‘Anything could happen’: Paula Poundstone to bring sharp, unpredictable humor to NHCC

Iconic American comedian Paula Poundstone started doing stand-up in Boston in 1979 and never looked back. In the 1980s and ’90s, she performed a series of acclaimed HBO comedy specials, then became a frequent panelist on National Public Radio’s weekly quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” and started her own podcast, “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.” 

Poundstone is performing at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Friday, April 3.

“My act is mostly autobiographical. I talk about what I’m doing and what I’m thinking about,” Poundstone said. “I talk about raising a houseful of animals. Occasionally, I tell a story from old about raising children.”

Poundstone currently has 11 cats, although she’s previously had as many as 16. But much of the focus of her act isn’t herself or her furry friends but the audience themselves.

“My favorite part of any night is just talking to the audience,” Poundstone said. “I don’t have a specific act. I use the time-honored ‘Where ya from, what do you do for a living?’ And from there, little biographies of audience members emerge, and I use that to set my sails. So, I don’t always know what I’m going to talk about.”

Poundstone said she developed her extemporaneous style out of necessity, owing to her less-than-reliable memory

“My memory’s really rocky,” she said. “Part of the reason I work the way I do is because my memory is so not trustworthy that what would happen is, I would have my big five minutes memorized, when I first started (in comedy), but I would go onstage and get so nervous that it would all just fall out of my head. Therefore, I was forced to just talk to the audience.”

Rather than a scripted routine, Poundstone aims for a singular and unrepeatable social experience.

“My goal for any given night is for people to have a good time — a lot of laughter, that sort of thing — but also for people to feel a connection, because, first of all, live entertainment offers that. You’re sitting mostly with strangers … but you’re laughing at the same thing.”

When audience members laugh at one of Poundstone’s stories because they can relate to it, she calls that “the recognition laugh.”

“When you’re talking about something that people don’t often share with one another — maybe even out of some sort of embarrassment … and everyone starts laughing at it, because they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I have that. Oh my gosh, I did that.’ And then you realize how connected we are,” she said.

“As much as Americans like to believe we’re all so unique — people always go, ‘We’re like snowflakes, no two are alike’ — first of all, who checks the snowflakes? That’s ridiculous. My guess is, many snowflakes are alike … And the same is true for human beings. We have so much more in common than we have differences,” she said.

Poundstone thinks humor’s capacity to bring people together, and to show them how similar they are, is especially important in our politically divided times.

“One of the devices cult leaders and authoritarians use is to convince us, for example, that immigrants are the problem. That’s not a new technique, it’s as old as the hills,” Poundstone said. “And why do they use it? They use it because it works. The idea is to say, ‘Well, these people are so different from us, and they’re the problem.’ So, part of the technique that they use is to convince us that we do not have more in common than we have differences.”

The comedian holds President Donald Trump responsible for much of the division in the United States today, and she even spoke at the first No Kings demonstration last summer in Dallas, where she mixed political messaging with stand-up. She was received well, she said, despite her and the crowd’s personal physical discomfort.

“I almost passed out, it was so d*** hot,” Poundstone said. 

More than twice as many protesters showed up at the rally than organizers expected, and they ran out of water. Poundstone was also wearing one of her signature patterned suits.

“I decided to wear a suit to give them ‘the deluxe,’” she said. It was a sartorial choice that, in the Dallas summer heat, said she regretted.

Poundstone never set out to become a political comedian, she said, but politics has increasingly found its way into her comedy.

“I talk about politics onstage, because, again, my act is autobiographical, in the main. I talk about what I’m doing and thinking,” she said. “And these days, I’m doing and thinking a lot about our democracy, and the situation that we’re in.”

But due to her unpredictable, extemporaneous style, she’s just as likely to talk about food, kids or cats.

“I like everything to come from this fertile ground, where anything could happen,” she said.

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at @loganroycebeitmen.