SANTA CRUZ — For 45 years, Paula Poundstone has done it all, from voice acting to National Public Radio appearances to hosting her own podcast. However, her main calling has long been in stand-up comedy, and she is currently on tour throughout the country with a stop at the Rio Theatre on June 15.
Poundstone is thrilled to be back on the road after live performances were canceled during the COVID-19 shutdowns.
“I’m open to the suggestion that I may have whined about travel before COVID,” she said. “(After that) I wasn’t able to work for 15 months. Man, you could put me in the overhead compartment now! I don’t care. Travel is a slight inconvenience as opposed to not being able to be with audiences.”
In fact, Poundstone learned how much the experience of seeing something live — whether a stand-up comedy set, movie, stage show or concert — is a communal experience.
“Your reaction to what you’re seeing is both influenced and reinforced by the people around you,” she said. “I think it makes us feel more human to know ‘Oh, I’m not the only one that feels that way! I’m not the only one who reacts that way!'”
Poundstone began her career doing open-mic nights at various venues throughout America starting in 1979. One of the fans in attendance during one of her shows in San Francisco was Robin Williams who invited her to perform when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1984, one of the few times a non-host has delivered a stand-up comedy set on the show.
From there, Poundstone became a big name in the stand-up comedy boom of the ’80s, performing sets on Johnny Carson and David Letterman’s shows, having specials on HBO, becoming a frequent Comic Relief performer, winning an American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up Comic and being named as one of Comedy Central’s top 100 stand-up comics in 2004.
Poundstone is particularly proud of her work as a “correspondent” covering both the 1992 Democratic and Republican national conventions for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and backstage at the 1993 Emmys.
“It was my manager Bonnie Burns’ idea,” she said. “They hadn’t done anything like that up until that point, so we sort of crafted it ourselves and that was great.”
Poundstone has also done plenty of voice acting, including as Judge Stone on the ABC Saturday morning edutainment show “Science Court” and Paula Small on the first season of the UPN adult cartoon “Home Movies.” On June 14, she can be seen in the newest Pixar movie “Inside Out 2,” the sequel to the 2015 hit about the personified emotions of a preteen girl. Poundstone will reprise her role as a “forgetter,” a sort-of maintenance worker tasked with removing memories the primary character, Riley, no longer cares about ranging from phone numbers to all her piano lessons except for “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul.”
“I’m such a fan of Pixar,” she said. “There’s nothing that they’ve done that I don’t think is just spectacular.”
Poundstone said it was a joy to reprise her small role, although the recording situation was very different. For the first movie, she recorded her dialogue at Pixar Studios in Emeryville. For the second movie, she recorded her lines at a separate studio in Los Angeles and submitted them to Pixar, which has been common since the pandemic.
“It’s not as much fun not to be standing next to the giant Buzz Lightyear statue, but still it was fun,” she said.
Poundstone has not yet seen the movie in full, but she has heard good things from Pixar insiders.
“If they think it’s good, I’ll think it’s great,” she said.
In addition to her standup, Poundstone has also been a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” and launched her own podcast “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone” in 2017 which she co-hosts with Adam Felber. She said the podcast came from a need to have a project where she had creative control, and performing in a new medium provided her with a different experience.
“I do stuff on the podcast that I would never have the nerve to do standing on stage: silly characters, silly voices,” she said. “I’m too shy to do that on stage.”
Another big difference from performing on stage, Poundstone said, is the lack of instant feedback from audiences.
“You can pretend you’re on a roll,” she said. “It makes me more brave to do more things.”
It also has led to fans of the podcast coming up to Poundstone at shows to present her with gifts like a pin of her character Mrs. Culpepper, a hand puppet of an old Southern lady constantly seeking approval from Felber on her satin dress.
“I just love it that anyone responds to it,” she said. “Because you don’t get that instant feedback, you really don’t know until much later.”
Poundstone and Felber have interviewed a variety of famous people from those in the entertainment industry like Michael McKean from “This is Spinal Tap” and “Better Call Saul,” Jane Lynch from “Glee” and the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest and Betsy Brandt from “Breaking Bad.” Guests have also come from the political realm including former “PBS NewsHour” anchor Judy Woodruff, historian Heather Cox Richardson, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill who testified during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial.
One of the most interesting interviews for Poundstone was with Peter Adams, senior Vice President of education for the News Literacy Project. She said that came about after receiving a sticker for the organization at one of her shows and deciding it would be a good opportunity to talk about media literacy.
“We need every tool we can use to be able to decode what’s real and what’s not real, given how many of us get information of any sort from the internet,” she said.
Poundstone has performed in Santa Cruz many times before and is excited to be back. Although a lot of material is based on talking to audience members and having little biographies emerge from that, she said she may have material on topics like coping with the news, raising a house full of pets and making frequent trips to the veterinarian.
One thing Poundstone especially loves is the interactions with audiences.
“I always love it when people come up to me afterwards and tell me that their face hurts or that their stomach hurts from laughing,” she said. “Somebody tweeted at me the other day and told me their face hurt from laughing, and she was hoping that when she woke up in the morning, it still hurt.”
The show is 8-10 p.m. June 15 at the Rio, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Doors open at 7. Tickets are $30 for general admission and $45 for Gold Circle members. For information, go to RioTheatre.com.