DISABLED PERFORMER IS EAGER TO TRY NEW ROLES : ‘I’m strong-willed. Ask anyone who knows me.’

Geri Jewell is a young woman with a quick mind, a ready quip and a natural, infectious vivacity. These gifts have served her well in her usual line of work: as a stand-up comedienne who has worked major clubs in Los Angeles and New York and appeared at numerous stage and television benefits.

It is a career that has been nationally chronicled in recent years--especially on her appearances in the NBC-TV series “Facts of Life”--because of Jewell’s highly visible physical disability.

Afflicted since birth with cerebral palsy (a nervous-system disorder), Jewell, 29, has achieved success contrary to the usual societal images about the severely disabled.

“I’m luckier than most disabled people, I know. I’ve been blessed. Big stars, like Liza Minnelli, have come up to me and told me how much they admire what I’ve done. That kind of thing just blows you away,” Jewell said before her appearance at a benefit Saturday for the Carl Harvey School in Santa Ana, a center for the physically handicapped where she had been a student in the mid-1960s.

But her career, despite all the initial ballyhoo, is now suffering from a kind of professional lull, she said. “It’s still hard for people to think of me (for roles). I’m still doing the stand-up stints, but I want to do more acting. But there’s still this stigma,” she said quietly, more with a trace of annoyance than of anger.

“I guess this is the flip side of any success. The down after the up. A lot of people have to go through it in this kind of business, I know. You have to keep thinking positive. And that”--Jewell grinned widely--”I have learned to do very well.”

Her appearances at benefits for programs for the disabled--such as a recent benefit hosted by Nancy Reagan at the White House and the one for the Carl Harvey School last Saturday at the Santa Ana Elks Lodge--are reminders of how far Geri Jewell has come.

Jewell is not bound to a wheelchair. But cerebral palsy has still left her muscular control severely limited.

“I can get around by myself,” she said. “I’ve been living independently for years, and I’ve been driving since I was old enough to get a license.

“But because I wobble, and sometimes I can’t control my arms, some people think I’m drunk or something. Or worse, that I’m not all there mentally.”

As a child, Jewell was placed in a series of public special-education schools, including Carl Harvey in Santa Ana and Woodcrest in Fullerton. (The family, originally from the Buffalo, N.Y., area, lived most of this time in Garden Grove and Fullerton.) She graduated from Fullerton’s Troy High School, where she attended regular classes on a full-time basis.

Most able-bodied people, she said, have a stereotype of cerebral palsy victims as being helpless and totally dependent on sheltered residential and job programs. Fortunately, she said, she found some teachers “who didn’t baby us.” Instead, she said, “they worked to wake up our minds and show us that we had a problem but are as normal as the next person.”

Then she discovered the stage. “It started in junior high. I had this teacher who got me to write a Christmas play, all about a family of disabled people. When the school staged it, that night was the biggest thrill of my life,” recalled Jewell, whose major when she later attended Cypress College was--naturally--theater arts.

By the time she enrolled in college, she had also developed an ability to joke about her plight. “You see, I had started to crack jokes about my CP (cerebral palsy) condition a lot back in high school. People learned to understand that it was my way of easing the situation. They were laughing with me, not at me.”

Her first big stage break came in fall, 1978. “Some friends (including comedian Alex Valdez, who is blind) kept egging me on about the stand-up comic bit. They got me to appear at one of those amateur nights at the Comedy Store (in West Hollywood).

“I did one-liners about CP. You know, how I got fired as a waitress . . . because people didn’t like the way I tossed their salads. Or when my family sent me to ballet school . . . now that was a trip. Or how people go out and spend tons of money to get drunk . . . so they can walk the way I do.

“You know, stuff like that. And people seemed to like it.” The ovation for her debut that night was a standing one. “I was scared to death, but I loved every minute of being up there on stage. Maybe they were clapping because”--Jewell’s grin this time was pure impishness--”I made it . . . without falling down.”

After more stints at the Comedy Store, her career began to take off. She made her television debut on a United Cerebral Palsy Assn. fund-raiser in Los Angeles. “I fast-talked my way into that one, fibbing about being already lined up as a performer,” she said.

She appeared in “The Righteous Apple” series on public television. And in “Two of a Kind,” a television drama with George Burns and Robby Benson, she played Benson’s cerebral palsy-afflicted friend.

Her biggest break came in 1981, thanks to producer Norman Lear, whose aides had seen Jewell perform at the Comedy Store. On Lear’s orders, a whole episode of “Facts of Life” was written around Jewell’s disability and career as a stand-up comic.

(The long-running series, produced by Lear’s company and starring Charlotte Rae, is about four students at a girls’ school, played by Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon, Kim Fields and Mindy Cohn.)

Jewell’s performance was widely noted, leading “Facts of Life” producers to cast her in numerous episodes in the next three seasons.

“It was a wonderful role. It really did a lot to humanize the image of the disabled for the general public. At first, yes, there was a lot of attention on my CP, but later it was mostly about me just as a person,” she said.

Jewell kept up her stand-up stints, appearing at the Improvisation in West Hollywood and at clubs in New York City. She appeared in Lear’s “I Love Liberty” television special. Her autobiography, “Geri” (written with Stewart Weiner), was published last year.

Although she left “Facts of Life” after the 1983-84 season (“they wanted to cut the number of episodes involving my character”), Jewell said she has hopes of starring as a schoolteacher in a new series now under development.

Meanwhile, she said, she’s treating the current lull in acting offers as just one more challenge. “I’ve always hung in there because I believe in myself and that I will be OK,” said Jewell, softly. “You need to have patience to survive. I have that patience; I have always found ways to survive. Having CP does that for you.”

With a wide grin, she added, “I’m strong-willed. Ask anyone who knows me. It would take a lot to make me quit.”