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Comedian Tig Notaro is here to make you laugh. How she does it is a mystery, but whatever her formula is, it defies easy description. Read more

Comedian Tig Notaro is here to make you laugh. How she does it is a mystery, but whatever her formula is, it defies easy description.

“I really try not to describe it,” she said in a phone interview.

“There’s the obvious stuff, that I’m dry and low-key, but so much more. … There’s silliness — and there’s honesty, and there’s observation; I guess I just described it, but I don’t know, I always would prefer for people to come check it out, and have faith.”

She’s done plenty to deserve that kind of support, most notably in 2012, when she kept her commitment to perform at a Los Angeles club just a few days after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and shortly after her mother died in a fall – and just one week after Notaro had recovered from a severe illness in which she 20 pounds.

Notaro talked about all three situations during the show, which became one of the most notorious performances in comedy and was turned into Grammy Award-nominated album “Live.”

TIG NOTARO

>> Where: Hawaii Theatre

>> When: 8 p.m. Friday

>> Cost: $34.50 to $54.50

>> Info: 528-0506, Hawaii Theatre8 p.m. Friday$34.50 to $54.50528-0506, hawaiitheatre.com

Now fully recovered, Notaro has a career in full bloom. She’s appearing in the latest “Star Trek” franchise and is working on a film featuring Jennifer Aniston, while keeping up with a full schedule of stand-up appearances, including her show at Hawaii Theatre on Friday.

NOTARO HAS one of the more unique voices in comedy. Her stories are full of awkward pauses and thoughtful asides mixed in with her funny observations, and while they seem natural, they are carefully delivered, as with a musician who alters specific notes in a repeated theme.

The laughs come from different parts of the audience at different times, as listeners pick up on various aspects of the tale.

“I have a story about the pop singer Taylor Dayne (in which Notaro describes multiple, happenstance meetings with Dayne). That story started out as 20 minutes long, and I worked on it, and edited it, just trying new things and dropping stuff,” Notaro said, by way of illustration.

“It came out to 13 minutes on average, but I definitely like to let myself stay very in the moment, and abandon things and come back to them and kind of go with whatever I’m feeling.”

And the awkward pauses, which might be considered bad news to many stand-up comedians?

“I don’t know that I’m trying to create an uncomfortableness in the audience, but I certainly welcome it,” she said. “And when it becomes uncomfortable I can at times thrive at that.”

She has made the most out of discomfort throughout her life. Born in Mississippi and raised in Texas, she found school to be so distasteful that – warning, parents! – she dropped out in the ninth grade.

“It wasn’t like I was this star student who one day said, ‘You know what? I’m going to give up on my hopes and dreams, and college,’” she said. “I was in trouble in school. I felt like I just didn’t really click in that environment.”

For years, she held odd jobs – working in day care, at a pizza joint, at a bar – and eventually, the entertainment business, forming her own music management company. All that experience paid off when at age 26 she got her first stand-up opportunity, a paid gig at a coffee shop in Los Angeles.

“My first time on stage went better than I could have ever hoped, and I think it just made me – delusional,” she said, sardonically, “in thinking I was really, really great out of the gate.”

NOW 47, Notaro is now looking forward to acting on “Star Trek Discovery” — she was a fan, she said, but not a fanatic about the original series – and is hoping to start shooting her film with Aniston in the spring.

Although Notaro eschews political comedy in her routine — “If I even touch on the fact that I don’t do political comedy, there’s an explosive reaction, like, ‘Thank God,’” Notaro said — the film has Aniston playing the president of the United States, and Notaro the first lady.

Notaro said her relationship with her own wife, fellow actor/writer Stephanie Allynne, is a model for the characters in the film, with Aniston keeping to her generally wholesome image.

“The ideal president would be somebody that everyone loves, and it seems like Jennifer’s that kind of person,” Notaro said.

Notaro’s performance here will feature a lot of new material, so even if you’ve seen her act before — when she appeared here three years ago or online — it will be worth viewing.

“People think ‘Gosh, don’t you write anything new?’” she said; answering, “All the time.”