness didn’t stop there. Folger woke up the next morning at 7am, and her phone was filled with messages – half from people checking to make sure she was okay after the terrible truck attack that took place in New Orleans hours after the show, the other half from people who had heard about her wild night. “I go down to the lobby of our tiny hotel and hear ‘Happy New Year!’” she recalls.
The source of the voice? None other than indie acting legend Parker Posey. “It’s just me and her in a café, and she’s wishing [me a] Happy New Year. I’m just going, ‘This is just some of the strangest 12 hours I’ve experienced.’”
This article appears in January 3 • 2025.
