The Comics Unseen
Press Kit
Stand-up · Solo Hour
Irene Woo
A software engineer at Google who quit to do stand-up full time — and whose hardest audience was not a room of strangers but her Chinese father, who had spent her whole childhood steering her toward straight As.
Based
New York City · from France
Works in
Stand-up · Improv
Known for
Golden Child — her first hour
Before comedy
Software engineer at Google
Interview
29 min · The Comics Unseen · 2026
“Expect to laugh, to reflect on your relationship with your parents, and to feel inspired to take a risk.”
Irene Woo — The Comics Unseen
Ready-to-use copy
Biography
243 words — lift as-is, no rewriting required
Irene Woo is a half-French, half-Chinese stand-up who grew up in France and now works in New York. She was a software engineer at Google — her first job, and the sort an immigrant father can brag to his friends about — when she took a stand-up class at the People’s Improv Theater. The class required two pages of jokes; she read hers off the paper without making eye contact, people laughed, and she had to walk it off afterwards because the adrenaline would not let her go home and sleep. She calls it one of the best feelings there is, and better than a drug, because you do not feel bad the next day.
Four years of open mics followed, including rooms where she was the only woman and the judging was brutal. Her fix was a system rather than a mood: after every bad set, a sweet treat. Last year, when Google offered a voluntary layoff, she took it as a sign and prepared for the conversation with her parents the way an engineer would — a written roadmap for the year, a look at her savings, and improvised rehearsals of every way the call might go.
That conversation is the spine of Golden Child, her first hour, which she brought to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2026. It runs from childhood through the tech years to the call itself, returning again and again to one central event — built, deliberately, as stand-up first and story second.
The part other press kits leave out
What you should know before you book her
Irene Woo is a writer’s comic with an engineer’s process, and she is clear about the kind of room she wants to make — one where nobody in the front row has anything to be afraid of.
Stand-up first, story second
She wrote the jokes first, far more than she needed, kept only the best, and then worked out how they told the story. The through-line serves the laughs, not the other way round.
Crowd work where you come out on top
She hates crowd work that makes the audience the target. If she talks to you, she says, you will not come off badly — you are not paying to be made fun of.
Type A comedy
A friend’s description she has adopted. Nerdy, precise, writing-led, and reflective of who she actually is rather than a persona.
The energy is her job
Not dominance but energy: the comic should be the highest-energy person in the room, bringing everyone up. She learned how much that matters doing the Fringe.
An audience that finds her
People in tech, Asian women and French audiences in particular. The show is specific, and those rooms recognise themselves in it.
Improv makes her listen
A self-confessed over-thinker, she trained in improv at the People’s Improv Theater and UCB, and credits it with making her present — and better at crowd work.
For press · cleared for use with attribution
Quotable
01
“I don’t think I even made eye contact with people. I was just reading from my paper. And some people in the class started laughing.”02
“There’s other things in my life that I’m proud of, but this felt like the biggest achievement.”03
“After class I had to walk it off, because the adrenaline was so intense I couldn’t just go back to my apartment and sleep.”04
“It’s like a high, but better, because you don’t feel bad the next day.”05
“The only way for you to really get better is to try things in front of people.”06
“Open mics can be really brutal sometimes. You’re the only woman in the room.”07
“Whenever I have a bad set, I get myself a sweet treat.”08
“If I bomb, I know I have a reward. So it’s not too bad.”09
“It’s truly about how I told my Chinese dad I quit Google to do comedy full time.”10
“For an immigrant dad, it’s very easy to brag to your friends that your kid is working at Google.”11
“What I was really, really scared of was losing the support of my dad, because I care so much about that relationship.”12
“I literally made a roadmap for the year. I wanted to show up to the conversation with data.”13
“I practised with my boyfriend how that conversation would go, with different scenarios. We did improv, basically.”14
“I’m naturally an over-thinker, so improv is really helpful — you can’t think.”15
“If I ever do crowd work on you in my show, you really don’t have to be scared. You will come out on top.”16
“I wanted this to be stand-up first.”17
“It’s your job as a comedian to bring the energy up.”18
“I try not to focus on one comedian in particular, because then you end up just mimicking what they do.”
Attribution: Irene Woo, speaking to The Comics Unseen, 2026.
Career
Selected credits
Stand-up
- Golden Child — first hour; Edinburgh Fringe 2026
- Four years on the New York stand-up circuit; full time since leaving Google
Training
- Stand-up and improv — People’s Improv Theater, New York
- Improv — Upright Citizens Brigade, New York
- Theatre in school in France
Before comedy
Software engineer at Google, her first job out of education. Left in 2025 through a voluntary layoff to perform full time.
This kit was produced by The Comics Unseen. The interview and quotes are drawn from The Comics Unseen × Irene Woo, recorded 2026. Irene Woo and their representatives are free to use any part of this document — the biography, the quotes — for booking, press and promotion, with credit to The Comics Unseen for the interview material.
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