Double Feature

Katie Hughes balances a bright, polite stage presence with incredibly specific, slightly macabre stories that catch the crowd off guard in her debut video special, Double Feature. Filmed live at Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon, the set highlights her knack for contrasting Southern-adjacent sweetness with details of growing up ‘white trash’. This includes a bizarre friendship she struck up at 14 with a 55-year-old divorced English teacher whose chamomile-induced night terrors featured a steering wheel made from her husband’s pelvic bone. Hughes, a Second City graduate and former Stand-Up NBC finalist, also skewers the faux-friendliness of brunch culture and recalls a door-to-door salesman whose mistaken greeting prompted her to use a bizarre vocal defense mechanism to scare him off. She also recounts visiting a gun show where she bought crystal-adorned shotgun shells, perfect for harnessing both the healing power of crystals and the killing power of bullets.