Boyish Girl Interrupted

The image of Tig Notaro is often tied to her 2012 “Live” set, where she walked on stage days after a breast cancer diagnosis and announced it to the crowd. She works to prove she is, as she repeatedly tells the audience, just a person. The peak of this transition occurs when Notaro, mid-anecdote about a baffling TSA pat-down, casually removes her shirt. Showing her double-mastectomy scars, she goes on to perform the final third of the hour entirely topless, barely acknowledging the nudity. It is a striking visual moment that manages to be both a triumphant assertion of survival and a joke about the absurdity of a half-naked comic pacing the stage.

Filmed at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston and released on HBO in August 2015, the special caught Notaro at a professional high. She had spent the previous three years managing a whirlwind of tragic headlines, critical acclaim, and multiple documentary projects. Here, her comedy leans heavily into the playful, deadpan silliness that defined her early career before her illness. She breaks down the various types of audience laugh noises, such as the post-giggle sigh, and acts out a painstaking, slow-burn story about chasing a Santa Claus lookalike in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Much of the set is anchored by her slow, deliberate pacing. In a centerpiece routine about bombing 14 straight shows in Las Vegas, she mimes eating an imaginary ice cream cone, deliberately keeping the microphone away from her face to heighten the physical absurdity. Other routines focus on the logistics of getting buried next to her fiancée and the culture clash of introducing her partner to her Southern family. The special received wide acclaim, earning an Emmy nomination for writing, while its subsequent audio release picked up a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album.