“Thank you, thank you. I have cancer, thank you.”

Those were the first words out of Tig Notaro’s mouth two years ago when she walked out on stage for a stand-up show. Yes, a stand-up show — as in comedy. Before that 2012 show at a Los Angeles club, Notaro had been widely heralded as a leading practitioner of the craft and a future comedy superstar.

Following that performance, the acclaim for Notaro, who had a double mastectomy, has continued to get louder and louder — particularly from her fellow comedians, who appreciate the way she skillfully structured the show. The crowd did, as well — once it became obvious she was serious, and especially after it became clear she wasn’t exaggerating her situation for shock value. There was genuine shock all around: Notaro performed the show while she was still reeling from her doctor’s news. The set was as raw and genuine as it gets. It was also, as you can hear on the Grammy-nominated 2013 recording of the show, Tig Notaro: Live, touchingly hysterical.

“They’re doing the ultrasound,” Notaro says, setting up a joke from the doctor’s examining room. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we found a lump.’ I was like, ‘Oh no, that’s my boob.'”

Notaro’s career to date is as a leading comedian’s comedian, the type known, respected and constantly employed within the industry. In addition to her bread-and-butter base of stand-up, chances are you also appreciate her generally behind-the-scenes television writing work — most notably for Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program and Inside Amy Schumer. Notaro is also an occasional contributor to NPR’s This American Life.

Five years ago Notaro, a Mississippi native who lives in Los Angeles, launched D.C.’s Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival with the local event production company Brightest Young Things. Cheekily named after a Danish man who essentially laughed himself to death 25 years ago while watching the movie A Fish Called Wanda, this year’s Bentzen Ball offers five days of laughter at various venues starting next Wednesday, Oct. 1. As with prior iterations, this year’s festival is characterized by a strong lineup of performers. Among them: Rosie O’Donnell. Her involvement may boost the event itself, but that’s not ultimately why she signed on. Turns out, O’Donnell has become Notaro’s newest comedy celebrity champion.

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METRO WEEKLY: What inspired you to launch the Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival?

TIG NOTARO: I’ve done a million comedy and music festivals around the world, but one stands out in particular where I was treated really poorly. And I just was thinking that it wouldn’t take much to treat people better. And I also thought, when I do festivals, I think it’s so crazy that I’m in these awesome cities with so many cool people and friends of mine. We just see each other at the shows, or bump into each other in the lobby of the hotel. We don’t actually experience the city together.

When I found out the DC Comedy Festival wasn’t coming back [after the 2008 edition with Notaro], I just had this idea of a festival that would treat the comedians well and also organize events during the day and night — parties, dinners, brunches, a tour of the White House. We’re going bowling at the White House, we’ll do a Segway tour around the city — activities for everyone to do together to create a feeling of community, socializing and experiencing the city together. Some comedians have referred to it as comedy summer camp. When you’re not performing, there’s usually something to do. It’s a really good time.

MW: By contrast, what specifically happened at that earlier festival that made it such a poor time for you and other performers? Was this a problem caused by the festival’s management, or the audience?

NOTARO: Not the audience, just the booker and producer of the festival. You know, leaving you high and dry without a ride, and telling you to take the public bus to the show. Putting you in a crummy motel room. No drinks or food in the green room. Just not being taken care of.

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MW: Aside from your own efforts with the Bentzen Ball, do you have the sense comedians are being treated any better now than when you got your start over a decade ago?

NOTARO: I don’t know. I think there are still lots of poorly-treated musicians, comedians, artists everywhere. And I think also the further you get up in your career, the less you deal with that. So I don’t know. For me, I have the luxury of having kind of moved up into my career to where I’m not really dealing with that. But I would very much venture to say that it’s still out there.

MW: I’m not sure there’s been much headway since the turn of the new millennium in greater ethnic diversity in comedy. But there are more openly LGBT comedians on the scene. And then when it comes to gender, it feels like there’s been almost a boom in both number and exposure of female comics. Do you think so?

NOTARO: Yeah, I mean there are so many women doing comedy now. It’s amazing. And so many of my favorite comedians are women. But yeah, I think it’s getting more diverse out there.

MW: While we’re on the subject, did you face any resistance or struggle when you first started in the business?

NOTARO: No, I didn’t really run into that. I don’t know why that was. It’s not like I had an easy, breezy time. I mean, stand-up and getting on the road and working out material and getting into venues and all that stuff, it’s definitely a struggle. But I feel like it was probably an average amount of struggle that I went through. I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, they won’t book me because I’m a woman.’ I didn’t really feel like I ran into that. And if that was happening, maybe I just chose to not see it. But I felt like people were pretty supportive in general.

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MW: How do you identify?

NOTARO: Hmm, gosh. I guess I just identify as gay.

MW: Did you struggle in coming to terms with being gay?

NOTARO: I didn’t know I was, or didn’t feel in touch with it, until my early 20s. So it wasn’t like I clearly or openly struggled with it growing up. But when I figured it out, and then told my family, I was stressed about it. But it was absolutely fine. All my friends and family are supportive and open and accepting.

My family, they’re all in small-town Mississippi and couldn’t be more accepting and offering open arms to me and my girlfriend.

MW: That’s an encouraging sign, suggesting there’s hope anywhere across America. Is that how you interpret it?

NOTARO: Oh, definitely. There are areas that are a little more stalled out then others, but I’m so thoroughly impressed by my friends and family in small-town Mississippi and Louisiana. They are just open because they are open people — and not because they moved to a big city and learned otherwise. They’ve never left their towns, and yet they have no qualms with anything about my life. They’re very loving and accepting — and very conservative, religious people. But it just is not an issue for them.

