Rochester Fringe headliner Tig Notaro blends the silly and the confessional with her comedy

Comic Tig Notaro once spent the second half of a show topless, a physical statement on the double mastectomy she'd undergone to rid herself of aggressive breast cancer.

Comic Tig Notaro once spent the second half of a show — about 30 minutes by her recollection — masterfully recreating the sound of a clown horn with her own voice.

This may sound like the disparate work of disparate performers, one willing to bare soul and chest, the other steadfastly silly with her audience interaction. But Notaro, considered one of the 50 best comics of all time by "Rolling Stone," navigates both worlds in a way that might seem foreign or forced from others. There is an intimacy to her comedy, a gentleness that is never mean-spirited nor nastily barbed.

She is an accessible Everywoman of humor.

Over a period of months more than a decade ago Notaro survived a life-threatening illness only to be diagnosed with breast cancer; her mother died; and she and her longtime girlfriend split.

Notaro somehow shaped these hardships — called by some media her "no good, very bad year" — into a memorable comedy set. While other comics can transform life's vicissitudes into laughter, few do so with the approachability of Notaro.

"There were so many topics I could relate to — a break up, losing a parent, a cancer diagnosis," Notaro, the featured comic at this year's Rochester Fringe Festival, said in a telephone interview. With her comedy, she said, "I just felt like a vessel.

"My story resonated with so many people," she said. "... I was always pretty straightforward and shared things privately with friends and family and I never fully brought it to stand up until l was very much in that life-or-death kind of time period."

Podcasts, TV and comedy

Had Notaro decided to end her comedy career there, she still would have made an indelible mark.

Instead, she has been busy with immensely popular podcasts, including her latest, "Handsome," with fellow comics Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin.

The podcasting arena allows her a "free-flowing chat," she said. "You just get to swim around in your brain."

Notaro also acts, including her recurring role on "Star Trek: Discovery" as Chief Engineer Jett Reno and her more recent TV job in which she'll appear regularly in the third season of Apple TV+’s "The Morning Show."

Her semi-autobiographical series on Amazon, entitled "One Mississippi" and co-created with Diablo Cody, received critical praise for its honest look at grief. In the series, Notaro, a Mississippi native, returns home after her mother's death and after her own bout with illness.

The show can step deeply into the absurdist, but it is the small moments that poignantly resonate. In the pilot her soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend says, on the eve of the burial of Notaro's mother, that Notaro should get some sleep.

"Tomorrow's a big day," she says.

"Tomorrow is actually a very small day," Notaro answers, "because my mother's not in it. Every day from now on will be smaller."

Ignorant of pop culture

Amid the podcasts, her current comedy tour and her acting, Notaro only recently pitched a game show built around her lack of knowledge of pop culture and its inhabitants.

If successful, the show will be the offspring of her recent Youtube series, "Under a Rock with Tig Notaro," in which she hosts actors, musicians and athletes well known in their respective fields and she tries to guess who they are, based on a series of questions she poses.

"The game show was born out of the fact that I started having all these conversations after 'Under a Rock' aired," she said. "People would say, 'How have you never watched Seinfeld?'

"I started to realize people were acting like it's almost a judgment of your intelligence," she said. "I know a lot of things but ... I don’t follow pop culture."

Notaro is an avid fan of documentaries. And, by the way, she can name the brand of guitars used by different rock stars. How many people can do that? she asked. (A personal aside: I informed her of the House of Guitars for her Rochester visit.)

One of the beauties of "Under a Rock" is the palpable joy from participants. They typically are unsure what to expect, being unaccustomed to being unrecognized, but the conversations take on a free-flowing ease. This is not the canned talk show chatter with the mandatory plug for the latest project. The guests have told her how relaxed and comfortable the segments are.

"I got that feedback all the time because they would comment that on talk shows you're usually not really connecting with the host," Notaro said.

Notaro and her wife have twin boys — something else to keep her busy — and like any good comic she finds humor at home, too. Her wife, actress and writer Stephanie Allynne, once informed her that she should not meow back at the family feline: After all, Notaro could not possibly know what she herself was saying in cat language. This of course became a bit, the impish Notaro again at work.

It is that light-hearted whimsy that is the glue with the multiple sides of Notaro, the confessionally comical and the nonsensically playful.

Notaro does not shy from the difficult, but she mines those moments of pain for humor that most would overlook. In her 2015 documentary, "Knock Knock, It's Tig Notaro," she travels the country, performing in the homes and backyards of fans. Her near-death experience is sometimes on the periphery of the documentary, sometimes at its center.

In the film, she misses a performance because of a trip to the hospital. In another scene, she performs outdoors, with headlights from parked cars providing lighting, and portrays how she imagines an infant would look if taking a shower. And, elsewhere, in the cramped confines of a living room, she thoroughly delights the crowd with, again, the mimicry of a clown horn.

"I really resonate more with the idea of being silly," Notaro admitted.

If you go

Tig Notaro will be the featured comic at the annual Rochester Fringe Festival with a Sept. 16 performance at 8 p.m. at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. Comics Joe Wilson and Madelein Smith will open for Notaro, who will be the first female comic as the Rochester Fringe headliner.

The show will be part of her "Tig Notaro: Hello Again" tour. Tickets can be bought at rochesterfringe.com; at the Eastman Theatre Box Office, 433 East Main St.; and from Eastman Theatre by phone at (585) 274-3000 or online at eastmantheatre.org.

The schedule for the Rochester Fringe Festival, which runs from Sept. 12 through Sept. 23 and includes more than 500 shows, can also be found at rochesterfringe.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Tig Notaro to headline Rochester NY Fringe Festival 2023