Poundstone wants to create kids-in-the-basement atmosphere
Paula Poundstone bets a lot of us remember this from our childhoods: Your family is having a dinner party with friends.
The adults retire for coffee and conversation, and the kids are kicked downstairs.
“But we would just have the best time down there,” Poundstone says. “I want (my performances) to feel like being in that basement, where all the adults are upstairs somewhere and we’re dodging them.”
While she’s certainly moved on to larger venues than that basement — Poundstone plays the Pikes Peak Center on Thursday — she’s still improvising her fun, never taking herself too seriously.
Famous for her stand-up as well as her role as a panelist on NPR’s weekly news quiz show, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” the comedian is known for her vibrant spontaneity and audience interaction, as if she and her audience together were weaving an evening of laughs.
“Generally speaking, there is just a magic that emanates from a group of people that come out to laugh for the evening,” Poundstone says.
“My favorite part of the night is just talking to the audience. I find really great stuff unfolds. I can almost predict that it will anymore.”
For those familiar with her “Wait Wait” radio performances, the live stand-up Poundstone will play differently.
Rather than crack jokes solely about the news, she riffs on a wide range of topics, including more about her personal life, her three children — who “have a plan to drive me into the mulch pile” — and their houseful of pets, including more than a dozen cats, a pony or two, and a bearded dragon lizard.
“It’s like a really bad, unprofitable farm every day, with hours of cleaning waste products,” she says.
Traveling to do live performances does take her away from that family she loves, but, “I’m delighted and thrilled to have a job, and it’s the best job in the whole world,” she says. “I really do have the greatest audiences there are. They’re happy and responsive — not cynical — and fun.”
Poundstone’s comedic style is loping and conversational, and for most shows, her only props are a stool and a can of Diet Pepsi. She likens her material to the T-shirt pile in your closet: She’s got stacks and stacks of ideas and jokes; there are usually a few at the surface, depending on the wash, and the rest are buried.
“What you see is what you get. I’m the real deal and I don’t feel bad about that,” Poundstone says.
“There are nights I talk a lot about politics because it’s on my mind, and there are other nights I don’t.”
Of course, on “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” politics and current events are the main ingredients for panelists’ jokes, and Poundstone didn’t become one of the show’s most popular panelists by avoiding the news entirely.
“I think people really want to pay attention to what’s going on in the world, and I also think they have a strong desire to mock it,” she says, explaining the radio quiz’s fan following.
“It’s like Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar. It’s hard to take without cutting it with something.”
Paula Poundstone stand-up
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave.
Tickets: $25; pikespeakcenter.com or 576-2626
