She's not holding back anything

Heather McMahan isn't afraid to share her vulnerabilities on stage for big laughs.

- MARISSA EVANS

COMEDIAN Heather McMahan deliberately overshares when performing, saying she heals by bleeding truth and processing messy moments with authenticity.

Heather McMahan is convinced you can learn a lot about society at any Chili’s airport location.

It’s peak people-watching and there happens to also be mozzarella sticks, lava cake, margaritas and the salsa trio with chips. For McMahan, it’s the perks of touring around the country and her love of travel. More than that, it feeds McMahan’s love for observing everyday humans who “are funny and ridiculous and unhinged and unfiltered and a mess and wrong and right.”

“Yes, you're on the road, you're writing material, you're performing all the time, you're honing your craft, but you also have to, like, go sit at a Chili’s sometimes and just have a mozzarella stick and a margarita and be like, what is life?” McMahan said. “Because you can get wrapped up in your own story and your own s—all the time, you have to go out, and that's why I travel so much.... I like to just go live life [because] you're never going to have new material if you're not out there making mistakes." McMahan's Bamboozled tour, which came to the Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, is her third national tour and she's taking on new material that she's adding, building and moving every single show, and sometimes changing from city to city.

The stand-up comic and actor had two comedy specials in recent years, including, "Son I Never Had" on Netflix, where she talked about her journey with in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and "Breadwinner" on Hulu.

The Times caught up with McMahan to talk about her tour, the intersection of comedy and politics, how she releases her emotions on stage and how she thinks about authenticity.

What are you most excited about going into this upcoming set of shows that you have?