Barb Neligan sticks the firecracker of comedy into life’s absurdities and lights the fuse.
During her formative years growing up Catholic in the deep South, Barb also enjoyed blowing up brightly colored plastic objects with real firecrackers. (Please note: The Catholic/deep South thing is not really related to the firecracker/plastic object thing. It is more related to the absurdities thing. Seriously. She went to the only church in America that served communion moonshine.)
Barb started doing standup in the early 1980s while in college in Chattanooga, Tennessee. From there she moved to Chicago where she spent five years honing her improvisational comedy skills.
That raucous time led her to a writing stint that included scripting such epic dramas as “Country’s Most Shocking: Stories Behind Southern Rock and Outlaw Country” which aired on CMT. Even though Barb is pretty sure she was close to winning a Pulitzer Prize for her in-depth analysis of celebrity plane crashes, car accidents and drug overdoses, the steady glow of the word processor paled in comparison to the sparks given off by a live audience.
So she’s back out on the comedy circuit putting a match to everything from kudzu to congress to cyberspace—mostly because she likes the way the explosion brightens up the room. (Figuratively, that is. There’s no actual gunpowder involved. Just words. Which is good, because otherwise everyone in the audience would have those little pieces of paper stuck to their clothes and smell like the Fourth of July.)
Come see Barb. She’s currently working on getting some of her jokes to float down on little parachutes after they blow up. You won’t want to miss that.
