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Performing Arts

Paula Poundstone to perform at Community Concert Hall

The thing about comedian Paula Poundstone: Even during the course of a fairly standard interview – and a relatively early-morning one at that – she’s really, really funny.

Poundstone will be coming to the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College on Aug. 19 and we had a chance to talk ahead of that. Here’s some of our conversation:

Q: How many dates do you do a year?

A: About 90. When I was in clubs, it was a bigger number because in the clubs, I did four or five nights a week, but the theaters don’t work that way, thank goodness.

Q: You’ve been doing this a long time – is touring still fun?

A: Yeah, I mean, the performing part is still great, it’s really renewing. Somebody should do a brain scan of – there’s got to be some way of putting electrodes to find out what’s happening because the truth is ... it’s got to be the most mentally healthy job in the world.

Q: I would imagine because a lot of – most of – your stuff is unscripted.

A: Yeah. I mean, it depends on the night, really. But scripted or no, just telling people stuff that I think is funny or hopefully funny and being in a room full of laughter is incredibly uplifting, and I can go on and absolutely embattled by life and exhaustion and, you know, the state of the world and every thing and then within really a few minutes or less feel great.

Q: It must be a great escape.

A: Yeah, it is, But the other thing is, there’s a certain humanity in a group of people who come up after the night, you know. One of the things that happens is, I talk a lot about being a parent, which can be an incredibly lonely job sometimes. It’s a little bit like writing: You’re just swimming in a sea of self-doubt all the time, and to have the opportunity to say, ‘Well, here’s this thing that happened,’ whatever it was, and find out oh, you’re not the only one, ’cause if you were the only one, people wouldn’t laugh, they would be sitting with their eyebrows furrowed with concern; certainly laughter would not be their response, but what you find out is, ‘Oh, I’m not the only one. Oh, that’s just a part of life.’ Nature gave us this technique, this great defense mechanism, which is laughter. I don’t know if any other species has it, I sometimes thought raccoons did – there’s something about them that’s entertaining – from a distance, anyway.

Q: Do you go on an actual tour, or do you just leave for certain dates?

A: No, it’s not a tour like on the back of a sweatshirt. It’s like the same way I ran away as a child: I keep coming back.

Q: So what can the audience expect here?

A: I talk about raising a house full of kids and animals, I talk about trying to pay attention to the news well enough to cast a halfway decent vote, which we all know is not an easy trick at all. My favorite part of the night is just talking to the audience. I do the time-honored, ‘Where are you from? What do you do for a living?’ And in this way, little biographies of audience members emerge and I use that from which to set my sails ... I never know exactly what I’m going to say.

Q: Has it ever not really worked out? Have you ever had nights where you go backstage and go, ‘Ugh’?

A: Oh, sure. Fortunately, not many. But because I agree with Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Outliers, which is a book that basically debunks the myth of talent. He says that it is access and opportunity, practice – 10,000 hours practice he feels – and attitude. And I would have to agree with him. Yes, I have had bad experiences, but it’s pretty infrequent at this point.

Q: You must have it down.

A: I don’t think I have 10,000 hours. But what part of it do you consider the job, really? Is it the writing part? Is it the onstage part? I don’t know. To me, there’s a sort of a whole way of being that falls into the category.

Q: Do you still get nervous?

A: I do. Not on every occasion, I guess, but yeah. I’ve done (this) for so long, I don’t mean material, I just mean the sort of ritual of doing the job that I think I’m not even aware of what my emotional state is. There’s sort of a lot of things that I do, small, subtle things that I do getting ready that I’ve done for years that probably put a lot of anxieties to rest. You know, first of all, just in general, I think I live my life with sort of a pool skimmer in my head – I always kind of have a sharp eye out for what I might be able to use or do. It’s not all that conscious, really. I just sort of do things, just sort of go into the lint trap that is my brain.

Q: If you weren’t a comedian, what do you think you would have been?

A: Oh, probably dead by now. I used to bus tables for a living, and surely, I’d be in the table buser hall of fame by now because I was really good at it.

This interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

katie@durangoherald.com

If you go

Comedian Paula Poundstone will be performing at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 19.

Show content may not be suitable for children.

Tickets cost $34/$28 and are available online at www.durangoconcerts.com, by phone at 247-7657 or at the Ticket Office inside the Welcome Center at Eighth Street and Main Avenue.



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