Making a Point and Making ‘em Laugh

When comedian Lea DeLaria returns to her rural hometown of Belleville, Ill., her neighbors don’t give her a warm reception.

“They meet me at the border with a noose and tar and feathers,” DeLaria said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass., where she lives now. “I don’t really go home a lot.”

The reason for her unpopularity, DeLaria figures, is her chosen profession: She calls herself a “dyke comic,” although she has achieved fame outside her field. She recently appeared on “20/20” and on a new PBS special to be aired at the end of the year. The cable comedy show “Women Aloud” has invited her as a guest, and she plays in mainstream venues as well as gay ones.

On Saturday, DeLaria joins four other lesbian acts--Karen Ripley, Lisa Kron, Parker & Klein and Marilyn Pittman--for the third annual “All Women All Comedy” concert at Millikan High School in Long Beach for a night of “very political, very feminist comedy,” said Jane Wesley Brooks, an event organizer.

Men, however, should not feel excluded. “Anybody can enjoy the show, Brooks said. “My brother’s going, and he’s straight. He’s taking his girlfriend.”

The show benefits CORE, a nonprofit Long Beach service organization that supports women. “By using comedy, we hope to present lesbian and gay culture in an accepting form,” Brooks said, “to help people understand what it means to be gay and lesbian in a homophobic society.”

DeLaria aims to do the same in her act. She first learned comedy as a student in a Catholic school. “You learn how to make that nun laugh or she’ll beat . . . you,” she said. She left Belleville immediately after graduating from high school. “As soon as you realize you’re queer,” she said, “you move to a coast.”

Money was never the reason she pursued a career as a comic. “I never said to myself, ‘How can I make a lot of money? I think I’ll be a lesbian comic.’ ”

DeLaria has been playing gay clubs and college campuses for 10 years. “Then all of a sudden I got famous out of nowhere a couple of years ago,” she said.

DeLaria says she has succeeded a little in changing the world. “I was doing a college show with 300 people and one queer--me. Afterward, a woman came up to me and said: ‘I came here to make fun of you but I couldn’t. You’ve really changed the way I view gay people.’

“That’s why I do what I do.”

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. at Millikan High School, 2800 Snowden Ave., Long Beach. Assigned seats are sold out, but advance sale tickets for unassigned seats remain at $25 and $18. Tickets bought at the door cost $30 and $23. Tickets or information: (310) 495-9206.