Absurdly honest: Olivia Bratko on the complex comedy of ‘Kyles’’

“The new show is called ‘Kyles’ K-Y-L-E-S-apostrophe,’’ explained writer/performer Olivia Bratko, who brings her singular stage persona to Theatre Rhinoceros in the Castro from July 3-18.
“The character is Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle. Seven times. I’ll often just call them Kyle because saying Kyle seven times every time is exhausting. Actually,” Bratko, 32, noted in recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter, “Kyle is more of a vessel for language than a character.”

In Bratko’s past performances in the Bay Area, New York, and at the Dublin Ireland Fringe Festival –where she won the 2023 ‘Spirit of Wit’ award for uncategorizable work– the language that overflows from Kyle has taken the form of Christian pop songs, paeans to masturbation, and musings on the Masked Singer.

Her original one-woman whatchamacallits combine the tangential comic logic of Dina Martina, the wry-but-magnetic stage presence of Laurie Anderson, and the meta mind-fuckery of Andy Kauffman.

“I think of it as a kind of parody of a performance artist,” said Bratko, who admires the approach of comic Julio Torres.

“The delivery is very serious, very deadpan, as if what I’m doing is the highest level of art. And then there’s the juxtaposition with some of the songs I choose and the kinds of jokes I tell, it’s very much playing with that high-low, that duality.”

Family language
Bratko, a trans woman who has performed as a member of the Cockettes Nouveau, often describes her shows as “weaving together strands of pop cultural ephemera.” But the pieces also incorporate glimmering shards of autobiography.

“I grew up in San Jose. My brothers and sister and I were homeschooled, because Jesus spoke to my parents and told them to do that. We were very Evangelical. We were speaking in tongues. We were healing with our hands. We were prophesying. It was very woo woo, but very conservative,” she paused, then added drily, “Which I didn’t really like.

“I went to Berkeley for college and I came out to them [as non-binary] over Thanksgiving break. They took it badly, but since then they’ve made a huge 180 and are so accepting and supportive.

“When I came out to them more recently as trans, I think it was as good as it could possibly be, especially since they don’t have a ton of lived experience with trans people. They’ve done everything with the best intentions and I love them very much.”

Bratko says her family shares an off-kilter sense of humor that’s reflected in ‘Kyles’’ collage-like discontinuity.

“My mom is like the poster child for echolalia,” she said. “She’s always singling snatches of jingles from when she was a child. Something triggers it and she’s like on a loop, without fail. So the idea that bits and snatches of pop culture are embedded in us and just keep coming back up; I think that’s very present in ‘Kyles’,’ these bright little bits being referenced, and remixed, and juxtaposed in ways they heighten them and make them even more ridiculous.

“I also think that my family has always had an obsession with words: how they sound, what they mean. I feel like we were always playing around, saying things funny, or like trying to find the perfect word, or trying to find the perfectly wrong word.”

Indirect resonance
While Bratko has worked on and off stage with Bay Area theater companies in the past, she’s currently focusing on her own creative endeavors, including her transition process.

“I don't like to be told what to do,” she said. “And I’m really valuing my creative control right now. For a long time, the only roles people were interested in casting me in were male roles. And I couldn’t have put my finger on exactly why, but I didn’t want to do that.

“A lot of what we think of as communication is ultimately much less rationally meaningful than society likes to pretend that it is. In ‘Kyles,’’ I get to express every aspect of myself. And it speaks to me at a level that I don’t hear very often.”

Bratko paused, extended her arms wide and declaimed, “I emerged fully formed from the ocean when I was 12! That doesn’t make any sense. If you emerge from the ocean, if that was your birth, you weren’t 12. It just doesn’t…you can’t…That’s a Kyle-ism. The words don’t make sense, but you know exactly what I mean.”

‘Kyles,’’ July 3-18. $15-$50. Theatre Rhinoceros. 4229 18th St.
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/kyles-tickets-1391842862469