4 | Edmonds Center for the Arts | 2011-12 Program
Lily Tomlin opens 2011–12 season at ECA By Katherine Luck
Legendary comedian Lily Tomlin is coming to Edmonds to open ECA’s fifth season with a full arsenal of wit and wisecracks. Loosely based on her stand-up show “Not Playing With a Full Deck,” which Tomlin created for her Las Vegas debut in 2009, her appearance at ECA will feature topical comedy, appearances by classic characters she created for the TV show “Laugh-In,” and plenty of audience interaction. “Largely it’s similar, because I do a lot of characters and use a lot of multimedia. It’s going to be very intimate, and I’ll talk to the audience. I’m going to try to talk about Edmonds if I can,” said Tomlin. At its core, it will be stand-up comedy at its finest. Tomlin has a lot to say about the madness of the modern world. “There’s so much that’s out of whack, you don’t know where to start,” she said. “You might have a line that you think is ‘of the moment’ that has a shelf life. But sometimes it turns out to be funny for two years!” From plumped lips to politics, Tomlin’s live shows take on pop culture with humor that’s both pointed and insightful. “You want to be perceptive. It’s not just to make a joke. You want it to feel like there’s
some kind of illumination behind it. I don’t know what a plain old joke is. I wonder if there’s a joke out there that doesn’t reveal anything?” she said. If nothing else, according to Tomlin, a joke reveals something about the person telling it. This teller of jokes was born in Detroit and grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of one of the city’s most wealthy areas. Although she claims she wasn’t funny as a child, Tomlin said that she “knew who was, and lifted all their material right off the TV screen.” Her favorite performers as a child included Lucille Ball, Imogene Coca, and Jean Carroll, one of the first female stand-up comics ever showcased on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Tomlin made her television debut in 1966 on “The Garry Moore Show,” then was featured several times on “The Merv Griffin Show.” In 1969, she joined the cast of “Laugh-In” and quickly gained a following for her memorable characters, such as Edith Ann, a devilish 6-year-old, and Ernestine, originally an irritable telephone operator. “Ernestine the phone operator has had many different [jobs]. ... [Today], she’s working for a big health insurance corporation and she’s denying everyone,” Tomlin laughed. “She gives everybody a hard time. She can comment on almost everything. … She’s a
communications visionary!” In addition to these popular characters, Tomlin will portray Lud and Marie, Mrs. Beasley, and The World’s Oldest Beauty Expert. Tomlin may have made a name for herself on TV, but it was in films that she honed her comedic chops. She made her screen debut in 1975 as Linnea in Robert Altman’s Nashville, a performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination. Other roles in The Late Show, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, All of Me and Big Business gave her the chance to try out a range of comic styles. In 1980, she joined Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton in Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5. She recalled that she learned from Higgins how to be a better “editor” of her comedy. He taught her that less is sometimes more and to give the audience time to appreciate the joke. During filming, “It’s as if he knew where every laugh would be. He knew his stuff,” she recalled. Recent big and small screen roles have included I Heart Huckabee’s, A Prairie Home Companion, Pink Panther II, the NBC series “The West Wing” and ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.” She’s currently co-starring with Lisa Kudrow in “Web Therapy” on Showtime, where she plays the mother of Kudrow, a therapist who gives three-minute sessions online. “That’s been great fun, because it’s all
Photo courtesy of Tomlin and Wagner Theatricalz
Lily Tomlin as Ernestine.
improv,” she said. You can also see Tomlin on the HBO show “Eastbound & Down,” as well as an episode of “NCIS” airing Oct. 4 on CBS. Even with all her success on television and in Hollywood, simply getting in front of an audience still tickles Tomlin’s fancy. “I just love to perform live on stage. It’s like going on a blind date. The audience knows me better than I know them. It’s just about the fun of making them laugh,” she said. Don’t miss Tomlin in her only West Coast performance of 2011 on Saturday, Oct. 1, at ECA.