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Lea DeLaria Biography

lea-delaria
  • Born: May 23, 1958 in Belleville, IL
  • Years Active: 1990s-2000s
  • Genre: World & Reggae

Lea DeLaria has been a professional lesbian for over 10 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 emceed open mics, 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 3 years (1987-89) 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, where she currently lives. You may have seen her show, Lesbo-a-GoGo or caught her chatting, late-night, on a recent Arsenio. Lea's high-octane delivery, her gifts at spontaneous repartee, and her loud, often-vulgar presence make deliberate and fruitful inroads into the rethinking the stereotypying of lesbians and other women in our society. One of her greatest advantages is that Lea DeLaria is comfortable onstage, and, onstage, 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 recently released Bulldyke In A China Shop. ~ Laura Post, Rovi

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