In the spring of last year, as the entertainment industry continued its much lamented move out of L.A., Katie Folger was moving in. For the third time in nine years, she’d driven to the city from Austin, Texas, her worldly possessions stuffed into her parents’ 2012 Cadillac SUV and her sights set on becoming a star.
Folger is one of thousands of hopefuls aiming to beat the odds as Hollywood implodes. And though the news is full of failure, Folger’s story is one of modest success — including a recent sold-out performance of her one-woman show “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at Elysian Theater, with two more on the way — demonstrating that old-fashioned tenacity can still prevail in a city of increasingly hollowed out dreams.
When Folger first showed up at my Silver Lake guesthouse in October 2025, I’d been interviewing potential tenants for weeks. I gave Folger’s vintage-chic look a once-over, followed by a quick house tour (the only possible kind; the guesthouse is 350 square feet). As we emerged onto the sun-drenched deck, Folger declared herself “interested, if the terms are right.”
“Terms?” I repeated. Courtesy of the Lee List, I’d hosted dozens of actors, musicians and screenwriters in my guesthouse over the decades. Not one had ever used that word.
“I can’t afford the price you’re asking,” Folger clarified. “I’m an actor. A good one, but not a rich one — yet. Would you consider a starving-artist discount? Based on our shared artistic dreams?”
Katie Folger gets ready at her home in Silver Lake before her performance of “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at the Elysian Theater. Folger negotiated with her landlord for rent she could afford.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Half of me wanted to offer Folger the starving-artist kick in the pants. The other half was intrigued by her chutzpah. Also, this was no time to be a picky landlady. Hollywood was my tenant pool, and Hollywood was tanking. Before COVID, I’d seen people driving around my neighborhood searching out a “For Rent” sign. Now those signs were everywhere, along with moving vans advertising “Cheapest Rates LA-NYC.”
The headlines and pull quotes are dire: “How L.A. Stopped Being Hollywood’s Leading Star,” “L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie.” “2024 was the worst year on record, excluding COVID,” says FilmLA president Paul Audley. In the two years following the 2023 strikes, the entertainment industry lost 42,000 of its 142,000 jobs to streaming cutbacks, production moves to cheaper locations with better tax incentives, corporate consolidation and AI.
I’d never been on a casting call before, but I was on one now. Folger was auditioning for the role of my cut-rate tenant. I decided to give her the part.
“Bird in the hand,” I thought, as Folger told me more about herself.
Katie Folger performs her show “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at the Elysian Theater. Folger moved to L.A. three times before she met with some sustainable success.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
She’d enrolled in acting classes at the University of Texas at Austin at age 19, and by the following year, three films she acted in premiered at South by Southwest. Later that year Folger parlayed a casual exchange with Robert Redford during a campus Q&A into a several-years-long mentorship. “He shaped my career,” she said. “He pushed me toward becoming a creator as well as an actress.”
“In 2016, I drove out to Los Angeles with no plan, assuming the world would catch me. I couldn’t find stable housing or work. I was broke within four months.”
In 2020, Katie returned to L.A. and got a writing job on a YouTube show. Three weeks later, COVID-19 ended her new career overnight and she moved back to Austin to pursue a master’s degree in mental-health counseling. That’s when she began writing the short story that eventually became “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man.”
Katie Folger performs her show “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at the Elysian Theater on Oct. 7. The one-woman show has sold out in Austin, Portland and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
After holding one reading in her backyard and one on her bed, she ran a $25,000 crowdfunding campaign and debuted the show at an Austin theater in 2023. The Austin Chronicle described it as “a lusty, self-written, one-woman oration on female sexual discovery, exploration, and empowerment,” and it went on to sell out runs in Portland, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe. In May 2024, two managers from Artists First talent management saw “Pizza Man.” They signed Folger and put her to work writing the TV pilot they hope will be her Hollywood breakthrough.
