Groundbreaking stand-up comedian Tig Notaro performs in Tampa

Until five years ago, Tig Notaro was just one of dozens of fairly successful comedians who tour comedy clubs and do pretty well for themselves.

Then in August 2012, she delivered one of the most famous stand-up comedy routines of recent years, discussing from the stage her recent cancer diagnosis and a couple of other simultaneous personal tragedies. The audio from that show reportedly outsold a Kiss album that was released the same week.

Notaro will perform Friday in Tampa. She’ll be at Ferguson Hall, the second-largest theater at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts.

Her work has become more personal since her cancer diagnosis, but it’s still very, very funny. And although she occasionally talks about her cancer openly in her act (there’s a famous piece in which she takes off her shirt onstage, an especially courageous act for someone who has had a double mastectomy), she also offers a lot of observational humor and has an ongoing thread about her many chance meetings with ’80s singer Taylor Dayne.

“Rolling Stone” named Notaro one of the 50 best stand-up comics of all-time.

Besides performing her stand-up, Notaro stars on the semi-autobiographical Amazon hit series “One Mississippi,” which she also writes and produces. She garnered Emmy Award and Grammy Award nominations for her HBO special “Boyish Girl Interrupted” and a GLAAD Award nomination for her Netflix documentary “Tig.”

Details: 8 p.m. June 16, Ferguson Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. $27.50-$39.50 813-229-7827, strazcenter.org.

This story was originally published June 13, 2017 at 9:24 AM with the headline "Groundbreaking stand-up comedian Tig Notaro performs in Tampa."