Fired by Gaz and leaving ‘Absinthe,’ Penny Pibbets takes shot with her own show

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Dec. 14, 2014 | 6:28 p.m.

Penny Pibbets remembers vividly the conversation with the Gazillionaire that led to her leaving “Absinthe,” though this exchange was entirely one-sided.

“He threw me out, and I said, ‘I’m going to make my own show!’ And he said … well, he didn’t say anything,” Pibbets says while seated on a sofa at Art Square Theater during a break in rehearsals for “The Penny Pibbets Show.” “What I think he would have said was, ‘You go ahead and do that! I support you!’ But he didn’t say that.”

Instead, the overlord and host of “Absinthe” closed and locked the door, and later had those locks changed.

“I can’t get back in the mansion,” Pibbets says, metaphorically and as a matter of fact. “I think by not saying anything, you can say a lot.”

So Pibbets is done as the assistant in “Absinthe,” having performed for the final time as a full-time cast member last week. The abrasive and vastly moneyed character of the Gazillionaire remains (though with a different inhabitant). The new assistant in the show is Pibbets’ cousin Joy Jenkins.

“She’s great,” Pibbets says, referring to Joy. “She’s a little slow, though, so there won’t be as much arguing.”

Pibbets' energy is now directed to “The Penny Pibbets Show,” an hourlong, TV talk show-fashioned showcase that premieres at Art Square at 2 p.m. Dec. 21 (previews have already begun).

Further performances of “The Penny Pibbets Show” are set for 10 p.m. Dec. 22-23 and 29-30 and Jan. 5-6. Show times are at 2 p.m. Dec. 28 and Jan. 4. Tickets are $15 and available on the Penny Pibbets Show Facebook page, which links to the Vendini ticket website, and also by calling Art Square Theater at 702-818-3422. Pibbets’ goal is to take this project as far as possible, in some visual medium, though no specific blueprint or timeline has been imparted.

“Listen, I hear David Letterman is leaving, so …” she says as she is immersed in white lights and recording equipment. “I mean, they hardly ever let a woman do a late-night talk show, except on 'Chelsea Lately.’ ”

The set for “The Penny Pibbets Show” reminds of the glad days of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” with a desk and mismatched couch set up next to a keyboard and drum set, which is adorned with a big visage of Pibbets’ face. In the background are bookcases topped by an old globe and filled with odd figures. During breaks, Pibbets plays an old mini-boom box with a tape of Jimi Hendrix pouring from the tinny speaker. Her pet dog Charlie will be employed as a sidekick, in some capacity, scrambling into the theater and back to the set.

It will all work. How could it not? There is little question that Pibbets can entertain. There is no funnier individual in this city, either on script or by happenstance, than the woman who conceived the frenzied sock-puppet routine in “Absinthe.”

But how she is to operate solo, without playing off the frequently agitated and dismissive Gazillionaire, is still something of a blurry concept.

Pibbets wants to help people. That much is clear.

“Basically, this will be like Penny Pibbets is trying to help everybody. I am like the Dalai Lama. I wouldn’t say that, but you could say that, OK?” she says. “I feel like there are a lot of people who get caught up in life and caught up in worries and stress, and I feel it builds in our brains and our stomachs, and that’s why we get, like, angry at people for no reason and why we get pimples. ... I want people to forget all that.”

There will be a monologue and music, and Pibbets anticipates guests (though none have been announced) who will sit next to her on that couch next to the desk.

Pibbets says she is going to broach “current events and helping people” and says she’s unleashing a no-nonsense interview style.

“I’m going to get tough with everybody,” she says. “I’m going to go to the heart and to the bone and to the stomach area, and to the groin. Everybody better watch out!”

Pibbets plans to enter atop a unicorn. Obtaining such is not easy. Otherwise, Las Vegas resorts and productions would be teeming with unicorns.

“They are hard to find. We had to go on a safari, and we chased it down,” Pibbets says of this unicorn-ian pilgrimage. “We put out little treats. Sweet & Sour licorice ropes — they like those things. Sour Patch kids. They like anything sour. That’s a fact.”

Pibbets used the extra money she raised from her Kickstarter campaign to track down and bring home the unicorn. She had a goal of $19,990, and she raised a little more than $23,000.

Pibbets says a dream she had the night before the Kickstarter deadline gave her faith that she would reach that goal.

“Joan Rivers came to me, I swear, like an angel in my dream, and was explaining to me about her apartment. 'Yeah, this is where we put the kitchen …' and then she asks, 'Whatsa mattah, sweetheart?' That’s a bad imitation, but that’s what she said,” Pibbets says. “I tell her, ‘I’m just really worried about my Kickstarter, whether it’s going to get funded, and she goes, ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. It’ll happen.’ And I woke up that morning, and it had been funded. It was amazing.”

Pibbets says an occasional return to “Absinthe” as the assistant to the Gazillionaire is possible. She’s been fired many times before, only to have Gaz forget making that decision because of a blackout or after one of his many romantic trysts.

“If he lets me come back, I’ll do it. It’s all up to the Gazillionaire,” she says. “It’s his show, you know. But this one, this is my show.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.