Chonda Pierce is the best-selling female comedian in history. Its all right if you don’t know the name; she didn’t rise on the standard stand-up comedy stages. She’s a Christian comic who wouldn’t work in nightclubs. Instead, she has played many churches and theaters, to a primarily female audience. And her success has been a surprise.
“The funniest thing is when I got this award [from the Recording Industry Association of America],” Mrs. Pierce told me by phone, “at the ceremony that they threw for me here in Nashville, I leaned over to the guy from the RIAA giving me this big plaque or whatever, and I said, ‘You know, there’s so many great comics out there. I just find this so hard to believe. There’s Ellen DeGeneres and Roseanne Barr and Joan Rivers,’ and he went, ‘I know. We did the math twice because we ain’t never heard of you.’” She laughed.
“I thought, well, that’ll keep you humble, right there.”
Her humbleness will be on the stage at 7 p.m. today when she plays the Stranahan Theater, 4645 Heatherdowns Blvd., for a third time, bringing her “Happily Laughter After” tour to Toledo. She was also at the Stranahan in 2006 and 2008 and has performed in area churches. The fifth annual “Smile for Freedom” comedy show is a benefit for the Daughter Project, a nonprofit organization based in Perrysburg that Jefferson Award recipient Jeff Wilbarger formed to support human trafficking survivors.
“It is so absolutely true that this is something we have to talk about, we have to be aware of, we have to talk to our children about it, and keep our daughters safe,” Mrs. Pierce said, “and it’s almost sad that we have to talk about it in our country, in what would seem like modern America. But the truth of the matter is it’s all over the world now, and so, yeah, we do have to talk about it.”
The show’s opening musician is Karyn Williams, “who is just a great vocalist,” Mrs. Pierce said, “but a great partner in crime” too. Williams has published a book and filmed a movie as well as being a singer/songwriter.
The headliner said the two of them “come at life with the same kind of ups and downs, of trying to find who you are again.”
In her own film, the 2015 documentary Chonda Pierce: Laughing in the Dark, Mrs. Pierce showed that there was a lot of finding to do. It followed personal struggles, including tough circumstances from her younger years and the recent estrangement, reunion, then death of her husband.
This road tour “is kind of the follow-up” after the film, Mrs. Pierce said. “When you’ve been through a few tragedies, sometimes I think I’m showing up just to make people know I’m alive, I made it, I survived. It’s kind of reassuring, but I love that I am learning that widowhood — it stinks — but there comes a time you almost have to find yourself all over again.
“Now, I’m blessed that I have an audience that wants to hear how you’re doing, and I think that sometimes does help the grieving process, to know you’re not alone.
“And at the same time, I’m quirky enough to find some laughs in all of that,” she said. “I told a friend the other day, ‘Online dating, it’s either going to be the best material of my career or the most depressing thing I’ve ever been through.’ So far, it’s a little depressing.
“So you’ve got to laugh; it’s either that or fall apart, and I have fallen apart before and I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Asked if there were any big revelations after the movie, the 56-year-old comedian said, “I’m not going to show up and tell everybody I’m pregnant.”
There is another movie in the works as a follow-up, It’s a Girl Thing, scheduled for an April 25 release. “I am learning that it does sometimes take a group of this beautiful thing called sisterhood, that is so wonderful, that we have a chance to tap into. Especially when we’ve gone through tragedy, and when you’ve lost your husband or you find yourself uprooted and in a new community and in a new town, and so we just kind of begin to talk about as women how do we get better at this. And why do we chuckle in groups — why do we go to the bathroom in groups?”
She’s been called the “queen of clean,” and her bathroom humor isn’t graphic. “Someday I’m going to have a tour that’s sponsored by Depends,” Mrs. Pierce said, “but the bad thing is it’s not as funny when the comedian herself has to wear the Depends; that’s when I should retire, for heaven’s sake.”
As for her intentions to work “clean,” she said, “I would like to say it started out as a great spiritual thing, that I was going to stay clean and make my mama proud. But the truth of the matter is I grew up not hearing those words. With my background as a preacher’s kid, I couldn’t string a bunch of curse words together — it just wouldn’t sound authentic. … That being said, I tell people I remember the taste of Ivory Soap, so once you’ve had enough Ivory Soap in your system you learn to not cuss.”
As a traveling performer, the religious Mrs. Pierce and others on the tour bus have personal devotions, there are times when “we just climb off the bus and go to the nearest church we find and enjoy the service — and I really love that because you learn about the way other people do it,” she said, and with the Internet she stays connected with her home congregation, World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
“Now I sit and have church and watch my own church service streaming live as it’s happening. I love it. I feel like I run into people from my church, and they know I haven’t been there, and I’m still up on what’s going on with the sermons and what series we’re on. And they’re like, ‘Well, I didn’t see you Sunday,’ and I go, ‘No, I was sitting in Toledo.’ ”
Contact TK Barger at tkbarger@theblade.com, 419-724-6278 or on Twitter @TK_Barger.
First Published November 19, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
