Tig Notaro couldn’t possibly deliver a stand-up act as bold as her last one, right?

How can you get more startling than walking onstage and saying: “Thank you, thanks, I have cancer. Thank you, I have cancer. Really, thank you”?

That 2012 show confronted her breast cancer with unsparing honesty and comedy as intricate as it was raw. Louis C.K. called it one of the greatest sets he had ever seen.

Which made her New York Comedy Festival performance on Thursday night at Town Hall all the more remarkable. After revealing that she had undergone a successful double mastectomy with no reconstructive surgery, she told the crowd that she had thought of doing the show with no shirt, almost daring the audience to make her do it. One more shout from the fans, and she ripped off her shirt with one tug, standing topless, wearing only jeans, in front of hundreds of people.

She had done this before, at a show at the Los Angeles club Largo last month, and on Thursday, her demeanor remained firmly wry. “I’m very aware that people are like: ‘When is she gonna?’ ” she said, referring to putting her clothes on. “I’m not gonna.”