event Maria Bamford

Maria Bamford is one of those comedians whose “real” personality seems mysterious. She shifts through personas and voices—her parents, bitchy former classmates, airheads, co-workers, monsters, Alicia Keys—so seamlessly and with such pitch-perfect imitation that it’s easy to think Bamford is 100 percent vessel, 0 percent real person. Of course those numbers are way off in real life—it’s 50-50, at least—where Bamford comes across as far happier and more “together” than her obsessive-compulsive onstage personality. That composure is hard-won; Bamford's latest CD, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome, mines for laughs the real mental disorder that dominated her life for roughly 30 years.

Maria Bamford is one of those comedians whose “real” personality seems mysterious. She shifts through personas and voices—her parents, bitchy former classmates, airheads, co-workers, monsters, Alicia Keys—so seamlessly and with such pitch-perfect imitation that it’s easy to think Bamford is 100 percent vessel, 0 percent real person. Of course those numbers are way off in real life—it’s 50-50, at least—where Bamford comes across as far happier and more “together” than her obsessive-compulsive onstage personality. That composure is hard-won; Bamford's latest CD, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome, mines for laughs the real mental disorder that dominated her life for roughly 30 years.