Paula Poundstone comes to Missoula and Billings in early October.
Renowned stand-up comedian Paula Poundstone returns to Montana for two shows, Oct. 7 at The Wilma in Missoula and Oct. 8 at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings.
Time magazine, in the March 2020 “Best of” issue, listed Poundstone’s HBO special, “Cats, Cops and Stuff” as one of The 5 Funniest Stand-Up Specials Ever.
Beginning her career performing stand-up at open-mic nights in Boston, Poundstone is known for her smart, observational humor and spontaneous wit that has become the stuff of legend. She has expanded her reach to include podcasts, books, HBO specials, TV, and film. She never performs the same act twice and engages with the audience in a way that is unmatched.
Writes a reviewer for KDHX Radio in St. Louis, her act is “a hybrid of traditional jokes, real-life stories (possibly embellished for maximum comic effect), wry political rants, and impromptu riffs on interactions with audience members in the first few rows … What really makes Paula Poundstone’s act unique, though, is its refreshing, ego-free honesty. She doesn’t drop names (even though she certainly could), and her stories spring from experiences that nearly all of us have shared at one time or another. This is ‘we’re all in this together’ humor. We could use a lot more of that these days.”
Among her milestones: she was included in Comedy Central’s list of 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time, was the first female comic to perform at the White House Correspondents dinner and the first female standup to win the ACE award for Best Comedy Special on cable television.
Poundstone’s second book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, was one of eight semi-finalists for The Thurber Prize for American Humor, the highest recognition of the art of humor writing in the United States. The audiobook was among five finalists for the Audio Book of the Year AUDIE award.
She can be heard weekly as a host of the comedy podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone and is a regular panelist on National Public Radio’s popular comedy news quiz show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!
See her hilarious appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson here.
Catch Paula in Montana
Missoula: 8 p.m. Oct. 7 at The Wilma; tickets are $25-$35 and available online or by calling 800-514-3849.
Billings: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8; tickets are $39, $29, and $26 and available at the ABT Box Office, at 2801 Third Ave. N., by phone at 406-256-6052 and on the ABT website.