This interview took place on October 1, 2015, for Portland Magazine in Portland, Maine prior to Ms. Poundstone’s show at Joanthan’s in Ogunquit, Maine on November 28th, 2015.
Nina: I should let you know, I lost my sight ten years ago, and I also have a hearing loss. I guess you could say I am a “deaf blind journalist.” Let me ask, when you do your shows, and there are sightless people there, how would you describe yourself? How would you describe yourself to me?
Paula: Well, ahh I have unkempt hair. It’s brown, it’s usually wet when I go on stage because I take a shower just before I go on and I can’t blow dry my hair. I can’t, I am not skilled at it, for one thing. But for another, if I hold my hands over my head for that long, I’ll feel faint. So I generally speaking, usually go on with soaking wet hair and it sort of evolves throughout the evening, and by the end of the night, it’s kind of clumped. Yeah, and ahh let’s see, what else… You know, I have blue eyes that are usually red now, because I have Glaucoma and I take those stupid drops.
Nina: You have Glaucoma, you said?
Paula: I do, and it makes your eyes red, the drops make your eyes red. And ahh I’m in the midst of a bunch of eye stuff now. I have kind of high cheek bones… ahh, my head’s sort of squaring out over the years. Yeah, I have high cheek bones, I’m about five seven, but I have terrible posture, so I look shorter.
Nina: Well, we all have bone density issues after 50…
Paula: Yeah, well I could be shrinking a bit, but I also sort of do have terrible posture. I try to remember not to, but I do. I usually wear a big kind of zoot suit and pointy black and white shoes.
Nina: Pointy black and white shoes?
Paula: Yep, usually.
Nina: Pretty cool, ok, so that sounds like a good description. My next question is, when you are in New England, do you have a favorite place that you go to?
Paula: Well I have a… the family that I lived with when I was a teenager, some of them live in Manchester, Mass.
Nina: Are you originally from the New England area?
Paula: I am, I was raised in Sudbury.
Nina: Oh my goodness, that’s twenty minutes from Belmont.
Paula: Yeah! I think we used to play you guys in basketball. I’m sure that I did poorly in your gym once. Umm, yeah so, well I mean I love Massachusetts, it’s a great state.
Nina: How long have you lived in Massachusetts?
Paula: Ah, ohh, let’s see, about eighteen years, eighteen or nineteen, not sure.
Nina: At what age did you know that you were going to become a comedian? When did you first feel that you had it in you to do it, and that you had a gift of humor? Do you feel you got that genetically on either side of your family? Your parents, maternal? Paternal? Do you have any opinion on that?
Paula: Oh yeah, I do, there’s a book called Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwell, where he dispels the myth of talent, and I would really have to agree with Malcolm Gladwell. You know I’m not sure there’s such a thing as talent exactly. You get to be good at something, you know, it’s because you love it, you know because it’s not just practice, it’s a particular attitude, you know, but it’s also access and opportunity, and he says ten thousand hours practice to be an expert at something. I don’t know if I have ten thousand hours on stage, I would doubt it, because I’m not putting in eight hours a day on the stage, or ten or whatever, so I don’t know if I practiced enough in that regard. I was lucky enough to be living in Boston in 1977 when the stand-up comedy renaissance took place…the scene started up and I kind of jumped in and joined up with that. You know, there were places to go work out in and I could go get books; there weren’t a lot of us performing at that time.
Nina: Was a lot of it what you feel you had naturally?
Paula: Well, I mean I always loved making people laugh. The first sentence of the last paragraph of the summary letter which I wrote in lieu of a report card in kindergarten, written by my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bump (sic?) in May of 1965, said that I have enjoyed many of Paula’s humorous comments about out activities. So at least in Mrs. Bump’s eyes I was what I aspired to very early on.
Nina: Interesting, and did you have a lot of support continuously after that in your desire to become a comedian?
Paula: Not exactly, I started when I was nineteen, and people used to say to me,” Well, what do your parents think? Do your parents like it that you’re a stand-up comic?” And I used to say, “I have no idea, I didn’t ask them.”
Nina: Well, you obviously had an inner vision about what you wanted. Where do you feel you found your strength and you courage to be up there, doing what you’re doing, at a young age and now? And continuously?
