Live

Tig Notaro walks on stage, takes the microphone, and greets the crowd with, “Hello. Good evening, hello. I have cancer”. She is not setting up a misdirection. She is delivering the facts of her actual life, having just been diagnosed with stage two breast cancer days prior. The resulting half-hour set isn’t polished material, but a working comic using a club stage to process an almost cartoonish string of personal catastrophes in real time.

Recorded as an audio-only set at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles in August 2012, Live captures a 41-year-old Notaro at the absolute bottom. In the four months leading up to the recording, she contracted a life-threatening intestinal infection, went through a breakup, and lost her mother in a freak accident. The audio preserves the ambient tension of a room full of people realizing the performer isn’t doing a bit. The crowd gasps, cries, and laughs as she dryly details the physical reality of her diagnosis.

At one point, she attempts to deliver a standard piece of observational comedy she had planned to test out before her life fell apart, a gentle joke about a bee passing her in traffic. The contrast between her normal deadpan whimsy and the looming specter of a severe illness makes the old material sound completely alien.

Louis C.K. watched the performance from the audience and convinced Notaro to release the audio. Initially sold exclusively on his website for five dollars, the recording sold over 60,000 copies in a week and became a massive commercial success.