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Performing Arts Series: Poundstone Is Comedic GemPrint OptionsMore InformationRelated Information |
Performing Arts Series: Poundstone Is Comedic Gem
Johnson County Community College
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Armed with nothing but a stool, a microphone and a can of Diet Pepsi, Paula Poundstone will present her one-woman comedy show filled with razor-sharp wit and audience interaction at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in Yardley Hall of the Carlsen Center, Johnson County Community College.
Poundstone’s humor and spontaneity have made her one of the most popular panelists on NPR’s weekly news quiz show, Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me. Her commentaries can be heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and read on the Huffington Post and its comedy site 23/6.
Poundstone grew up in Sudbury, Mass., and by age 19 was traveling on a Greyhound bus across the country – stopping at open mic nights in comedy clubs.
In 1979 Poundstone began nurturing her stand-up comedy talent as part of the Boston comedy scene, then moved to San Francisco. By 1990 she’d relocated to Los Angeles where she starred in several comedy specials for HBO, as well as appeared on Saturday Night Live when friend and mentor Robin Williams hosted the show. Her first one-hour HBO special, Cats, Cops, and Stuff, made Poundstone the first woman to ever receive the Cable ACE for best Stand-up Comedy Special. She also starred in a self-titled talk show series for HBO (for which she won her second Cable ACE Award for Best Program Interviewer.)
In 1992, looking for a more real connection with the audience, Poundstone forsook what she considered the ‘staid’ five-minute stand-up set on late-night talk-shows to file memorable field commentary of the presidential election for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. This led to her own show on ABC, The Paula Poundstone Show.
By the mid-90s, Poundstone had shifted her performances from comedy clubs to performing arts centers where her interactions with the crowd became legendary. In 1996, Paula taped her second hour-special for HBO, Paula Poundstone Goes to Harvard, the first time the elite university ever allowed its name to be used in the title of a television show.
Poundstone’s off-kilter sensibility and impeccable timing makes her a perfect fit for Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me, for which she has been a regular panelist for seven years. The show is broadcast in 50 states and gives Poundstone a chance to match wits with some of today’s leading pundits. In 2009, she released her first book, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, and released a first CD, HEART JOKES: Paula Tells Them in Maine.
Poundstone has made frequent TV appearances on all the major talk shows including Letterman, Leno, Craig Ferguson and Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. She is the voice of Judge Stone on ABC’s Saturday morning Science Court aka Squigglevision and “Paula,” the mom in Cartoon Network’s Home Movies.
An avid reader and author, Poundstone was recently named the national spokesperson for Friends of Libraries U.S.A. She began fostering children in the early 1990s, and went on to become a parent to three children of her own, Toshia 17, Allison 14, and Thomas E., 10. The family lives in Santa Monica, Calif.
Tickets for Paula Poundstone are $40 and $30, available by calling the Performing Arts Series box office at 913-469-4445 or online at www.jccc.edu/TheSeries.
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