Paula: Well, the great thing about stand-up comedy is it’s an endorphin producer, both for the audience and the performer. So you literally get a chemical boost from doing it. And it’s something that I had thought that I would like, and boy once I did it, once you tasted that elixir, you know, it’s hard to go back. I think that no matter what… every now and then I’ll think, boy I used to work with some guy and people are like “he’s not around anymore,” and then I see his name on an executive producer credit on a television show or something, and maybe some day I’ll have some petty role in television, I don’t know, maybe… but I think that I am a stand-up comic through and through.
Nina: And what about your connection with Maine? I know you have a show coming up in November. What’s your connection with Jonathan’s, for example? I know you have a show in November on the 28th.
Paula: Yeah, I did Jonathan’s for the first time, gee, my friend might have been… I was pretty young… like ten years ago or something. It was a great venue, and he is just a salt of the earth maniac, just a great guy. He’s funny and practical, and Jonathan’s itself has been there for a very long time, it’s a family owned business. It’s been there a long long time, and ahh it has great food and a lovely atmosphere and I don’t know at what point he started bringing in performers, he mostly has music, and then occasionally he’ll have somebody like myself. But you know, the first time he picked me up at the airport I fell in love with him the minute I met him. He has a farm that I used to stay at the first time I worked for him and I said, “Hey, if I come back and work for you again, um, can I bring my son so he can go to your farm?” Which I did for years, and then while we were on vacation in Massachusetts, I brought my daughters up, and he’s a really great guy…
Nina: And so on the farm, were you tending to the animals?
Paula: Oh just hanging out. You know, it’s just lovely, and the thing is the Maine crowds are so much fun to work to; the combination of the two makes it one of my favorite jobs that I do all year. I always say when I work in Maine, I look out over a sea of gray hair sometimes, and it’s not because they are any older than the people that I work to in other venues in other states, but I think that people for the most part don’t dye their hair. And so, there’s something about them that’s very real. And I don’t dye mine often enough, so there’s always a gray streak down the middle, I’m not fooling anybody.
Nina: After all the experiences you’ve had over the past decade, can you mention one highlight so far that you’re quite proud of? One experience that you’d like to mention? Paula: Well, this last year, I voiced a character in the movie Inside Out from Pixar, it was a budget-less kind of experience, because I love Pixar. They are a remarkably brilliant movie making company, and ahh… I got to work with Pete Doctor, who is a genius, he’s a writer and director. And yeah, it was pretty delightful.
Nina: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? Could you mention anything on that?
Paula: I am an atheist, I am a devout atheist. Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that if you’re not Catholic or Christian or Jewish or a Muslim or whatever, is that your beliefs are not strong or important to you. And ahh…I feel as strongly about atheism as somebody else might feel about Catholicism. I believe in you, I believe in us, and that alone. I don’t need a God illusion to tell me that it’s important to take care of one another and to take care of the earth. I thought the Pope’s visit was lovely, I don’t have a bad thing to say about it, but I think it’s a little embarrassing that we need a Pope to come over from Italy to tell our Congress that we’re supposed to work together to take care of one another and take care of the earth. I assumed they knew that already. I mean, if they didn’t, then that’s an American tragedy.
Nina: How do you see yourself ten years from now? What do you hope to accomplish within the next ten years? What would you like to be happening for yourself?
Paula: Oh, I don’t really know. I mean, I would love at some point to do more comedy acting, but you know what, if I never did anything but what I do right now, I would consider myself the luckiest performer in the entire world. I love my job, it is so much fun. Especially now, when I feel like the entire world is in a mental health crisis, it just feels really great to be a part of why people are having a good time. Certainly it’s a good time for me.
Nina: I love that. I think that’s pretty promising, pretty optimistic. And I think that sums up my questions for you today. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Oh, actually, I have one quick question. Out of the four seasons in New England, what would you consider a favorite season?
Paula: Oh, my favorite season has always been fall.
Nina: Oh, nice! It’s October 1st today, it’s funny that you should say that.
Paula: Yeah, it’s a beautiful time of the year. It’s comfortable, you know, you’re not trying to get in or out of the heat or cold, so it’s just quite comfortable in the fall. You know, it’s the leaves and all of that, but also for me, fall is really the beginning of the year. People say it’s January 1st, but in truth, back to school season dominates the beginning of the year even when you’re not a student anymore.
Nina: And also, one last thing, I would love to see your show in November, I would love to meet you.
Paula: Oh, you know, after my show I come out and take pictures and hug people and talk and hang out. And I don’t do it every time, but I do it most of the time, and I do it at Jonathan’s.
— Nina Livingstone is a Boston-based freelance writer and novelist.
Contact: nina@destinationmirth.com
