With razor sharp wit and a charm once described as “ineffable,” Tooky (rhymes with cookie) Kavanagh (no “U”) speaks her mind with honesty, charisma, and edge. After just a few years on the scene, Tooky has already performed coast-to-coast in New York, San Francisco, and all over New England.
She has opened for Myq Kaplan, Eugene Mirman, Atsuko Okatsuka, Matteo Lane, Ben Wasserman, Bravo TV star Hannah Berner, Hannah Einbinder of HBO Max’s Hacks, performed as part of a Multiple Sclerosis benefit show with Dr. Jonathan Katz, and performed on lineups alongside comedy notables Emma Willmann, Gary Gulman, and Alingon Mitra, to name a few. She was also recently the opening act for comedy legend Maria Bamford at Boston’s historic Wilbur Theater.
In March of 2018 and 2019, she was selected to perform on the Comedy Central UP NEXT audition showcase, and in both April 2018 and February 2019, she was selected to audition for the prestigious Montreal Just For Laughs festival. She was selected to be a featured comedian at the 2020 Boston Calling festival (but we all know what happened in 2020), yet had already bounced back in 2021 by opening for several major national acts, headlining a full weekend at Boston’s legendary Nick’s Comedy stop, and headlining the Ruby Room at the famed Shaskeen Pub.
Her additional stand-up credits include: The 2020 Rogue Island Comedy Festival; December 2018 Comic-In-Residence at The Comedy Studio; The 2017 Women In Comedy Festival; Thunderfest 2017; The 2017 Boston Comedy Festival; Boston Comedy Chicks; The 2017 Boston Comedy Arts Festival; headlining Laughing Liberally Boston; co-producing Token: Rethink What Comedy Can Be at ImprovBoston; featuring at The Producer’s Club in Manhattan, NY; the 2021 JFL New Faces audition at The Stand in Manhattan, NY; and Comic Sit-In at The Riot Theater.
She cohosts the Loud Women podcast with friend and producer Marissa Emmanuele, hosts The Rehash on 2MBstudios, and cohosts NORM!: The Cheers Podcast on Facebook Live.
As an actor (check out her IMDB, The Boston Globe, and Vanyaland) she is a founding cast member of the indie sketch group Suzzy, co-stars alongside some of Boston’s finest comedians in Salesmen (available now on Prime Video), was a regular cast member of the “Redo Crew” for Starstruck: Close Encounters of the Awkward Kind, starred as The Humbled Hobo in a 48 Hour Film Project film, is a featured character in the short film Woman Unknown, and was a recurring character in the web series, Paid For By.
She can be seen regularly at Boston-based institutions such as The Comedy Studio, ImprovBoston, and Laugh Boston. Also, she's the one who described her own charm as “ineffable,” but it's still true!