Given the state of the world, there’s plenty to make a person angry. Comedian Margaret Cho has channeled her anger into her new show, dubbed The psyCHO Tour. The show, which also includes tributes to her “father in comedy,” Robin Williams, and her “mother in comedy,” Joan Rivers, comes to Hard Rock Live at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 4.
“Well, I think that anger is the appropriate response to everything that’s going on,” says Cho via phone from her Los Angeles home. “There’s police brutality and racism. The focus is the rage that I feel about the sexual abuse of women from Jian Ghomeshi to Bill Cobsy to Isis. We’re seeing a very hostile world when it comes to women and girls. It’s a way to answer that. It’s also a way to cope as comedy is a way to cope.”
Cho has said that when men go off on something they are "passionate" and "driven" and when women go off on something, they’re deemed "hysterical" and "crazy."
“We haven’t shifted in the way that we think about women and how they talk about society and our commentary on society. I want to throw my hat into the ring. This is my take on it.”
Her new routine also includes a bit on Bruce Jenner's announcement that he's now Caitlyn Jenner, something he's documented on a reality show on E! Entertainment Television.
“I love her,” Cho says of Jenner. “I’m so grateful to her. I’m friends with [actress] Candis Cayne. I think this is great. I think it’s an important step for American society to understand gender and transgender. The climate has changed. Before you would see tabloids with photos of Bruce Jenner wearing fingernail polish. Now, it’s shifted. She’s getting an ESPN award and the Arthur Ashe world. She’s on the cover of Vanity Fair. She has some heavy hitters in regards to transpolitics and all of her visits to these places that I frequent all the time, LGBT centers in L.A. She’s around all these trans kids. The show is beyond reality. It adds a great amount of dignity and gravity to reality television. I’m proud of E and Caitlyn and all these things that are happening.”
A veteran comic whose career started back in the ‘90s, Cho has had acting roles here and there over the course of her career (she even starred in a short-lived TV show in the '90s). But she says standup comedy is her one true love.
“I love performing," she says. "Comedy has a great impact on my social life. A lot of my friends are comedians and also musicians. It was never a means to get somewhere. I wasn’t a comic so that I could be an actor. I always wanted to be a comic. Standup comedy is my passion and always will be.”
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