For Cat Lim's Tampa Fringe show, the road to self-discovery is paved with jokes

Cat Lim is more than just a comedian. She’s also a graphic designer, a marketer, and a musician.

“As of last week, I’m also a choreographer,” Lim told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “It’s kind of ridiculous how many side gigs I have, but in a way, I don’t really consider them side gigs just because these are all things that I feel passionate about.”

Lim has enjoyed having a variety of creative outlets since she was a kid, but fitting all this creativity into adult life is a challenge. No one can provide you with a map to your own creativity. You have to figure it out yourself. It’s a journey.

Lim brings a slice of that journey onstage this June with her latest Fringe effort, “Cat Lim: An American Darling,” which opens on Saturday, June 8. In her new 45-minute show, Lim addresses the perils of being a people-pleaser.

“It gets me into these situations that I don’t want to be in, but for some reason, I get myself in, like conversations that never end,” Lim told CL.

The best comedy, Lim tells us, is personal.

“You have to be yourself and know yourself to create comedy that is unique and authentic,” says Lim. “Audiences can sniff out inauthenticity. Your brand or persona needs to be rooted in something that’s real for people to connect with it.”

Lim’s journey to comedy started with improv at American Stage around 2018. She broke into stand up comedy about two years ago. Since then, she’s performed at Studio@620 and Sunshine Comedy Club in St. Pete and The Commodore in Ybor City.

Lim threw her name into the Fringe hat (Fringe shows are selected at random — festival organizers draw names out of a hat) for the first time in 2023. John Huls of St. Pete comedy troupe Dirty Johns told Lim about the festival and how it nurtures the weird and unique. “Cat Lim’s Deepest Darkest Secrets” sold out The Cage, the 15-seat venue it was staged in, earning her an encore performance at Fringe Theatre the weekend after the festival.

The 30-minute show was the kind of comic leap one could only pull off at a Fringe Festival. Most comedians will spend a year performing a five-minute set before a comedy club invites them to do a ten-minute set. Lim went straight to 30 minutes within her first year of being a comic.

This year, Lim’s graduated to a 45-minute show in Fringe Theatre, which seats about 40 people compared to The Cage’s 15.

Like its author, “Cat Lim: An American Darling” dips its toes in multiple creative media.

“It’s mostly stand up, but there’s going to be a little bit of music and a little bit of a multimedia presentation,” Lim told CL. “I might be wearing a wig at one point. It’s a little bit different from a typical stand-up show. When I was putting it together, I felt some pressure to kind of fall in line with this standard stand-up show, but then I realized this is the Fringe Festival. This is an opportunity to have fun with it and see how I can fully express myself outside the bounds of a typical stand-up show.”

“Cat Lim: An American Darling” premieres at Tampa Fringe Festival Saturday, June 8, 6:00 p.m., with additional performances on Sun. June 9, 1:45 p.m.; Tues. June 11, 8:45 p.m.; Sat. June 15, 8:30 p.m. and Sun. June 16, 1 p.m. at The Fringe Theatre in Kress Contemporary. 1624 E 7th Ave. Ybor City. Tickets are $12.  [event-1] Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

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