Hop For Pop
Press Kit
Clown · Solo Show · Improv
Liz Coin
New York comedy has an epidemic of people wanting to look cool. She trained as a clown, so she wants the opposite — to be the thing on stage you came to laugh at.
Based
New York City · from Iowa
Works in
Clown · Solo show · Improv · Stand-up
Known for
Lizzie Sunshine
Background
Improv comedy · clown training · sketch and theatre
Interview
40 min · Hop For Pop · 2026
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.”
Liz Coin — Hop For Pop
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Biography
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Liz Coin is a New York clown, improviser and solo performer who grew up in Iowa and started in sketch shows and plays. Her first stand-up was at a bar in Chicago while at college — a room where nobody had come for comedy, delivered in a dress because she thought you were supposed to dress up, from three longhand pages of script. She still has the script.
Improv is her main background, and clown is the thing that reorganised how she works. She describes it as a mindfulness art: your only job is to walk on stage, look people in the eye, take in your surroundings and interact with them — which she notes stresses stand-ups out enormously, because none of it can be pre-planned. The quote she keeps on her computer is Baudelaire’s: genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.
Her solo show Lizzie Sunshine takes its title from her mother’s childhood nickname for her, earned by making everybody laugh. The show puts nearly every form she has on stage at once — scripted dramatic monologue, farce, dance, deliberately bad impressions, a magic trick, crowd work and audience participation — and underneath the shine it is about what a lifetime of relentless positivity was built to protect. As she puts it, the character throws everything she has at the audience, and then asks what is left.
The part other press kits leave out
What you should know before you book her
Liz Coin is a clown first, which changes what she is doing on stage and what she needs from a room. She is also the most articulate person in this series on how to run audience participation without the audience hating it.
She wants to look stupid
Not a figure of speech. Classic clown: she aims to be the thing you are laughing at, which she notes runs directly against a New York scene that wants to look cool.
The audience must look like the genius
Her stated secret for participation: make the volunteer the star and yourself the idiot. Everything they say is brilliant. That is why, she says, it never bombs.
Volunteers get cheered, and get a lollipop
The room chants the person’s name on the way up and they are rewarded on the way out. Participation engineered for safety rather than exposure.
Nothing is pre-planned
Clown means responding to what is actually in the room. She comes from improv, so she finds that liberating where most stand-ups find it alarming.
Every form except juggling
Monologue, farce, dance, impressions, magic, crowd work. Her own summary — she cannot juggle, and everything else is in there.
The positivity is earned, not default
The show goes under the shiny surface deliberately. It is a comedy, and it is also about what the smiling was doing.
For press · cleared for use with attribution
Quotable
01
“Nobody was there for stand-up. I wore a dress, because I thought you’re supposed to dress up if you go on stage.”02
“He goes: hey, you might have something here — for a girl. And I was like, yes, I’m in, I made it, buddy.”03
“Physical comedy is more risky, because you have to look funny, not like you look stupid.”04
“We have an epidemic in the comedy scene, especially in New York, of everybody wanting to look cool all the time.”05
“I actually always want to look stupid. I strive to be the thing on stage that you are here in the audience to laugh at.”06
“I am funny, I am stupid, I am dumb. That’s very classic clown.”07
“Clown is really a mindfulness art. My only job is to walk on this stage, look at you in the eye, and interact.”08
“That stresses stand-ups the f*** out, because you can’t pre-plan.”09
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.”10
“If you’re playing with a little kid and they say it’s a hot bowl of lava, you’re not going to say no it isn’t. You’re going to say: we have to drink the lava before the aliens come.”11
“It has every form of comedy or performance besides juggling. I can’t juggle.”12
“The point with this character is she’s going to throw everything she has at the audience — look at everything I can do — and then what’s left?”13
“The audience needs to look like a genius. If you can make the audience the star, and you’re the dumb one, the rest of the room will like it.”14
“People hate audience participation. So the last thing you want to do is make them more uncomfortable — you want to make them brilliant.”15
“That’s why the audience participation never bombs. I set them up for success.”16
“I didn’t want to be the ugly funny one, I wanted to be the hot sad one. Now I think Madame Thénardier is the best character.”17
“Lizzie Sunshine is what my mom called me, because I made everybody laugh.”18
“This is a long-earned thing of shiny positivity.”
Attribution: Liz Coin, speaking to Hop For Pop, 2026.
Career
Selected credits
Solo work
- Lizzie Sunshine — solo clown show; Edinburgh Fringe 2026
- Combines scripted monologue, farce, dance, impressions, magic and audience participation
Background
- Improv comedy — her primary training
- Clown training
- Sketch shows and plays in Iowa; first stand-up in Chicago; open mics in New York
This kit was produced by Hop For Pop. The interview and quotes are drawn from Hop For Pop × Liz Coin, recorded 2026. Liz Coin 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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