VALLEY WEEKEND : After Stint as Porky Pig, Actress’ ‘Girly Show’ Is a Welcome Piece of Cake : Denise Moses’ one-woman showcase at Two Roads Theatre brings out eight quirky characters--and no giant cartoon heads.

A one-woman show in a 48-seat theater is paradise for Denise Moses--at least compared to other things she’s done in the name of show business.

There was the stint as Porky Pig with the Bugs Bunny Show, which she describes as “like Disney on Ice, but without the ice and without the Disney.” She got her Equity card for that role, performing in Mexican bull-fighting rings, off-season. Then there was life as Jerry (of Tom and Jerry), dancing across America one shopping mall at a time.

All of which makes “Girly Show” at the Two Roads Theatre in Studio City look like piece of cake. Each Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Moses simply transforms herself into eight women. No giant cartoon heads necessary.

A few hats, pairs of glasses and sweaters are all she needs to fill a tightly packed comedic hour.

The characters come from a variety of sources. Quirky Miss Donita, the world’s oldest living kindergarten teacher, is a second-generation imitation of Martha Graham. Talk show host Marianna Davenport is drawn for an acting teacher Moses studied with at the University of Texas. And beauty pageant contestant Kandy-with-a-K, could be any girl Moses attended high school with in Oklahoma City.

The one character who isn’t fictionalized is Aunt Marie. Stooped, rail-thin, dressed in a bathrobe and hairnet, Marie shows off her religious kitsch and offers her unseen visitor a snack of Wonder Bread.

Long before “Girly Show,” Moses knew she had a character in her grandmother’s twin sister. “You have to understand that my family has been imitating Aunt Marie for years,” Moses says. “But they all have real jobs, so it’s up to me to exploit my family.”

Moses would take a tape recorder to her aunt’s house to document the woman’s ravings about Uncle Buddy or the roster of family pets buried in the backyard. Sitting in the middle of Starbucks, Moses mimics her great aunt’s reaction, rolling her tongue out of her mouth as if to realign her dentures. “Sister, don’t say anything,” says Moses, momentarily aging 50 years. “She’s stealing my words again.”

When Moses first tired of playing cartoons, she drew on characters like Aunt Marie to put together a cabaret act in New York. When club managers asked about previous appearances, she did what any good actress would do: She lied. She claimed to have done a one-woman show in Texas. Later, she took her show on the college comedy circuit with the likes of Sinbad and Brett Butler.

Years of imitating Aunt Marie also came in handy when auditioning for the off-Broadway comedy “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding.” She got the part of 87-year-old Grandma Nunzio. She came to Los Angeles in 1989 to reprise that role and stayed.

While commercials became her bread and butter, Moses continued to look for a place to rework her one-woman show. Her close friend, TV actress Valerie Mahaffey, spotted an ad in the trades for one-person plays.

Moses wasn’t sure that her primarily light-hearted characterizations fit the bill, especially because many one-person shows focus on dysfunction. “I thought, oh boy, am I in trouble. My parents loved me. They sent me to camp. They sent me to ballet lessons. They’re still married,” she says.

Submit it anyway, Mahaffey said. All they can say is no.

Moses started to write down the characters living in her head. She developed the vignettes, often in Mahaffey’s living room, adding characters, expanding monologues. She added the title “Girly Show” and sent it to producer Edmund Gaynes, who included it in the monthlong series “64 Solos.”

“Watching all those shows--all 64--I knew which ones I wanted to bring back for runs,” Gaynes says. “I didn’t have to do a lot of thinking.” He brought “Girly Show” back in November. Word of mouth has been good, he said, and the show has already been extended into February.

Moses must have had characters left over because she has also developed a few TV show ideas that she is shopping around in the annual frenzy known as pilot season. One, “The Mobile Homemaker,” is a cooking show/sitcom about the “Martha Stewart of the trailer-park set.”

Writing, though, remains a means to an end. Acting out these characters remains her priority. It has to be, she says. “I have no other skills.”

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DETAILS

* WHAT: “Girly Show.”

* WHERE: Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City.

* WHEN: Sundays at 7:30 p.m. through Feb. 11.

* HOW MUCH: $12.50.

* CALL: (818) 766-9381.