STAND-UP : DANA CARVEY : Split Persona : The ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedian is tired of being upstaged by his Church Lady character.

When a performer complains of not getting top billing it can come off sounding egotistical, but that’s hardly the case when the performer is Dana Carvey of “Saturday Night Live.” That could be because Carvey’s a good-natured kind of guy with an innocent, boyish appearance. Then again, maybe it’s because Carvey’s complaint is about being upstaged by, of all people, himself.

“The first year I did Church Lady it was overwhelming,” he said. “I was doing a show in New London, Connecticut, and the marquee said: ‘TONIGHT THE CHURCH LADY.’ It really bummed me out. It’s OK to say the Church Lady, but it would be nice to have my name first.”

Well, with the Church Lady now five years old, Carvey, 35, is beginning to be known more for his own persona than as a leading lady. In the advertisement for his June 30 appearance at the Ventura Theatre his name is a good quarter inch above hers.

Now all he has to do is keep an eye out for the President of the United States.

“In 1977, I remember Chevy Chase doing Ford and Dan Ackroyd doing Carter. Now I’m doing a president on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Bush is kind of tricky. He sounds kind of whiny, but there is this thing down there,” said Carvey, lowering his voice to about a tenor level. “It sounds low, but the tone of it is kind of high. It’s really basic. Bush moves his hands around a lot. He’s a lot more manic than Reagan. He’s like Nixon in that sense.”

Bush and the Church Lady step out of the TV set and onto the stage with Carvey when he does stand-up, but that’s where the similarity between his two acts ends. “I’m the Wayne Newton of comedy. I sing, I play guitar, I interact with the audience, I play piano. On TV I’m constrained.”

Stand-up, Carvey said, gives him the time and the flexibility to develop really complex characters.

“They are a lot more abstracted. I take them to extremes. To me that’s the only reason to do it,” he said. “My whole being, my whole psyche wants to control it, but that’s the worst thing I can do.

“This philosophical stuff will really pack them in,” he said while analyzing his act. “I can see all these bikers from Santa Barbara saying, ‘I hear he’s into abstraction philosophy. We really ought to go.’ ”

Carvey said his knack for comedy, in general, and for doing characters and impressions, in particular, came through early in his childhood. He said he owes a lot of it simply to growing up in a very funny family of seven.

“At age 9, I had a tape of the Beatles and I could sort of do a Liverpudlian accent. I got a lot of attention,” he said. “It definitely chose me. I didn’t choose it,” he said of his career.

Even so, there are one or two voices he has yet to master, such as that of talk show host Larry King. “I just can’t get that low. I would need an electronic device,” he said. “And I can’t do an Australian accent to save my life. . . . I go cockney or Swedish.”

Carvey, who now divides his time between Encino and New York, was born in Missoula, Mont., and raised in San Carlos, Calif. It was while studying communication arts at San Francisco State University that he began to find success in comedy, and he won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1978.

He performed in comedy clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, got roles in the Mickey Rooney television series “One of the Boys” and in the movie “Spinal Tap” and then made his way to “Saturday Night Live.”

Like many comedians, Carvey had to battle some shyness along the way.

“When you’re not on stage it’s different. You switch off,” he said. “I can get kind of shy sometimes. I can be extroverted or shy. Basically, I’m insane, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

Carvey has overcome any onstage shyness to complete four seasons on SNL. As with a number of his predecessors on the show--Ackroyd, Chase, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray--that success has attracted the attention of filmmakers.

“If you get a hit character on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ you get asked to do a movie,” he said. “It’s not as much fun--it’s 100 takes, 10 hours a day. In a movie you give up control. The form doesn’t lend itself to comedy. It’s all slowing down. If you were to think of a way to kill comedy, that would be it.”

In the wake of his starring role in the not so successful film “Opportunity Knocks” earlier this year, Carvey said he intends to hold off on the movie-making for awhile. He recently decided against a role in the film “Beverly Hills Ninja.”

“It was all green light, ready to go. They were going to pay me a fortune,” he said. “But I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.”

Although he won’t be appearing in any movies for the time being, watching them is still one of his favorite pastimes. “Matinees only, but not the bargain matinees,” he said. “I can’t stand people who talk in the theater. I always sit in the 13th row. It’s supposed to be the best place for absolute optimum viewing.”

As Church Lady would say, “Isn’t that conveeeeeeenient?”

* WHERE AND WHEN: Dana Carvey will perform two shows June 30 at the Ventura Theatre, at 8 and 10:30 p.m. The theater is at 26 S. Chestnut St. Tickets are $21.50. Call 648-1888.