Lea DeLaria has been a professional lesbian for over ten years, earning a living with her comedy and singing routines. She helped to create San Francisco's Gay Comedy Nights and New York's People Who Are Funny That Way and has uproariously MCed open-mike nights, festival stages, and Gay Pride rallies across the nation, including the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, to a crowd of nearly 1,000,000.

You may know her musical comedy about perverts, Dos Lesbos, which toured the country for three years (1987-1989), or Girl Friday, a comedy conceived, written, and directed by, and starring Lea, which won the 1989 Golden Gull for Best Comedy Group in Provincetown, her hometown. You may have seen her show Lesbo-a-GoGo or caught her chatting, late-night, on Arsenio.

Lea's high-octane delivery, her gifts at spontaneous repartee, and her loud, often vulgar presence make deliberate and fruitful inroads into rethinking the stereotyping of lesbians and other women in our society. One of her greatest advantages is that Lea DeLaria is comfortable on-stage -- and on-stage, she is herself. Her Muse is lesbian life, gay life, all life.

She careens unabashedly around a stage, into the audience. Nothing is sacred, yet all, somehow, is respected. The targets of her energetic blitz: a gynecology appointment from Hell, Bette Davis being born, gay/lesbian relations, lesbian dating and sex in all their absurdity, straight woman tourists in Provincetown, and the occasional gullible patron at her shows. She has been known to wind up on the laps of female audience members; even in a large room, Lea's performances are intimate. And, would you believe her big-voiced presentation of scat/blues and soul; she has released comedy albums (including 1994's Bulldyke in a China Shop and 1997's Box Lunch) and a series of jazz standards albums as well. ~ Laura Post, Rovi