AUTOBIOLAUGHICAL : ‘I’m Not Doing a Character,’ Says Cathy Ladman. ‘The Character Is Me.’
When a friend of Cathy Ladman’s saw her perform live for the first time recently, she turned to the man she was with and said: “That’s exactly the way she is when I talk to her in the morning.”
It was a high compliment to Ladman, who is performing at the Improv in Brea through Sunday. “My goal is to be as close to me as I can on stage,” Ladman said in a recent interview. “I’m not on stage doing a character. The character is me.”
And who is that?
An extremely likable, single, 35-year-old former teacher from Queens in New York City who taps her own experiences to create an autobiographical style of comedy: She touches on everything from coping with single life and dealing with broken locks on restroom stalls to how “fastidious, meticulous and anal-retentive” her accountant father is and how she has a “typical Jewish mother” (her mother was sent home from jury duty because “she insisted she was guilty”).
“I’m not talking about 7-Elevens,” she says, “and commercials and ‘Did you notice. . . .’ I don’t comment so much on things outside of me as how things affect me. It’s like situational comedy, really. Things that people tend to remember most about my act are those things where I am put in a situation.”
One of those situations, which has become something of a classic, involves a misunderstanding at the Canadian border. She tells the border guard that she is a comedian; the guard thinks she said, “I’m Canadian.”
Ladman talks in her act about her past before stand-up as a substitute teacher. She also worked as a free-lance writer and sales clerk and didn’t get into comedy until she was 26.
“I couldn’t stand not doing it anymore,” she recalls. “I had wanted to do it so long.”
The impetus to finally take the plunge came when she saw her friend, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, make his first appearance on “The Tonight Show” in 1981. Ladman has known Seinfeld since she was 15. They met on a teen tour of Israel and later would get together regularly at a bowling alley her father owned in Massapequa Park, N.Y., Seinfeld’s hometown. (“That was our rendezvous place,” she says.)
After seeing Seinfeld on “The Tonight Show,” Ladman discussed a career in comedy with him. She remembers that he encouraged her, telling her how funny she is and how she would make a terrific comedian.
“He gave me the push that I needed,” she says.
Her first shot was at an open-mike night in a Manhattan comedy club, she says: “I knew in my gut I should be doing this. Of course I had tons to learn, but I just kept doing it. There was really no question. The only thing that had stopped me was fear, which is what stops all of us from doing anything.”
Here’s Ladman talking fearlessly about:
* Religion: “All religions are the same. Religion is basically guilt with different holidays.”
* Open marriage, which she’s against: “I get upset when guys I don’t know see other women.”
* Therapy: “I’ve been in therapy once a week for 16 years. My friend thought that was rather extensive, so I brought her home to meet my family. Now she goes twice a week.”
“I’m pretty dry, I guess,” Ladman says. “I guess I’m not the most positive person in the world, but I’m always striving to be better than I am.”
It’s paying off. In the past year, Ladman has appeared four times on “The Tonight Show”; she was a nominee for best female stand-up comic at the American Comedy Awards last weekend, and she recently taped her first comedy special, “One Night Stand,” which begins airing on HBO April 13.
Who: Cathy Ladman.
When: Tonight at 8:30; Friday at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday at 8, 10 and 12 p.m.; Sunday at 8:30 p.m.
Where: The Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea.
Whereabouts: Take the Lambert Road exit off the Orange Freeway and go west. Turn left on State College Boulevard and right on Birch Street. The Improv is in the Brea Marketplace, across from the Brea Mall.
Wherewithal: $7 to $10.
Where to call: (714) 529-7878.
