Comics Get Acts Together for Families : Benefit: Capistrano Beach fifth-graders will try to raise funds for a class field trip with a school show featuring five stand-up comedians.

“Nah . . . nah, can’t say that. . . .”

Comedian Willie Randolph was mentally running through his act, figuring out which lines he will and won’t be able to use during a show Saturday afternoon in Capistrano Beach.

After all, a stand-up comic doesn’t normally perform in front of a family audience--in an elementary school auditorium, no less.

Randolph and fellow comics Tere Joyce, Joey Gaynor, Dick Hardwick and Jim Hope will be sharing the bill at the Palisades Elementary School during the two-hour show, starting at 3 p.m. It’s a fund-raiser to help send the school’s three fifth-grade classes on an overnight field trip next month aboard the Pilgrim, the 19th-Century sailing ship replica anchored in Dana Point Harbor.

The students are reading Richard Henry Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast” in class, and while on the Pilgrim they will learn how to tie knots, hoist sails and swab decks as they role-play the lives of 19th-Century sailors.

“It’s a great educational experience,” said fifth-grade teacher Clare Kenney. “Our goal is to get everybody to the Pilgrim for free.”

A professional comedy show is obviously not your typical school fund-raising event.

But then most schools don’t have a parent who books opening acts at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

The students already had raised about $1,900 selling first-aid kits and cookies. But another $1,200 was needed to send all 78 fifth-graders on the trip. Kenney, who has been running Pilgrim field trips for three years, asked for more fund-raising ideas during a recent Back to School Night. That’s when Nikki Sweet--whose son, Wyatt, is a fifth-grader--spoke up.

“Instead of the regular selling or doing things like that, I thought it would be more fun to do a comedy show,” Sweet said. “All the parents were just enthralled.”

Sweet, who is also the publicist at the Coach House and who has booked the opening acts there for four years, rounded up the five comedians, all of whom are donating their services.

“These are people who are either very into benefits or are family oriented,” said Sweet. “Obviously, their humor is extremely clean,” she added with a laugh. “There’s no Andrew Dice Clay.”

Still, a family audience at an elementary school is nothing like an over-21 crowd at a comedy club, and even a comedian who does “clean” humor has to make some concessions, right?

Willie Randolph isn’t concerned. Turns out it won’t be his first time performing at an elementary school.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he said, “but I got thrown out of class for doing it the first time.”

Randolph, who was a contestant on TV’s “Star Search” in October, has the kind of act that would appeal to families: He has 12 brothers and sisters and, as he put it, “I talk about my family a lot.”

He remembers the times the entire family traveled together.

“My father used to say stuff like, ‘Quit fighting in the car or I’ll come back there and spank you.’ I’d say, ‘There’s only two of you and 13 of us. Take your best shot.’ ”

Randolph’s act is also music-oriented, featuring a unique gimmick of his own invention: The words of his songs have been pre-programmed to, as he sings, run up the neck of his guitar in small red lights. Beyond that, he does mime and a host of voices, from Daffy Duck to the sound of the Jack in the Box speaker.

Tere Joyce says she knows how to cater her material to a specific audience. “I usually kind of do two different types of shows: more adult humor, and some I can use for people who don’t want to hear it,” said Joyce, who plays an “innocent” character on stage. Her standard catch-phrase is “I’m shocked.”

She added that she may know better than most comics what is or isn’t appropriate for a school audience: “My mother’s a schoolteacher.”

Although he has been called a “renegade” comedian, Joey Gaynor said he is not concerned about performing for a family audience. “I’ll do the same type of an act I’d do for television,” said Gaynor, who does topical humor and singing impressions of Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Joe Cocker and Bruce Springsteen. One bit, called the Loud Actors Theater, features the voices of Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb and Jose Ferrer.

Gaynor, who is a regular on Robert Townsend’s “Partners in Crime” specials on HBO and who is now appearing on HBO’s “First and Ten” sitcom, also does characterizations of regional and ethnic groups. “I talk about being Irish--and Italian, actually--and how I came from the House of Volume. They don’t show love by hugging. It’s by decibels.”

More than any of the comedians on the bill, Dick Hardwick is used to performing for family audiences--having worked at Disneyland for nine years, including five as the comic in the Golden Horseshoe Revue. “I’m a clean, Midwestern kind of guy you wouldn’t mind having over to your house for dinner,” said Hardwick, who lives in Fullerton.

In his act, Hardwick talks about growing up in Indiana--”the land of opportunity--if you’re a tractor.” He says things are simpler in the Midwest: “You only have to worry about tornadoes.” He remembers how they used to “confuse” the tornadoes in his hometown of Green Castle: They’d set up fake mobile home parks around town.

Green Castle is home to Depauw University, which is where Hardwick got his start in show business. In the late ‘60s, when he was in junior high school, he used to play drums in a rock band that played in a campus fraternity house. One of the fraternity brothers, it turns out, was Dan Quayle. As Hardwick says, “He’s the first vice president to know all the words to ‘Louie Louie.’ ”

Willie Randolph, Tere Joyce, Joey Gaynor, Dick Hardwick and Jim Hope perform Saturday at 3 p.m. at Palisades Elementary School, 26462 Via Sacramento, Capistrano Beach. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the school for $5, or at the door for $6. The show is a benefit to help send fifth-graders on an overnight field trip. Information: (714) 496-5942.