|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A Livermore show is set to mark Santa Monica resident Paula Poundstone’s last scheduled appearance in her home state for months to come, with the longtime comedian booked for shows throughout the country through next spring in the latest stretch of her wide-ranging and prolific career.
While the date and time are set next month at the Bankhead Theater, what is not yet known about the show – like Poundstone’s other shows – is exactly what the performance will hold.
“My act is largely autobiographical,” Poundstone told the Pleasanton Weekly during an interview this summer. “I talk about what I’m doing and thinking, and right now I do a couple of daily videos trying to save democracy, and a lot of what I talk about is sort of defined by who’s in front of me. My favorite part of the night is talking to the audience.”
That audience interaction, Poundstone’s own signature comedy and improv style, and decades worth of musings and material to draw from mean that it’s anyone’s guess what topics might be up for discussion during her Tri-Valley visit.
“I have 47 years worth of material rattling around – some of it is easily accessible, and some of it is under a pile of clothes in the back of my brain somewhere,” Poundstone said.
Her comedy career is significant not just for its length, but its breadth, with countless appearances across platforms ranging from TV to radio over the decades, and to social media and podcasts in more recent years.
“I work as much as I can, and I have the best audience in the world – not the largest audience, certainly not the most diverse, but the best,” Poundstone said. “They’re really fun to play with.”
It was across the Bay in San Francisco where Poundstone spent her early career in a thriving comedy environment that she credits with helping to sharpen her chops and set the stage for her continued success.
Born in Alabama and having grown up in Massachusetts, Poundstone got her start in comedy in Boston before hitting the road landing in the Bay Area in the early 1980s.
“It was such a good place to kind of figure out what you do in the room, in part because the audience were so willing back then,” Poundstone said. “They wouldn’t dismiss you just because you sucked.”
Poundstone went on to move to Los Angeles at the advice of fellow Bay Area comedian Robin Williams, leading to her first television appearance alongside Williams when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” and her first movie appearance in “Gremloids” (aka “Hyperspace”).
Her career continued to pick up the following decade, which kicked off with an HBO standup special in 1990 and continued with correspondent roles on talk shows and a series of educational videos for PBS Kids, all while she continued making her standup rounds.
Pounstone has since written two books and become a staple on multiple NPR shows, particularly the news quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”.
“I was really lucky – I had never heard of ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ and they contacted me 25 years ago – and this is how long ago it was – they sent me an audio tape of the show and it was cassette tape,” Poundstone said. “It sat on the island by my kitchen for a really long time, until I was standing in the kitchen talking to a guy and he saw the tape.”
“He was like, ‘Why do you have that?’ And I said, ‘Oh, these people want me to do this show…'” she continued. “He was beside himself, because he happened to be a listener.”
Decades of radio appearances and countless listeners gave way to the podcast “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone”, which has been ongoing since 2018.
The emergence of social media has also given Poundstone yet another platform, with the comedian posting regular short form and longer videos offering more intimate – but still comedic – glimpses into her inner workings.
Since the 2024 election, those videos have had two distinctive features – critiques of the federal government, and the introduction of a pogo stick.
“One of my daily video projects is a countdown to Nov. 3, where I give the viewers something they can do every day to save our democracy, because handwringing isn’t as helpful as you might think,” Poundstone said.
As part of that, Poundstone said she “started this ridiculous practice, because it was ridiculous,” of adding one pogo stick bounce per day since the last general election, with the count now up to several hundred.
It has proven to be more of a challenge than expected, both mentally and physically.
“I get a little brain-fried from pogoing, so as I’m pogoing I forget where I am in the count,” Poundstone said.
But performing on stage – in her element – is a different story, according to Poundstone.
“I’m so invested in what I’m doing – my brain’s not good for a lot of things, but man, during that time I’m on stage, I’m using everything that I got,” Poundstone said. “People ask me about it later and I’m like I have no idea. I just see the task in front of me and do it.”
Tickets are “selling fast” for Poundstone’s appearance on the Bankhead stage at 8 p.m. Sept. 5, according to Livermore Valley Arts. More information is available at livermorearts.org.
