Comedy’s Queen of Mean Lisa Lampanelli is back at Sands Bethlehem Event Center on May 12
From a press release:
Raunchy insult comic Lisa Lampanelli, comedy’s lovable Queen of Mean, returns to the Sands Bethlehem Event Center on Saturday, May 12 at 8 p.m.
Tickets, which are $39.50 and $49.50, go on sale this Friday, Jan. 12 at 10 a.m. and can be purchased at sandseventcenter.com, the Event Center box office (77 Sands Blvd., Bethlehem), ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster outlets, or by phone at 800-745-3000.
Lisa Lampanelli’s rise to the top of the comedy food chain began in 2002 when she was the only female comedian invited to skewer Chevy Chase on the New York Friars Club Comedy Central Roast. She soon became known as the “Queen of the Roasts,” going on to lambaste such names as Pamela Anderson, Jeff Foxworthy, William Shatner, Flava Flav, David Hasselhoff and, most recently, Donald Trump. Due to her success as a roaster, in 2009, she was asked to serve as Roastmaster for the highly rated Comedy Central Roast of friend and fellow comic Larry the Cable Guy.
One of the few white comedians to perform on BET’s “Comic View,” Lampanelli has clearly cemented her huge crossover appeal. She went on to appear on Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh 2005” and her one-hour special that year, “Take It Like a Man,” was a hit with the comedy network yet again. The CD and the DVD of the same name hit No. 6 on the comedy charts. Then, in January 2007, her second one-hour special, “Dirty Girl,” debuted on Comedy Central and Warner Bros. Records, and reached No. 4 on the charts. Soon thereafter, “Dirty Girl” was nominated for a Grammy Award for 2007’s Best Comedy Album.
Lampanelli joined the ranks of comedy greats with her 2009 HBO comedy special “Long Live the Queen” and, that same year, she released her autobiography, “Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks” (Harper Collins). She was also a monthly writer for the Women column in Playboy Magazine and is a contributor to the blog for Kripalu, the world-renowned yoga and meditation retreat center.
Lampanelli became a household name when she joined 17 other celebrities on the fifth season of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” where she advanced to the final four in the competition, raising $130,000 for her chosen charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She also starred as a regular on “Bounty Hunters,” CMT’s first-ever animated series, and guest-starred on a hilarious episode of CBS’s “2 Broke Girls,” helmed by “Sex and The City” creator Michael Patrick King.
Lampanelli’s fifth stand-up special, “Back to the Drawing Board,” premiered June 26, 2015 on EPIX and was nominated for a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. In the special, Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean showed off her radically different look after having lost more than 100 pounds. That weight loss, which she has maintained for over four years, inspired her to write her play “Stuffed.” Having been every size from 2 to 26, she has firsthand knowledge of the food and body image struggle.
When she debuted the first version of “Stuffed” in the fall of 2016 at the WP Theatre, the New York Times said “’Stuffed’ offers laughs and even a bit of insight … Lampanelli’s strongest, funniest, and most affecting work,” and the Hollywood Reporter echoed their sentiments, calling the play “very funny and affecting.”
In “Stuffed,” her first foray into legitimate theatre, the Queen of Mean – now also known as the Queen of Lean – holds nothing back about our crazy-making relationship with food, weight, and body image. The new version of “Stuffed” – “Stuffed 2.0,” if you will – features four characters who grapple with one of the most common issues women – and men – face. The play is equal parts hilarious and heartwarming.
“Stuffed,” now entitled, “Stuffed: A Big-Boned, Skinny-Ass, All-You-Can-Laugh New Play,” opened in October of 2017 at one of the most sought-after and prestigious off-Broadway venues – the Westside Theatre in New York City. The Westside is a theatre steeped in the tradition of great works for and by women, including Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” and Nora and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss, and What I Wore.”
