Comedian Tig Notaro comes to the Vilar Tuesday

If you’re tired of pandemic and COVID-19 jokes, you’re in luck: Though Tig Notaro calls her tour “Hello Again,” it’s not because of pandemic shutdowns. In fact, she wrote most of the material for Tuesday’s show at the Vilar Center before the world crashed.

“There’s a very specific and fun reason it’s called that, beyond coming back after the pandemic — it’s a big moment of the night,” Notaro said, and that’s all she’ll say about that, until Tuesday.

The Emmy-and-Grammy-nominated stand-up comedian, writer, radio contributor, podcaster and actor has been working on a new role in a prominent television show, which she can’t yet make public, but if it’s anything like what she’s been up to, we’re in for a treat.

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In addition to hitting the talk show circuit and being named one of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time by Rolling Stone, she has written and starred in the groundbreaking and award-nominated Amazon series “One Mississippi” and just released her second HBO special, “Tig Notaro: Drawn.” She and her wife and writing partner, Stephanie Allynne, sold their screenplay, “First Ladies,” to Netflix, with Jennifer Aniston attached to star as the first female president of the U.S., and Notaro as the first lady. She also co-directed the feature film “Am I OK?” with Allynne, which debuted at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and will air on HBO Max later this year. Currently, she hosts the critically acclaimed advice podcast “Don’t Ask Tig” and co-hosts the comedic documentary film podcast “Tig and Cheryl: True Story.”

Not bad for a high school dropout, huh? Sure, she failed three grades in high school, but it served her well. While she entertained her classmates “rather than entertaining the notion of a successful academic career,” she developed skills as a comedian. The one-liners she started with eventually evolved into longer, and more personal stories.

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“I was raised around really funny, interesting characters. It was just always a part of my life and something I always wanted to do,” she said. “As I got more experienced, I started to feel like I wanted to change and do different things. I think it’s always important to listen to that in yourself if you want to switch and do different things. It’s made me also enjoy doing comedy for 25 years, because sometimes, comedians back themselves into a style, but you can always change it up.”

Her observational, personal slant includes a swirl of “utter nonsense,” she said, adding that she prefers audiences arrive without preconceived notions. But she will say her shows are family-friendly, “unless you have a really uptight family.”

Hers clearly wasn’t too uptight: On her website, she describes how, on “hot summer days, her artistic and free-spirited mother would feed the children all three meals at once, then hose down their diapered bodies in highchairs to cut back on cooking and cleaning, leaving more time for her to paint donkeys on the outside of their house. The family eventually moved to Texas, where they gained a stepfather who provided structure and, alas, a house with no donkeys painted on the walls.”

That pretty much sums it up, right?