INTELLIGENT LIVES RECOGNIZED

For once, Lily Tomlin was speechless.

Almost.

“To be an actor in the theater is to have the best time being an actor,” said the mega-star of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” as she stood with her writer, friend and co-honoree Jane Wagner on a small stage in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“This is not anodized aluminum,” she quipped, tightly clutching the large, silver-hued award plaque she and Wagner had each received only moments before.

The event was Monday’s 11th California Theatre Awards, a $200-a-ticket annual fund-raiser presented by (and for) the California Theatre Council, a statewide, nonprofit service organization for the nonprofit sector of the California theater community. Whatever it lacked in Academy Awards tinsel and glitz, it made up for in Tony Award urbanity and wit.

From the tasteful dinner to the tasty “entertainment” (a swift, sly, seamless riffling through a dozen or so famous stage comedies by a quartet of pros: Marsha Mason, Marian Mercer, David Dukes and Rene Auberjonois, staged by Gordon Hunt), the evening confidently reflected what outgoing CTC President Nancy Ebsen had earlier called the passion its artists bring to the theater.

Ebsen introduced her successor, Stephen J. Albert, managing director of the Mark Taper Forum, and the newly contracted CTC executive director, Robert Holley. Holley left a post with the Theatre Communications Group, a nationwide service organization for nonprofit theater, to come West largely, he said, “because it seemed to me that the most exciting people I talked to in the theater came from the West Coast.”

The hour was getting late by the time L.A. Public Theatre producer Peg Yorkin, one of last year’s honorees, was called on to introduce this year’s award recipients and, as she pointed out, everyone had pretty much already said everything she had intended to say. This left nothing to do but introduce the evening’s star attractions.

As they came to the podiums, buoyed by applause and a standing ovation, Tomlin seemed momentarily nonplussed; writer/director Wagner, perhaps less accustomed to these honors and visibly delighted to be up there, warmly thanked the 200-plus members of the council and their guests, reminding them, with a sly glance at Tomlin, that first came “the words.”

“Fame is a terrible price to pay for the loss of one’s dignity,” Tomlin deadpanned, well on her way to recovering both her speech and humor.

City Councilman Joel Wachs, long a promoter and supporter of the arts in this city, then presented each of the creative partners with a proclamation from Mayor Tom Bradley declaring Monday Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner Day--virtually at the eleventh hour.

“This,” Tomlin said, fully recovered, “is politics instead of art.”