Madigan Is Star Mover for Benefit : Comedy: After headlining AIDS fund-raiser tonight in Irvine, she’ll be heading for Phoenix. She says she normally avoids L.A. area ‘if I can help it.’

Kathleen Madigan is coming into Southern California for tonight’s AIDS benefit at the Irvine Improv, but the comic won’t stick around any longer than she needs to. Soon after the gig, she is heading to Phoenix for a series of club dates there.

“I don’t spend much time out there (in Southern California) if I can help it,” Madigan said in a phone interview from West Palm Beach, Fla., where she had just celebrated her 27th birthday with a day on the golf course. “In L.A., the traffic is just too much for me to deal with.”

The Missouri native, whose Midwestern upbringing is a touchstone in her act, is headlining tonight’s benefit for Stop AIDS Orange County, an education and prevention project of the Garden Grove-based AIDS Response Program. Also on the bill are comics John Riggi and Jim Hope.

In this third annual comedy benefit for the AIDS project, Madigan is following in the footsteps of Paula Poundstone and Ellen DeGeneres, the headliners of the previous comedy benefits and two of the top female comics in the business.

The string of female headliners is “kind of a fluke,” according to Jerry Holderman, the event’s volunteer producer. “The first year, we knew we wanted Paula Poundstone.” The second year, organizers managed to land DeGeneres.

After that, “it just felt like a trend,” said Holderman, who caught Madigan’s act on an HBO special. “There are a lot of good female comics out there who haven’t been overexposed and do good, fresh stuff.”

“I was very flattered that they asked,” Madigan said of her invitation to headline the benefit. Hers has been a fast rise through the ranks; she did not become a full-time comedian until 1989, and earlier this year she was nominated for an American Comedy Award as Best Female Club Comic.

Riggi is doing his first stand-up gig since working for seven months as a writer on the now-canceled “Dennis Miller Show.”

He described his act as “definitely observational, sort of verging on stream of consciousness. My show’s always changing--a lot of times I don’t really know what I’m going to do until I get on stage.”

The Los Angeles-based comic said he draws his material from life, such as a current routine on a recent project to build a flower bed.

“I had to pay for dirt,” Riggi marveled. “I just thought it was really funny that I had gotten to a point in my life where I feel a need to buy dirt. I guess that means I’m an adult.”

Riggi, a Chicago native, started his stand-up career in 1982 and traveled heavily for eight years before moving to Los Angeles. He was soon able to cut down on his touring, thanks to television appearances (including three stops on the Carson-era “Tonight Show”) and eventually the writing job with Miller.

The comic likes to work out his own material on stage, so writing for television was a switch. “It was hard to get used to at first,” he said. “I don’t really write in the sense that I sit down and write a joke. . . . The audience--they’re the best editor.”

* Kathleen Madigan, John Riggi and Jim Hope will perform tonight at 8:30 at the Irvine Improv, 4255 Campus Drive. Dinner, which is included in the ticket price, begins at 7 p.m. Admission: $35 to $50. (714) 534-0961.