Paula Poundstone brings her unscripted comedy back to Vashon

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Paula Poundstone doesn’t really do the same show twice. That may be one reason Vashon keeps asking her back.

The veteran comedian will return to Vashon Center for the Arts on March 27 for a sold-out performance, bringing with her the loose, conversational style that has defined a comedy career spanning more than four decades.

“I don’t really have an act per se,” she said in a recent interview.

Instead, she describes what happens onstage as conversation — not “crowd work,” a term she finds odd, but something looser and more human.

She talks to people. She talks about what is happening in the room, what is happening in the world and what is rattling around in her head that day. She follows tangents. She doubles back. She remembers old bits. She invents new ones.

That spontaneity has become her trademark.

Poundstone, a regular panelist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” and host of the podcast “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone,” said her style grew partly out of necessity.

When she began performing at 19, she would memorize her material, step onstage and promptly forget it. So she started talking to the audience instead. Over time, she realized those unscripted moments were often the strongest parts of the show.

“I was forever writing in the beginning how awful it was that I couldn’t remember what I was doing,” she said, recalling how, at 19, she carried a folder and wrote notes to herself after every set. “And I don’t know at what point … it dawned on me that those moments where I didn’t know what I was doing were the best moments of the show.”

Now, after 46 years in comedy, she says the inside of her brain feels like one of those arcade booths where paper money whips through the air and you grab what you can.

“Some nights I grab this, and other nights I grab that,” she said. “And yet, having said that, probably a third of any given night is unique just to that night, and it’s stuff I never said before and never will say again.”

That one-night-only feeling may help explain why her Vashon appearances have become such a draw.

Poundstone said she loves returning to the island, even if she initially had to double-check her calendar to remember when exactly she was coming. She recalled past visits fondly — especially the rare chance to stay long enough to actually see the place, and one especially memorable stop at Snapdragon Bakery.

More specifically, she remembers pastries “the size of your face” and one enormous danish or cinnamon roll that made a lasting impression.

Poundstone said she also appreciates Vashon audiences, describing them as warm, engaged and game for the kind of back-and-forth that fuels her comedy. As she chats with audience members about where they live or what they do for work, local quirks often rise to the surface.

Her comedy is built around daily life, aging, parenting, pets and forgetfulness. One recurring subject is her long-running struggle with memory, which she mines for jokes about everything from driving past her own house to putting reminder signs in every room to help her remember why she walked in.

But these days, politics inevitably enters the mix too.

Poundstone said her material is still far from all-political, but national events have become impossible for her to ignore.

“My act is largely autobiographical, and that is what I’m doing and thinking about during my regular days,” she said. “I can hardly think about anything else but politics, because we’re hanging by a thread.”

Offstage, she has leaned even more directly into political commentary, posting daily “Hey Donald Trump” videos and a separate countdown series leading up to the Nov. 3 midterm elections, each one urging viewers to take a concrete action — calling senators, reading about major policy proposals or educating themselves on the political figures she believes are shaping the country.

“I try to give people something they can do every single day, so that they’re not just worrying,” she said. “Because people think worrying is helping. It’s not helping at all.”

She has even added a physical bit to the routine: one daily jump on a pogo stick for every day until Democrats reclaim the House and Senate. At the time of the interview, she said she had done 59.

Still, Poundstone resists packaging herself too neatly, whether politically or artistically. She said a former publicist once insisted she needed a tour name, only for every interviewer to then ask what the tour was “about.” The answer, she said, was that it wasn’t about anything beyond the fact that she was out performing.

That refusal to flatten herself into a concept may be part of why she still feels fresh after decades in comedy.

Poundstone remains, at once, highly recognizable and hard to pin down: smart, improvisational, a little chaotic, deeply verbal and always ready to chase a tangent if it leads somewhere funny. Her résumé includes HBO specials, books, a long run as an NPR favorite, voice work in “Inside Out” and “Inside Out 2,” and the distinction of being the first female comic to perform at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

But accolades aside, her most reliable subject is still the same one it has always been: human behavior, in all its anxious, repetitive absurdity.

Poundstone will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 27, at Vashon Center for the Arts. The show is sold out, but people can join the waitlist by calling the VCA box office at 206-259-3007.

For those without tickets, Poundstone suggested another route: her podcast, “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone,” and her social media videos, including the “Hey Donald Trump” series.