Tig Notaro Discusses Her Westhampton Beach Show, Star Trek & More

Tig Notaro is having a moment. The stand-up comedian, actress, podcaster and recently feted film producer’s name was on everyone’s lips at Sundance Film Festival this winter thanks to her new documentary Come See Me in the Good Light winning the Festival Favorite Award, she’s reprising her popular Star Trek role in a new series, and now she’s bringing her excellent standup comedy to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Sunday, August 17.

Notaro has created multiple specials of her incisive standup, such as Drawn, Happy to Be Here, Boyish Girl Interrupted and Hello Again, as well as her Tig Notaro – Live album, recorded four days after she was diagnosed with breast cancer — each exploring her life and the bumps and contradictions along the way. She’s not currently on tour, but the comedian says this Westhampton Beach show was an offer that fit her plans this season.

“I’m on summer vacation with my family right now, and we’re going to New York, and just figured, because we were headed up that way, it made sense. And we had enjoyed our trip to the Hamptons before,” Notaro says, pointing out that she probably won’t begin a full-fledged comedy tour until February 2026. “I’m doing (the Westhampton Beach) show, and then I’m also doing a couple of shows in P-Town, but aside from that, I’m not working until I go back to Toronto to start filming Star Trek.”

After becoming a fan favorite as engineer Jett Reno in Seasons 2-5 of Star Trek: Discovery, Notaro is returning to the role in a brand-new series. “This is a new iteration. It’s called Starfleet Academy, and it’s starting Holly Hunter, and Paul Giamatti is the bad guy,” Notaro shares. “So we did Season 1 already, and I’m going back to do Season 2, but it hasn’t aired yet,” she adds, noting that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will debut on Paramount+ at some point between now and in 2026, and “It looks really good.”

While she’s found a home in the Star Trek world, Notaro admits it was outside her wheelhouse initially, and the heavily fan-driven genre is still new for her. “It was not a world that I thought I was going to end up in, but I’ve really enjoyed it, and I feel proud to be a part of it,” she says. “As far as the fans, it’s not really in my day to day. I go in and film the TV show and then go home. I’ve only been to one Star Trek convention, and I did stand up there, which was an interesting situation, but I also met the fans briefly after, and everybody was very nice,” Notaro continues. But I’ve never been lodged in that world — it’s really just been a job that I do, and then I’ve made some really great friends on the show, so that’s what it’s been more of for me. I’m certainly not William Shatner in that world… He’s like, 95 years old, and he jets off to conferences all around the world every weekend. It’s crazy.”

In addition to the Star Trek project, Notaro produced the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light about one of her friends, and it is getting quite a lot of buzz since winning the top audience award at Sundance. The film is about poets and lovers Megan Falley and Andrea Gibson (named Colorado’s Poet Laureate in 2023) as they cope with Gibson’s terminal cancer with humor and grace.

“It won the entire Sundance Film Festival this year out of documentary and scripted — everything. It did really well. It was purchased by Apple, and it’ll be premiering (on AppleTV+) in the fall,” Notaro says. “That’s big deal in my life right now, and it’s going to all the different film festivals and doing so well. It’s crazy,” she adds, acknowledging that Come See Me in the Good Light is sad but also full of humor. “You’ll find both in the film, but it’s really beautiful, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of in my entire career.”

New fans looking to get a better idea of Notaro’s body of work will also enjoy her hit Prime Video series One Mississippi, and her roles on Army of the Dead, Star Wars’ Young Jedi Adventures and Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, to name a few. And she cohosts the “Handsome” podcast with fellow comics Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin.

As far as the Hamptons goes, Notaro says she and her wife Stephanie Allynne are keeping things loose for their upcoming visit. “We’re open to whatever. You know, we’ve gone out on boats and shopped, and rented a house and just gone to good restaurants and whatever. We’re definitely still in exploratory mode. I’m psyched.”

Get tickets and info about Notaro’s Westhampton Beach Performing Arts show at whbpac.org. Read 10 Questions with Tig Notaro on DansPapers.com.