Hop For Pop
Press Kit
Stand-up · Solo Hour
Tori Morancay
French, performing in English, and convinced she becomes a different person in each language. She flew to a city where nobody knew her specifically so that her first open mic could go badly in private.
Based
New York City · from France
Works in
Stand-up · Solo show — in English and French
Known for
Debut solo hour, Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Performs in
English, and since June 2026 in French
Interview
31 min · Hop For Pop · 2026
“If something bad happened to you, you should be able to laugh about it and feel better eventually.”
Tori Morancay — Hop For Pop
Ready-to-use copy
Biography
229 words — lift as-is, no rewriting required
Tori Morancay is a French stand-up based in New York who performs in English, her second language. She studied law, disliked it enough to go looking for an escape, and found stand-up on television — American and British comics she had never seen growing up in France. Doing an open mic went into her new year’s resolutions and stayed there, unattempted, for years.
COVID delayed it further. Living in Los Angeles, she took a solo trip to New York to find out whether she would prefer it there, knew nobody in the city, and worked out that this made it the ideal place to fail: if the open mic went badly, no one would know. She did a run of them on that trip, went home, worked three jobs for a year to fund the move, and has been performing in New York ever since.
Her debut solo hour — titled after the Chic disco track Le Freak, C’est Chic — came to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2026, built from three years of material reorganised into an autobiography: childhood in France, moving to America, dating, and the darker things she has decided are funny. It is deadpan, occasionally physical, and deliberately goes to subjects most people are too embarrassed to raise. In June 2026 she performed stand-up in French for the first time.
The part other press kits leave out
What you should know before you book her
Tori Morancay works in a second language by choice, and most of what is distinctive about her act comes out of that decision — including a freedom on stage she does not have in conversation.
A different person in each language
She is more comfortable in English than in French, her native tongue — because English permits mistakes. In French she is self-conscious about every word on stage.
The accent was the first obstacle
Early on she would have to say a joke several times to find a wording an audience could follow. That pressure shaped how tightly she writes.
Dark, deadpan, and aiming for a reaction
A woman in the audience once gagged at a joke and then laughed for the rest of the show. She counted that as a success, not a failure.
Every premise is true
She exaggerates to the extreme but does not invent, and says the exaggeration is always obvious. Audiences ask her regularly whether it is all real.
Light crowd interaction only
She asks the room general questions tied to specific jokes. Nobody is brought on stage. Bookable in rooms where crowd work would not suit.
Built from three years, structured in one
The hour is a compilation reorganised into a biography. Writing it whole is what then let her generate new material, because she finally knew what worked.
For press · cleared for use with attribution
Quotable
01
“I didn’t know anyone in New York. So I was like, I should just try an open mic, because nobody knows me. If I don’t do well, it’s totally fine.”02
“I worked three jobs just so I could afford moving to New York.”03
“Everyone has a different personality when they speak another language. The person I am when I speak French is a different person than the person I am when I speak English.”04
“It’s okay for me to make mistakes in English, because it’s not my first language. When I speak French I’m way more self-conscious about the words I say on stage.”05
“It’s very addictive to get a laugh. I want to have as many laughs as I can and really connect with the audience.”06
“It’s a way of processing everything that has happened to me — but without being like, oh, you should feel bad for me.”07
“If something bad happened to you, you should be able to laugh about it and feel better eventually.”08
“The woman next to my friend gagged because of what I said during the joke. And that didn’t make me feel embarrassed. I was like: this is amazing, I’m provoking a reaction.”09
“I like talking about subjects you’re not going to talk about with your friends — things you could be too embarrassed to talk about.”10
“Every premise is based on my real life. I take some bits to the extreme, but I don’t make things up.”11
“Sometimes just to say a joke I would have to say it several times, just to make that joke understandable.”12
“New York is the best city to do open mics, and the hardest — you’re competing with the top of the top. But you can only learn from it.”13
“In LA, most people doing stand-up want something else — to be an actor, a TV writer. In New York you see more people who say: this is what I want to do with my life.”14
“I hate driving, so New York was the only city I could move to.”
Attribution: Tori Morancay, speaking to Hop For Pop, 2026.
Career
Selected credits
Live
- Debut solo hour — Edinburgh Fringe 2026; previews in New York and Paris
- First preview at The Slipper Room, New York — a burlesque venue she found suited the show better than a comedy club
- Opened for Tyler Gross, a comic she met at her first New York open mic
- Performing stand-up in French since June 2026
Background
Studied law before comedy. Moved from Los Angeles to New York specifically to pursue stand-up, funding the move with three jobs over a year.
This kit was produced by Hop For Pop. The interview and quotes are drawn from Hop For Pop × Tori Morancay, recorded 2026. Tori Morancay and their representatives are free to use any part of this document — the biography, the quotes — for booking, press and promotion, with credit to Hop For Pop for the interview material.
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