Shriller

Kristen Toomey does not lower her volume or soften her edges when walking a room through the indignities of adulthood. The centerpiece is her breakdown of the unspoken panic inside women’s public restrooms—the collective delusion that everyone entered the stall solely to blow glitter, the tactical coughing fits to mask noise, and the horror of making eye contact through the gap in the stall door.

Toomey came into the 2025 taping after seventeen years working Chicago clubs and touring nationally. A former Navy recruit, she filmed the forty-minute set shortly before becoming the first woman to solo host the Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.

Directed by Jeremy Essig and distributed by Comedy Dynamics, the set leans hard into domestic disorder. Toomey talks through getting divorced at the exact same time as her mother, dating apps, and the casual cruelties of raising children who already know how to talk back. The performance won Best Special at the Chicago Gazelle Awards later that year.