The Tower Theatre welcomes comedian Paula Poundstone on Friday, June 3. Thirty two years ago Poundstone climbed on a Greyhound bus and traveled across the country — stopping in at open mic nights at comedy clubs as she went.
From Boston to San Francisco to Los Angeles, she went on to become one of our Country’s top comic minds – legendary for her razor-sharp wit, her self-deprecating humor, and a spontaneity with a crowd that hands-down is without peer.
You can hear her through your laughter as a regular panelist on NPR’s #1 show, the Peabody Award-winning weekly news quiz show, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. She voiced the character “Forgetter Paula” in the Oscar winning movie by Disney Pixar, INSIDE OUT which won Best Animated Feature Film in 2016.
Poundstone says of her ability to be spontaneous with a crowd: “No two shows I do are the same. It’s not that I don’t repeat material. I do. My shows, when they’re good, and I like to think they often are, are like a cocktail party. When you first get there, you talk about how badly you got lost and how hard it was to find parking. Then you tell a story about your kids or what you just saw on the news. You meet some new people and ask them about themselves. Then, someone says, “Tell that story you used to tell,” and then someone on the other side of the room spills a drink, and you mock them. No one ever applauds me when I leave a party, though. I think they high five.”
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