MW: Growing up, did you have your sights set on comedy? Or what did you think you might do as a career?

NOTARO: Comedy was a dream of mine, but I didn’t imagine that I would ever get to do it. I didn’t really understand the steps that went into doing it. I would just see people like Paula Poundstone or Richard Pryor on these comedy specials and just think, ‘How do they go on stage and have thousands of people show up?’ I just didn’t understand how to become that person. So I really didn’t think it was in the cards for me.

But I love music. I pursued that a little bit as a musician, and then worked in the music business. And I thought I was pretty happy, pretty content. And then good friends moved to Los Angeles, and I moved with them. I just saw the opportunity to do open-mikes, and all the comedy clubs. And I just immediately went towards that. And didn’t ever stop doing it. And realized that everything I had been doing before that in life, I wasn’t as happy as I thought I was at the time.

MW: And along the way you started acting.

NOTARO: Yeah, that’s kind of the nice thing about stand-up. I never was pursuing acting, but the more you’re out there, and your friends get TV shows, and the network executives are in the audience — your name just kind of gets out there. And with stand-ups, they pretty much will use your on-stage persona and kind-of cast you off of that. You know I don’t do too much acting outside of my comfort zone. Although, actually, I have a movie coming out with Ryan Phillippe, Catch Hell. It’s a dramatic thriller. So I actually did some actual acting in that movie. But in general, I’m pretty much just myself in everything I do.

MW: What’s your role in Catch Hell?

NOTARO: I’m just the sister of the person who’s doing all the murdering.

MW: So it’s a serious dramatic role — you’re not playing it at all like a sidekick role, offering some comedic relief?

NOTARO: No. It’s kind of like a modern-day Misery. This takes place in the swamps of Louisiana.

MW: How did you land such an atypical role? What inspired you to take it on?

NOTARO: Well, Ryan was familiar with me, so he reached out and offered me that role. That’s kind of how I’ve gotten most of my work — people know of me, and just have offered me work. And I’m originally from the Mississippi/Louisiana part of the world. All my family still lives out there. And it just interested me to try and kind of do something different and see if I could do it. I guess Ryan’s happy with it. I haven’t seen it yet. It comes out Oct. 10.

MW: Is that something you’d like to do more of — acting in general, and dramatic acting in particular?

NOTARO: Yeah, I’m interested in trying anything out. I act here and there. I just get offered gigs. I’m doing a few episodes of the new Transparent series on Amazon Prime, the hugely hyped new series coming out about transgender people. I’m married to one of the main characters. I don’t have a huge role or anything. I’m only in a couple episodes. But it’s really, really a great series. It’s this family whose father comes out. Jeffrey Tambor plays the parent who comes out in his ’70s as transgender.

MW: I saw mention that you have a forthcoming Showtime special. Is that stand-up?

NOTARO: It’s stand-up, and it’s also a road trip special, where I’m performing in the homes of my fans. I’m driving around, and then stopping into people’s houses and doing stand-up in their house.

MW: Earlier you mentioned having a girlfriend. How long have you been together? Would you consider marriage?

NOTARO: We’re coming up on a year-and-a-half. We’ve definitely thought of marriage. It’s the first time either of us have ever seriously considered something like that in life. It’s kind of a nice place to be. I’m very happy.

MW: Would you like to have kids?

NOTARO: Quite possibly. I’m pretty much open to whatever comes my way.

MW: I understand you’re writing a memoir, expected to come out next year. Can you tell us more about the focus?

NOTARO: It’s about the four months — it’s the specific details of the four months when my life fell apart in 2012. My mother dying unexpectedly and me being diagnosed with cancer, and all sorts of details like that. And I talk about my childhood and who my mother was, but it’s very specific about that four-month period of time. I’m excited about the book. I’m really happy with it.

MW: At this point I’m overdue to ask for the goods on Rosie O’Donnell. What have you got planned with her when she appears?

NOTARO: We’re both going to do stand-up and then we’re going to sit down and I’m going to interview her. That is a show that I think should not be missed. [The show has been cancelled due to a family emergency. See notes below.]

MW: How did you manage to pull off such a casting coup?

NOTARO: I’ve never met her. She had emailed me saying that the album that I released a couple years ago, about my life falling apart in a short period of time, inspired elements of her new HBO stand-up special coming out in December and that she would be honored to take me to dinner and meet me. I was very flattered by that. And then when I was booking the festival in D.C., I thought, ‘I’ll reach out and see if she’d be interested in coming.’ And she wrote back that she would be there. And so it’s very exciting.

MW: Have you organized other festivals elsewhere, or do you have any plans to expand the Bentzen Ball?

NOTARO: No, this is the one and only. It’s already quite an undertaking for five days in D.C. I’m all the way across the country trying to help organize and schedule things, and I already have a very, very busy schedule of my own. So it would be rough to take this around the country.

The Bentzen Ball Comedy Festival opens Wednesday, Oct. 1, and ends Sunday, Oct. 5, both at the Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St. NW. Tig Notaro performs on opening night, and then again with Rosie O’Donnell on Oct. 4, at Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st. St. NW. For a full lineup, schedule and ticket information, visit bentzenball.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: 

• Sadly, The Rosie O’Donnell/Tig Notaro evening at Lisner on 10/4 has been cancelled due to a family emergency. All ticket holders will be automatically refunded.
• There is still a chance to catch Tig Notaro TWICE this festival: on opening night and NOW ON CLOSING NIGHT as well (she has just been added to the line-up, alongside Reggie Watts, Wham City & more)
• Dave Hill & Seaton Smith (DC native and a Bentzen Ball alum of 2009 and 2013, who is starring on the next FOX sitcom Mulaney ) have been added to the line-up.