Paula Poundstone brings interactive standup comedy to Beaver Creek

Known for her observational wit and humor, Paula Poundstone’s stand-up relies more on audience interaction throughout the evening than it does a set “act.”

She talks about her coping mechanisms of dealing with the stress of travel.

“Everybody makes fun of comics for making jokes about airplanes, but it’s a third of our lives, in fairness,” she said.

Still, her favorite part of the show stems from simply talking to the audience, from the time-honored “Where are you from, and what do you do” and beyond, as people’s mini-biographies emerge.

“It invites conversation, and that will never be duplicated. That’s unique just to that night,” she said, adding that certain topics often lead her to tell a story from her life experience that she might otherwise not have thought of delivering on stage.

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While some might think it’s her way of keeping every gig fresh — and, in a way, it is — the style mostly stems from her poor memory.

“At first, I thought that was a horrible thing, but at some point relatively early on — within my first two years — I figured out that that was the fun part. (Before that) I’d come off stage, and I would be beating myself up mentally for not remembering stuff. One night, I took a moment (and realized) the best part was the part where I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, so I started allowing myself to do that, and sometimes even encouraging myself to do that, and it seems to work pretty good,” she said.

It has worked out so well that she became the first female comic to host the White House Correspondents Dinner under President George Bush Sr. She has also stacked up a host of accolades, from performing at the 93^rd Emmy Awards to providing voiceovers for “Inside Out” and “Inside Out 2,” starring in two television series donning her name and several documentaries, writing books, being a regular panelist on National Public Radio’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” and she hosting her own weekly podcast, “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.”

Her comedy resonates because, as she points out: Every human being wants to feel like they belong. By sharing her experiences, she voices what others feel but may not have spoken — or thought they were alone in feeling.

“When you’re a part of a live audience, and you’re watching something or listening to something, whether it’s a concert or a dance show or a circus act or a scary movie, when you have the same emotional reaction as everyone else in the room, there’s something about it that is so reassuring. You’re all like: I’m a human being. This is the way human beings react. Even if you don’t go through the steps of saying that to yourself, that’s the effect of it,” she said.

By admitting she doesn’t remember things well, be it a face or name or the next planned story in a set act, she has found solace. And, audience members relate.

“When I get stressed, my memory just goes. Now, in recent years, I’m a mess in terms of memory because of what’s going on in the world,” she said. “I do a couple jokes about my method of coping, and not only do I hear people laughing, but I literally see people nodding and turning to one another.”

She talks about how humans have been under so much stress that the “only industry making out like bandits right now are therapists.”

“One of the things I always try to remind the audience is that they’re not the only ones (struggling and suffering),” she said, referring to the pandemic as just one example. “We were going through the grocery store with masks on, which was appropriate, with arrows telling us we could only go one way. You could see the terrified look in people’s eyes back during that time, and I think a lot of people have forgotten because so many other things have happened since, and we haven’t recovered from the first thing.”

She attributes her success as a comic — female or not — to beginning at age 19 in Boston and continuing on, no matter what.

“The Boston comedy scene was pretty damn misogynistic, and the audiences that attended enjoyed that. I was not the only woman there but one of the very few, and one of the things that I did from the very start was not worry about the fact that I’m a woman,” she said. “If I had made the mistake of saying to myself, ‘well, it’s because I’m a woman that I didn’t get hired,’ that would be a big mistake because I don’t know that for sure … I’ve made so many stupid choices in my life that I’m really surprised at younger me figuring this out when I did, but very early on, I put my head down, and I worked really hard and made myself sort of undeniable to people who might not want me for any number of reasons. And I think that served me well.”

In addition to spending time touring the country and hosting her podcast, she helps Democrats register to vote and protests against Trump, the latter of which she does during rush hour on a major street in Los Angeles by herself.

During her tours, audience members tell her they haven’t laughed that hard in months.

“It’s just uplifting,” she said. “You don’t generally laugh out loud when you’re by yourself. You acknowledge in your head that you thought it was funny, and you might smile, but it’s a great coping mechanism, laughing. It helps your brain, it helps your heart and it strengthens you.”

And that’s why, on social media, she advertises the Vilar show as “a soul-strengthening night of absolute laughter.”