Tig Notaro Essentials

They say that “comedy equals tragedy plus time”, but the story of Tig Notaro poses the question: Why wait? Mere days after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, the then-unheralded comic was onstage, channelling the trauma into a career-making standup set—documented on Live—that introduced the masses to her bone-dry, brutally frank sense of humour. But Notaro can also tease out discomfiting laughs from more mundane everyday inspirations, be it peculiar Spanish-hotel signage (“No Moleste”), Beatles songs (“When I'm 64”) or diarrhoea-afflicted swimmers (“Public Pool”).