Clean Comedians Do Away With the Unspeakable : Stand-up: Their performance to benefit Garden Grove High School’s drama department, however, fails to draw a big audience.

“Comedy,” Steve Martin used to say, “is not pretty.” But to a group of performers in the Orange County area, comedy today is downright unspeakable.

Between Andrew Dice Clay’s jokes about the male anatomy and others joking about sex acts, “it’s all just disgusting,” said Adam Christing, his angry words belied somewhat by his stage costume--a tuxedo jacket and decidedly mismatching surfer jams.

Christing, 28, is president of Clean Comedians, a 20-member consortium of magicians, mimes, singers and stand-ups who say they can be funny even though they don’t saturate their show with scatology.

Audiences are not always convinced. On Saturday night, Clean Comedians could fill only one-third of the Garden Grove High School auditorium, even though their performance was billed as a benefit for the school’s drama department.

Nevertheless, Christing--a magician whose act depends as much on sly one-liners as it does on prestidigitation--views his work as little less than a crusade.

“America has a problem of the heart,” he says. “It isn’t just Clay or 2 Live Crew; it’s something beneath the tattoo. The heart of our culture is in trouble.”

Christing and his colleagues believe that to cure America’s cultural heart problems, performers they consider filthy should be banned. And once such acts as Clay and Howard Stern were silenced, Clean Comedians would stand ready to fill the breach.

The troupe began two years ago when Christing and Cary Trivanovich, a mime and the company’s top draw, spent an evening at an all-night restaurant in Orange, bemoaning the coarse grade of contemporary comedy.

Trivanovich, 34, recently had appeared in a showcase for college activity directors and found his relatively tame act (mimes not being known for their use of gutter language) sandwiched between rougher stuff.

“One hundred percent of the other acts were very, very filthy,” said Trivanovich, who cites Mad magazine cartoonist Don Martin as an inspiration--and whose appearance and facial expressions, in fact, evoke one of Martin’s elongated figures.

“I felt I was insulting my character by being associated with them,” Trivanovich said. “I felt this is not the way it should be.” His own act uses a few one-liners (“Here’s one thing you’ll never hear at a Catholic school: ‘So what are you wearing tomorrow?’ ”) amid several carefully scripted mime sketches, only one of which involves mucous.

Christing picked up the narrative: “I thought people would be really hungry for clean comedians. And that’s how we got our name.”

He drew up a list of requirements for would-be Clean Comedians, proscribing certain words and topics. Members of the troupe must adhere to the “10 Commandments of Comedy” in all their performances, not just those booked by Clean Comedians.

Although most of their business is with school assemblies and church groups, Clean Comedians’ shows are not entirely without bite. On Saturday, Christing made fun of media coverage of the recent Los Angeles riots, and of Jim and Tammy Bakker’s fund-raising techniques. He also teased a member of the audience who didn’t quite cooperate with his magic act, saying: “Hey, this is my job. I wouldn’t go to your job and mess up the salad bar.”

Stand-up comic Scott Wood’s act most resembled standard comedy club fare: He poked fun at President Bush (visiting the riot scene, Bush tells the First Lady: “Barbara, drop those shoes! Put ‘em back!”), squirted a water gun at the audience and made occasional references to bodily fluids, flatulence and Vice President Dan Quayle.

Indeed, underlying Clean Comedians’ acts is what might be considered a conservative political position.

“Don’t get us wrong, we don’t feel that guys like the Diceman should be censored,” said the straight-faced Christing. Waiting a beat, he continued: “We feel they should be put to death.”