Sedona News – The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to welcome back award-winning comedian Rita Rudner for a very special benefit performance — “An Evening with Rita Rudner” — live on stage at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Thursday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m.
A successful actress, author, playwright, and screenwriter, Rita Rudner’s epigrammatic one-liners have filled the London Palladium, the Sydney Opera House, and Carnegie Hall. Now, Sedona will have the opportunity to experience her icepick-sharp timing and trademark clever observations up close and personal. Rudner’s unmatched humor and enduring charm will leave you in stitches. Don’t miss the chance to see this comedy legend!
A house-filling favorite in Las Vegas since she opened as one of the hottest tickets in town in June 2000, Rudner sold almost two million tickets over the multi-year run, and become the longest-running solo female comedy show in the history of Las Vegas. She was named Las Vegas’s Comedian of The Year nine years in a row and in 2006 received The Nevada Ballet’s Woman of The Year Award. In October 2017 she was given the Casino Entertainment Legend Award.
Rita’s first solo HBO special, Rita Rudner’s One Night Stand, was nominated for several awards, as was her eponymous English BBC television show that later appeared in the USA on A&E. Rudner’s two one-hour specials for HBO, Born to Be Mild and Married Without Children, were ratings standouts and she performed all over the country, filling Carnegie Hall in New York three times. In 2008 Rita Rudner: Live From Las Vegas was PBS’s first ever stand-up comedy special.
Rita Rudner has written several books; her bestselling non-fiction titles, Naked Beneath My Clothes Rita Rudner’s Guide to Men and I Still Have It…I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It, plus the novels Tickled Pink and Turning the Tables. The audio version of Naked Beneath My Clothes received a Grammy nomination.
Rudner is a frequent collaborator with her writer/producer husband of thirty years, Martin Bergman. The couple’s first produced film script was Peter’s Friends. The film, starring Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Imelda Staunton, Stephen Fry, and Rita, won the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award for Best British Film and was nominated for the Goya Award for Best European Film of 1994. The script was nominated for a WGA Best Screenplay Award and Rita won Best Supporting Actress at the American Comedy Awards.
The couple’s second film project, a TV movie called A Weekend In The Country, starred Rita, Jack Lemmon, Dudley Moore, Richard Lewis, Christine Lahti, Betty White and Faith Ford. Bergman and Rudner’s last film, Thanks, premiered at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival, won several awards on the film festival circuit and was bought and frequently aired by Showtime.
Rita Rudner moved to New York at the age of fifteen to become a dancer on Broadway. She appeared in several shows, including the original productions of Follies and Mack and Mabel. It was while in Annie on Broadway that she began exploring the comedy clubs of Manhattan. In the early ‘80s, Rudner took a full-time leap from chorus lines to punch lines and was soon a regular guest on both Late Night with David Letterman and The Tonight Show.
In 2022, Rita returned to live performance with a series of concerts across the USA. Her memoir My Life In Dog Years was published in December of that year, and in January 2023 she appeared at the Laguna Playhouse in the world premiere of STAGED, a new comedy written by her and Martin Bergman. In February 2023, she featured as a guest star in an episode of Magnum P.I. on NBC.
“An Evening with Rita Rudner” takes the stage at the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Thursday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 General Admission; $65 Preferred Seating; and $135 VIP Seating (which includes premium seating and a champagne, wine and hors d’oeuvres reception before the show).
Call 928-282-1177 to order tickets by phone or visit the box office at 2030 W. State Route 89A in West Sedona. To order tickets online, visit www.SedonaFilmFestival.org.