Cat Swantner: Rebel with Applause

A rebel child and nat­ur­al-born class clown, Cat Swant­ner loves noth­ing more than per­form­ing and mak­ing peo­ple laugh. In only two years as a standup come­di­an, she’s already made the semi­fi­nals at Cap City Com­e­dy Club’s Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin con­test, co-pro­duced her own show Truth or Dare and became a co-host of the Grim­by Half-Hour Pow­er Hour Pod­cast with Casey Rocket.

When asked one word to describe her past, Swant­ner respond­ed: sto­ried. ​“There’s a mix of things that made me who I am today,” she shared. 

At first glance, Swantner’s life path is ​“Tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­cana”. She grew up in Beau­mont where she was a débu­tante then attend­ed The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin and even joined a soror­i­ty. She recalls being a devout Chris­t­ian until age 17. ​“I was even more Chris­t­ian than my par­ents,” she admits. 

Despite appear­ing straight and nar­row, Swant­ner has always been a bit of a wild child — an anom­aly — a girl who went from lov­ing Jesus to lov­ing drugs. A girl who was in a soror­i­ty but wore Doc Martens, ban­danas, and band t‑shirts.

Swant­ner describes being a ​“sassy kid with an atti­tude.” She liked to push the bound­aries and felt like she was always get­ting in trou­ble. At eight years old dur­ing a class pre­sen­ta­tion she quot­ed Austin Pow­ers, ​“I’m foxy Cleopa­tra and I’m a whole lot­ta woman.” The school coun­selors were try­ing hard not to laugh. But with Cat…that’s impossible.

Com­e­dy has a deep foun­da­tion in Swantner’s life. In high school, she and her grand­fa­ther bond­ed over their love for Mitch Hed­berg. They would quote their favorite Hed­berg jokes togeth­er. Swant­ner looks back fond­ly on those days: ​“That was so fun. I love that I have those memories.” 

She has always been a per­former. It start­ed with dance, and then about five years after col­lege, com­e­dy took on a new role in her life. She attrib­ut­es com­e­dy for help­ing her over­come sub­stance abuse. With­out a ful­fill­ing cre­ative out­let, drugs were the source of excite­ment in her ear­ly 20s. Thank­ful­ly, writ­ing and per­form­ing gave her the cre­ative ful­fill­ment that was miss­ing from her life. 

“Once you have some­thing that you’re like ​‘I real­ly don’t wan­na mess this up … I real­ly take this seri­ous­ly and I real­ly care about it’ … you’ll do any­thing to keep your head straight.” In fact, her deci­sion to do her first open mic came after a brush with death. The night she antic­i­pat­ed sign­ing up for the first time, she was admit­ted to the ER for emer­gency surgery. After that expe­ri­ence, there was no more delay­ing her dream. ​“I’m def­i­nite­ly doing it now,” she said.

The first time she got onstage (at The Creek and the Cave), it all made sense to her. This was it. ​“There’s noth­ing like the first time,” she remarks. Receiv­ing just one laugh at an open mic on Thurs­day night was enough to ignite that spark. When asked what her favorite thing about being a per­former is, Swant­ner answered ​“how scary it is.”

Evo­lu­tion is a con­tin­u­al process for Swant­ner. She aims to be more her­self on stage. There are sto­ries she hopes to share about her life and top­ics she wants to cov­er. For instance, some of her mate­r­i­al includes jokes that address men­tal ill­ness. Swant­ner explains ​“I recent­ly wrote a joke about hav­ing OCD…that’s some­thing I’ve strug­gled with for a long time. And there’s a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about what it actu­al­ly is.” She recalls an expe­ri­ence where after a show two peo­ple approached her and said how they love the OCD joke. They told her ​”it was so relat­able and so true.” She wants to shed light on OCD. ​“I think it’s some­thing that’s real­ly misunderstood.” 

But for the most part, Swant­ner just wants to be sil­ly. She just wants to be her­self onstage and wants to con­nect to the audi­ence through her own life expe­ri­ence, even the dark parts. 

In her time as a come­di­an, she’s has already expe­ri­enced pro­duc­ing her own show, mak­ing the semi­fi­nals in FPIA, and has formed a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with fel­low Austin come­di­an: Casey Rock­et. ​“It’s nice to have some­one who cares so much about you … who you can run things by … who under­stands so much about the indus­try.” Awww. 

In the future, Swant­ner aspires to con­tin­ue to find her voice as a come­di­an, to cre­ate enjoy­able expe­ri­ences for audi­ences and hone her craft. She also real­ly wants to write a com­e­dy sketch. We assume it will be a sil­ly one if she gets her wish.

We can’t wait to see where her pas­sions take her in the New Year. 

Fol­low Cat

• Insta­gram — https://​www​.insta​gram​.com/sata…@satans_feetpics
  
• Tik­Tok — @catswantner
  
• Do512 — do512​.com/​a​r​t​i​s​t​s​/​c​a​t​-​s​w​a​ntner

Cat can be seen and heard:

• Per­form­ing all around Austin
• Grim­by Half Hour Pow­er Hour Pod­cast — youtube​.com/​GHHPH