Comedian, author, actress, interviewer, and commentator Paula Poundstone brings her sharp wit and observational humor to San Antonio’s Charline McCombs Empire Theatre for a one-night gig on October 19.
In addition to stand-up, Poundstone is a panelist on the National Public Radio quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. She contributes commentaries for CBS Sunday Morning and voiced the character “Forgetter Paula” in the film Inside Out, winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Poundstone has written two books, the most recent being, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.
“You know that she is a great comic, the way you know any fine performer when you see one,” columnist Nick Zaino wrote in the Boston Globe. “There’s a disarming ease in her craft, an immediate sense that she’s so quick on her feet you need never worry about the possibility of something going wrong.”
Poundstone has been doing standup for almost 40 years. “My act is largely autobiographical,” she said told Visit Houston in 2015. “When I started out I was talking about bussing table and taking public transportation. Now I’m talking about raising kids and animals and paying enough attention to the news to make an educated decision about who to vote for. It’s not easy.”
There’s no doubt Poundstone has been paying attention to current politics. In an appearance this summer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she offered a metaphor about the current U.S. president. “Electing Trump is to America what beaching themselves is to whales. I just don’t understand it. The trouble is there isn’t another species to push us back into the water.”
When she first started performing, many of Poundstone’s fans speculated she was lesbian, based on her menswear-styled wardrobe. She revealed she was asexual in a 2013 interview with Edge Media. “Well, it is hard to say a lot more about being asexual. I don’t like sex. Therefore, I don’t have sex. It frees up time, but that’s not by design, it’s just a bonus,” she explained.
Poundstone told Pride Source she experimented with sex early on, enough to know it wasn’t for her. “Sometimes I marvel at the rest of you; I think, ‘Wow, they must have nothing else going on in their lives.'”
Paula Poundstone at the Charlene McCombs Empire Theater, Friday, October 19 at 8 p.m. Tickets $29.50 – $65 available at the Majestic – Empire box office and at this link.
