For
Margaret Cho, that which does not kill her makes it into her act.
During most of her stand-up career, the 33-year-old comedian has channeled her pain and despair on topics ranging from growing up Asian to coping with the cancellation of her short-lived, 1994-1995 ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl,” into laughs.
“That’s how I work. Things happen to me, and it’s horrible in the moment, but I can make it into something funny,” says Cho, whose new tour, “The Notorious C.H.O.,” comes to Long Beach’s Terrace Theater Saturday.
“Usually when something makes me angry, I want to talk about it because it’s so funny,” she says. “That’s how I heal. If I can get a good story out of something, then it’s all worthwhile.”
But initially her parents didn’t share her on-stage point of view.
“When I was growing up, it was really bad to talk about things that were happening in the family or just painful things,” says Cho, the daughter of Korean immigrants. “The philosophy behind pain is that if you share it with other people, you’re selfish. If you have pain, you should hang onto it and nurture it and not burden other people with it.
“I totally disagree with that and think it’s unhealthy. So I decided to share my pain with others,” she says. “Initially, my parents were upset by my choice of career. They hated the idea and couldn’t stand it. It took a long time for them to trust and enjoy what I do.”
Cho started her comedic climb at age 16, performing stand-up in a coffee shop above her parents’ San Francisco bookstore.
“In a sense, my career is a rebellion against that kind of closed-mouth attitude. I was a very awkward teen-ager. I didn’t have any friends. I was in a lot of emotional pain because I couldn’t handle social situations. But with comedy I felt totally at place and in control on stage. I knew what I was doing. I was popular, funny, smart, everything I wanted to be.”
In a sense, Cho became an all-American girl, whose recent tours have been a no-holds-barred emotional expose.
When Cho hit the road last year, she toured with “I’m the One That I Want.” Earning rave critical reviews, the show was a chronicle of the trials and tribulations that followed the cancellation of “All-American Girl” and Cho’s subsequent descent into four years of distress, including “lots of drugs and drinking and horrible relationships, each one leading me further and further into the abyss.”
This time around, she discusses other dark aspects.
“It’s all about the search for finding happiness and love and it all blowing up in my face,” Cho says. “My eternal struggle is that I will build something up in my mind that I ultimately think will save me and save my life. But it turns out to be a huge disaster because I put all this expectation and hope into it. That’s what this show is; it’s about that journey.”
That journey, however, takes a few tawdry twists and turns. Cho talks about venturing into Los Angeles’ underground sex clubs, where she found who she thought was Mr. Right.
“I went into this relationship with him, not being particularly enticed by the sex they were having, but so locked into the fantasy that this is going to be a great thing. But then I realized it’s all a sham, and it’s stupid.”
Risque routines aside, Cho says the show also has a political edge to it, “trying to find happiness and satisfaction in yourself, which is a revolutionary idea and a political statement.”
She says that comic agenda was influenced by her adolescent feelings and adult experiences of “being racially different and looking different from everyone,” including her time on “All-American Girl.”
“In the magazines that I loved so much and the television and movies I loved so much, I never felt a sense of belonging,” Cho says. “I felt invisible, which lent itself to this inferiority complex that affected me in my daily life, that lead me to all these hideous scenarios in my social situations. I didn’t have the self-esteem to back up any real good feelings about myself in a relationship.
“But now I want to make the political statement of I’m not going to put the power of my self-worth into the hands of advertisers and television executives or connected to any idea society is supposed to treasure,” Cho says. “I want to put that power in my hands. That’s what the show’s about.”