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Promotional art for Drawn
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Prime Video

Drawn

Tig Notaro

HBO · 2021 · 52 min

A fully animated stand-up set built from years of live audio.

The performance relies entirely on audio from her sets at the Largo in Los Angeles, which is matched to a patchwork of animation styles. It’s a risk that works because her pacing is famously deliberate, giving the animators at Six Point Harness plenty of silence and vocal shifts to play with. When she recounts proposing to her wife Stephanie Allynne while suffering from internal bleeding and perched on a hospital bedpan, the animation takes a potentially grim medical nightmare and turns it into a vivid, weirdly sweet cartoon.

The HBO special, released in July 2021, arrived at a busy moment in Notaro’s career. She had just finished digitally replacing another actor in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead and was recurring on Star Trek: Discovery. Because the pandemic had kept her off physical stages, director Greg Franklin helped her construct this set from roughly 48 hours of recorded audio compiled from her regular shows at the Largo.

Rather than sticking to a single visual style, the special jumps between claymation, classic Sunday-strip caricatures, and surreal sketches. The medium allows Notaro to fully visualize her off-the-wall hypotheticals, like a breakdown of the gender-neutral anatomy of the Kool-Aid Man or her drug-addled state following a wisdom tooth extraction. It is a looser, sillier outing than her career-defining 2012 set, concluding with a chaotic, Dolly Parton-soundtracked road trip that the animation is able to push into pure absurdity.

The set list

7 bits

  1. Contemplating the daily life and gender of the Kool-Aid Man.

    Imaginatively depicting the mascot crouching behind fences waiting to break through walls, while questioning why an inanimate pitcher of Kool-Aid is presumed to be male.

  2. Having wisdom teeth extracted and dealing with an unhelpful ex-girlfriend.

    Recounting stumbling through an apartment complex in a medicated daze to find a neighbor, accosting a woman in a bikini by the pool, visualised in a 1960s-1970s illustration aesthetic.

  3. Repeatedly failing to meet fellow comedian Jenny Slate for tea.

    Detailing how Slate unintentionally checked in at the worst moments of Notaro's cascading health emergencies, depicted via claymation-style visual reactions.

  4. Having Eddie Van Halen as an imaginary childhood companion.

    A psychedelic, fantastical sequence showing Van Halen playing flamboyant guitar riffs alongside young Tig playing soccer.

  5. Proposing to her partner from a hospital bed amid severe internal bleeding.

    Framing intense physical pain as the ideal backdrop for a romantic milestone, with internal agony visualized as tiny demons causing chaos in her abdomen.

  6. An unexpected spider dropping from the ceiling onto the stage during a set.

    Impromptu crowd interaction and ad-libbed reaction to the real-life insect, turned into an animated character vignette.

  7. The closer (spoiler). Show it

    A road trip fantasy involving Dolly Parton. closer

    Animated in a sleek CGI style that culminates in a looped recording of Parton's song 'Two Doors Down'.

How it plays

Tone
Deadpan, whimsical, absurdist, and wry, blending bodily misfortune with lighthearted silliness.
On stage
Preternaturally laid-back, deadpan, self-consciously cool, and wryly amused narrator delivering absurd stories with low-key restraint.
Pace
Deliberate, patient tempo with a calm monotone delivery, unafraid to let awkward pauses hang to build comedic tension.
About
bodily health crises and medical procedures, awkward social interactions, childhood memories, pop culture figures, gender identity assumptions

What the critics said

Critically praised as an innovative, delightful visual experiment that skillfully complements Notaro's calm, deadpan delivery and expands her material through diverse animation styles.

In the room: An animated rendering of a comedy club audience reacting with genuine laughter sourced from live multi-track venue recordings.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: nytimes.com, cartoonbrew.com, themoviedb.org, hbomax.com, vulture.com, pastemagazine.com, imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, thequeerreview.com, theringer.com.

Backstory

Conceived and greenlit just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, the special was assembled from archival live club audio and produced as the first fully animated stand-up comedy special.

Details

Released
Taped
Largo, Los Angeles
Runtime
52 min
Where
HBO
Director
Greg Franklin
Honors
1 Nomination
Topics
Before
Happy To Be Here (2018)
After
Hello Again (2024)

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