Monica Piper has enjoyed a long career as a television writer, winning Emmy and Golden Globe awards along the way, but her first love has always been stand-up comedy.
“I was away from stand-up but now I’m back,” Piper said. “I left to be a TV writer for 15 years. With television, you don’t know if people are laughing. You hope they are, but there’s nothing like stand-up.”
“Once you’ve done stand-up comedy, it’s hard not to keep doing it,” she added. “You can get addicted. When you try a new joke and it’s a big laugh, that’s the best high there is.”
On March 21, she will perform at Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma. The event is presented by Laugh Cellar, also known as Crushers of Comedy, a Sonoma County company that produces live shows at wineries.
Piper’s television credits include the hit sitcom “Roseanne,” which won her a Golden Globe in 1993, and the children’s animated series “Rugrats,” where she served as head writer and producer, earning an Emmy in 2003. She also wrote for “Mad About You.”
“I had worked with Roseanne Barr when she was doing open-mic nights in the early ’90s. I was with her when she made her first appearance on the ‘Tonight Show.’ Years later, she said she wanted me to write for her TV show,” Piper recalled.
Her work on screen has extended beyond writing. She starred in her own Showtime special, “No, Monica, Just You,” and was named one of the top five female comedians in the country by the American Comedy Awards. She also recently co-starred in the short indie-film favorite “Grandma Bruce.”
“I love acting because you get to be someone else,” she said. “I keep returning to stand-up just for fun, because you can’t stop using your own voice.”
Her stage work extends beyond stand-up. Piper’s critically acclaimed one-woman play, “Not That Jewish,” ran to sell-out crowds in Los Angeles before an Off-Broadway run in New York from October 2016 through April 2017. It was revived in 2019 and again in 2025.
When she is not touring with “Not That Jewish,” Piper performs for Jewish organizations nationwide with her biographical blend of stand-up and storytelling, “Farmisht, Farklempt, and Farblungit!”
Piper has not abandoned writing for television.
“Some friends wrote a children’s book called ‘Jane Smith aka Thistle Fabuloso,’ and we’re working on an animated series,” she said. The book was written by Barra Grarant and Deborah Keaton, with illustrations by Jeff Shelly.
A native of Chicago, Piper began her working life as a high school English teacher before moving to San Francisco in the early 1970s to pursue comedy. Now based in Santa Monica, she prefers material drawn from everyday life.
“It could be about stayovers away from home, hotels, dogs, people,” she said. “Comedians see the world as a funny place.”