The big night
As a photographer’s shutter clicks, Folger flutters a mascara wand over her lashes while preparing for opening night at the Elysian.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“Amazing,” I reply. A lifelong actor, dancer and director, Folger is a master of makeup, a fearless fashionista and a DIY diva. She doesn’t need the photographer to direct the shoot, she doesn’t need her landlady to tell her how she looks, and she doesn’t need a crew to schlep the show’s set pieces (delivered by Amazon today, to be returned for a full refund tomorrow) up the hill from her bungalow to her car.
As her upstairs neighbor and surrogate much-older sister (Folger is 34, I’m 75), I’m often her last look, tossing tributes as she dashes through our garden en route to Soho House for lunch with her managers, or to a friend’s studio to self-tape an audition. Eighteen months after landing back in Los Angeles, Folger is a success-seeking missile. When the call-backs don’t call back and she needs to borrow her discounted rent, Folger’s comeback is to count her blessings: a home she loves, managers she loves, a pilot script her managers love, and a circle of industry friends who love and support her work.
People stand outside Elysian Theater after Katie Folger’s one-woman show, “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“Katie and I met and bonded on a movie in Austin,” says Clayton Farris, another Texas-to-L.A. refugee whose recent acting credits include “Weapons” and “Cape Fear.” “Self-starters like us are drawn to each other. I’ve seen ‘Pizza Man’ twice. I’m so moved by Katie’s honesty and bravery. In a town full of artifice that goes a long way.”
“Katie has a knack for bringing people together to connect and share their work,” Farris adds. “She thrives in the type of community that produces creative collaborations.”
What’s not to be grateful for? Five hours from now Folger will be onstage, starring in her sexy, smart, one-woman show.
In my first Year of Katie, I’ve come to admire the balance of independence and interdependence, ambition and collaboration that sustains her scrappy, indie-artist life. While working three part-time “paycheck gigs,” Folger has created, written and endlessly rewritten a TV pilot and auditioned for dozens of commercials and TV shows, all while polishing “Pizza Man” for tonight’s show at the venue of her dreams.
At showtime minus three hours I help Folger attach the light-up checkered Pizza Man sign, a gift from her ex-boyfriend, to the roof of her car. Waiting for her under the marquee announcing, “SOLD OUT GETTING IN BED W/PIZZA MAN” is Matrex Kilgore, Folger’s “Texas director” and friend since they met at UT theater camp in 2009. Kilgore has flown to L.A. on his own dime to guide Folger through the pre-show tech rehearsal.
Fliers for Katie Folger’s one-woman show “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at the Elysian Theater.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“I’ve been with this show for years in all its different iterations,” Kilgore tells me as we wait for Folger in the theater’s funky, popcorn-scented lobby. “Katie’s a hard worker who gets things done with a flair that few people have. I admire her work ethic and her ability to get back up no matter what knocks her down.
“People who have been our friends for years have worked on this show. ‘Pizza Man’ has been a labor of love and community. We riff off each other to make music that’s more complex than it would be if we played it by ourselves.”
Showtime arrives
At showtime the theater hums. Suddenly church music pours into the room. Folger appears on the steps above the stage in “pastor’s wife” garb, blowing kisses to the “congregants” as she descends. “Beloved daughters of God!” she shouts, her Texas twang chicken-frying each word. “If you wait to have sex before marriage, your vagina will be like a beautiful red rose, fresh and pure like springtime flowers. But if you don’t …”
The crowd watches Katie Folger perform her solo show “Getting in Bed With the Pizza Man” at the Elysian Theater.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
The audience explodes with laughter. “But if you dooooon’t …” Folger repeats the words like a pitcher caressing a verbal curveball she’s about to throw. For the next hour, Folger keeps tossing curveballs from her dating life, owning the stage in her red halter top, brown pleather pants and beat-up brown leather boots, orating nonstop about sex, religion and dating while kicking her legs sky-high, simulating sex on the “borrowed” Amazon couch, narrating the conflicts that do battle within her.
Is Katie Folger a daughter of God? A “slut”? Her parents’ little girl? An empowered, liberated woman? The audience appears to hang on her every word, shout and moan, erupting in explosive applause as she utters the play’s last lines, arms extended ecstatically to the crowd.
“My dignity and power will not be dimmed,” Folger declares. “And my sexuality? My sexuality is mine.”
More to Read
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
