Paula Poundstone’s Surprising Audience Interaction Brings Laughs

By Nate Storey

If you’re like me, your only vague recollections of Paula Poundstone are from a childhood when she appeared in kid-friendly media such as Sesame Street and would wear brightly colored pant suits and ties. Given this past, I was surprised at the fact that The Majestic had signed Poundstone to perform for Family Weekend, and in fact, I openly mocked the event, though I was intrigued when I learned that she had since developed into a bit of a political and pop culture humorist and was a panelist on the NPR program Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, and had appeared periodically on shows such as The Tonight Show.

Her performance was not perfect, and is hardly unique or groundbreaking in this day and age, but she did a good job of doing what she does: making people laugh.

One of Poundstone’s specialties is audience interaction, and this was her bread and butter on Saturday. She quizzed students about their majors and was always quick on her feet. Upon finding a woman from her hometown, who seemed to space out whenever Poundstone asked her a question, she capitalized on this by coming back to the woman periodically during the performance. She did this with a number of the other audience members and it created a nice sense of audience participation. The ditzy lady who wouldn’t answer questions was just stupid, it turns out.

Poundstone also included humor concerning the current political situation, including the presidential race, and the economic crisis. In addition to current world, Poundstone revealed herself to be intelligent historically as well, and went on several riffs about such figures as Helen Keller and Beethoven. Beethoven, she said, had been beaten as a child, but this must be overlooked, because, after all, it produced Beethoven. She noted that there had been kids she had known who played instruments who were just “a few whacks” away from being decent.

Another aspect of her talk that was particularly humorous was her bits about her kids, particularly her older daughter who apparently is not the brightest or most hard working student. It struck me how odd it must be to be used for comedic fodder by one’s parent on a stage in front of 100 some strangers.

Poundstone closed the show by talking about how she had OCD, a side effect of which was that she had trouble stopping herself from talking. With that, she thanked the audience, closed her mouth, and left the stage. Not too shabby for someone I remember entertaining puppets on Sesame Street and telling them to go to the library more often.