Comedian Chonda Pierce comes to Columbus

Chonda Pierce is a 64-year-old Christian comedian from Ashland City, Tennessee. Pierce has been performing for over 30 years and has become known as "The Queen of Clean,” never using profanity in her act.

Her stand-up makes people laugh in person and on-screen, appearing in five feature films, four TV movies, three autobiographical documentaries and one TV series, not to mention her 14 DVD releases from 1998 to 2016.

Performance and entertainment were always on Pierce's horizon, as she started out studying theater arts at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Despite this, comedy did not come into her life until tragedy struck.

During college, she found herself in an uncomfortable situation on a show about the history of country music at Nashville's Opryland theme park. Just after her parents’ divorce and the death of her two sisters, Pierce’s job was contingent on making other people feel better. Pierce took the heavy predicament and used it as a vehicle for rehabilitation.

“I had to make people laugh,” said Pierce. “Five times a day, six days a week. It was truly medicine for me.”

Question: Has the medicinal quality of comedy continued throughout your career?

Chonda Pierce: It has, it certainly has. Life takes off, your material evolves, but the thrill of hearing people laugh has never changed. It is just as much a thrill for me as I hope it is for the people who sit there and laugh with me. I’ve always used comedy as an opening act. I felt like I had something I wanted to share about my faith or my life. I never end the show with just a laugh. I always have a little somethin’ somethin’ that’s coming through my spirit to share with people. For 32 years that’s worked pretty good.

Question: Do you have an example of that?

Pierce: How wild it is that at a time when I could be angry and mad and frustrated at life, turning to other things to fill the gap of grief, I didn’t, because laughter was there. I feel like the god of the universe is my god and he is so creative and helped me get placed at a job where I could use that creative energy to make a positive difference in someone's life, and I love introducing people to who God is.

Comedy in Columbus: Martin Lawrence's comedy tour coming to Nationwide Arena on Sept. 21

Question: What is religion's role in your comedy?

Pierce: Everyone has a foundation of something. My faith in Jesus is what really made the foundation for me and I'm so grateful for it. Life is funny until it’s not, and there is a lot of not. Whether it’s death or grief or depression or an addiction, your foundation will really be the thing that helps you through it. I never view myself as someone who’s got the corner market on grief and trauma. I have been through a lot of things, but it also took 64 years to go through them.

Question: Why did you write your memoir, "Life Is Funny Until It’s Not: A Comic’s Story of Love, Loss, and Lunacy?"

Pierce: Looking back over my life and the peaks of success and career challenges and meeting those challenges, to the very lows of grief and losing my husband and sexual assault and abuse and all that, there’s a lot of stories in between the peaks and the valleys. That’s where we learn; we learn so much in the rise and we learn a whole lot more in the fall. I wanted to write about those details, I wanted to write about what I did right and what I did wrong, hopefully as a roadmap for someone to glean from my mistakes and let them be great warning signs, or to laugh along with those things that went well.

Question: How has the experience of writing a book differed from stand-up comedy?

Pierce: I was nervous about it. In my circle, the church circles of evangelical circles, they're not always forgiving people like you'd think they would (be). And I really shared a lot of tough and personal stuff that I just wanted to be honest, I wanted to tell the truth that you know, I love Jesus, but I get myself entangled every now and then. And I think it rang true for a lot of women. I get a lot of email notes that say, “Thank you for being honest, because I'm not a perfect Christian either.” Okay, girl, I got you.

Live comedy: Bill Burr talks about his humor style before May 16 show at the Schottenstein Center

Question: What makes up the content of your show?

Pierce: A lot of it is directed to the church of how we could be better Christians, we could be more inclusive, we could be more diverse in how we love people who don’t look like us or think like us or believe like us. My father was a good preacher, he was great at growing a church to a great size, but I don’t remember a church that my father ever pastored (where) he didn’t have a girlfriend or some liaison that made my mother fall apart. That is real confusing for a young girl.

nfishman@gannett.com

At a glance

Pierce is performing May 16 at Genoa Baptist Church, 7562 Lewis Center Road, Westerville.

Tickets are available for purchase through Vivid Seats. Her new book, "Life Is Funny Until It’s Not: A Comic’s Story of Love, Loss, and Lunacy," is now available for purchase online and in stores.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Comical and clean, Chonda Pierce brings her talents to Westerville