When comedian Kathleen Madigan vistied Traverse City for the first time four years ago she was pretty excited as she pulled up to City Opera House to perform.

“I was like, ‘Wow! Look at all of these people lined up,’ and I said to the person who picked me up at the airport, ‘Hey that guy looks like Michael Moore.’ Of course my driver explained to me it was Michael Moore,” said Kathleen Madigan. “Then I learned there was this big Film Festival coming to town in a month and that the line was actually for people trying to get tickets to see Madonna.”

Madigan ended up having a full house that night and now she is back for an encore performance on Thursday, February 14 at the City Opera House. Madigan was already scheduled before the Traverse City Winter Comedy Arts Festival dates were set but now her “Gone Madigan” performance will serve at the Fesitval’s opening event. Continue reading →

Comedian Ron White introduced her during one of his recent Salute to the Troops comedy specials on CMT as “the funniest woman on the planet,” and she’s been on the Tonight Show more times than even she can count, so why isn’t this celebrated comic who’s widely revered by other comedians not more famous?

“My career has never been a bonfire, it’s just one more log on the fire at a time,” Madigan said in a phone interview from her L.A. home that she rarely stays in. “It’s all just another thing to add: a comedy special, CMT, Sirius radio.” And the list goes on, from VH1′s I Love the (insert decade) specials to Celebrity Poker Showdown to a 2011 Showtime special, Gone Madigan.

She first came to the attention of middle America on the second season of Last Comic Standing, an NBC reality show that pitted comics against each other for a TV contract. Continue reading →

Kathleen Madigan is happy, really.

Friday, Feb. 15, the comedian will be headlining Miller Auditorium for her first time. That’s a larger venue than the State Theatre, which she played in 2005 and 2010.

She’s been getting larger venues and doing more TV. In early February she did a CMT “Comedy Salute” special with Ron White in Las Vegas. And she’ll be taping her own special somewhere in the Midwest in May.

Madigan doesn’t want a sitcom, doesn’t do movies. “I don’t really do other stuff, so I’m always just kind of happy,” she said from her home in Los Angeles. Continue reading →

Kathleen Madigan is having far too much fun telling jokes to pursue a TV career.

It’s not that Madigan, a veteran stand-up comic, is wholly against the idea of following the dozens of comedians who’ve made the migration to TV land. It’s never been one of her goals.

“I just don’t have any strong desire other than to keep writing and telling jokes,” she said. “I never got into this job to be an actor. To me, that’s like when people ask me, ‘So what are your other goals?’ And I’m, like, ‘Well, I don’t have any. This was the goal!’ And then I feel bad. Continue reading →

All I want to do is tell jokes.” In that sardonic, working-class tone that fans of her comedy know so well, Kathleen Madigan declares this during a recent phone interview. For the past couple of decades, the Florissant, Mo.-born Madigan has been first and foremost a touring stand-up comedian, hitting the road (and USO tours overseas) with such comics as her good buddies Lewis Black and Ron White.

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