Acting in the First-Person

“So tell us something about yourself!” That’s the unspoken invitation behind the many autobiographical one-person shows that have been seen on American stages since the late 1980s.

Part of a broader boom in solo performance (which also includes fictional and documentary character monologues a la Eric Bogosian and Anna Deavere Smith, as well as more narrative works, such as those by David Cale and Holly Hughes), the first-person trend has been fueled by both tight theater budgets and the identity politics of the multiculturalism movement. Consequently, autobiographical solos have become a staple of the nonprofit theater--from performance art venues such as Santa Monica’s Highways to such prestigious theaters as the Public Theatre in New York.

Recently, however, autobiographical solo shows increasingly have been appearing in commercial houses. And with the movement has come new forms.

Among the new genres is “therapy theater.” Not to be confused with the self-indulgent excesses and often amateurish production values of many performance-art pieces, two new shows in particular demonstrate that comedy-as-therapy-as-art can be highly professional as well.

These two shows are “Nude Nude Totally Nude,” written and performed by SCTV alumna Andrea Martin, at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, and “God Said ‘Ha!,’ ” “Saturday Night Live” veteran Julia Sweeney’s hit show, which played L.A.’s Coronet Theatre this past summer and opens at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway on Nov. 19. Similarities between the two artists’ career profiles--both rose to prominence via TV sketch comedy--is only a small part of what they have in common. Perhaps most notably, both shows are built around the actresses’ attempts to reconcile their recent familial and personal experiences.

Martin intercuts stories about her relationship with her mother, her search for her Armenian roots and her affair with a much younger man with reprisals of several of her SCTV personas, including station manager Edith Prickley and cleaning woman Pirini Schlerosi. Sweeney, meanwhile, focuses almost exclusively on anecdotes about the recent period during which her parents moved in with her, as their son (and Sweeney’s brother) was dying of cancer.

Certainly, Martin and Sweeney aren’t the only ones who’ve been feeling the need to get up close and personal with audiences lately. L.A. has also seen Claudia Shear’s “Blown Sideways Through Life” and Lynn Redgrave’s “Shakespeare for My Father,” to name but two.

But Martin and Sweeney are the latest entries in the field, and in some ways the most similar thus far. Their respective shows also mark the first time each artist has ventured anything so overtly personal.

Martin first began working on “Nude Nude Totally Nude” a couple of years ago, in part because she wanted to go beyond the satiric characters that made her famous in the late 1970s.

“It wasn’t satisfying creatively anymore to hide behind characters as a sole expression,” she says. “I could have done a show with just characters, but it became less important to me to solicit just the approval of the audience and more important to solicit my own approval.”

Yet she insists that she was inspired to talk about her own experiences for artistic, rather than psychological, reasons. “I didn’t want this to be therapeutic or to use the audience to work out issues,” Martin says. “I wanted to prove to myself that that voice could be potentially as entertaining [as my characters], because I have always believed that the most compelling art is that which one exposes [one’s] own truth.

“I’ve always been drawn to people who are very brave in feeling not apologetic about who they were,” Martin continues. “So the older I got, and the more I found myself drawn to that kind of expression, the more I wanted to delve into that same arena.”

Sweeney’s motivations, though not conscious at the time, were a combination of artistic and psychological. She first developed the material that would grow into “God Said ‘Ha!’ ” while she was going through the very experiences she relates in the show.

Performing at the Un-Cabaret--the alternative comedy showcase hosted by performer Beth Lapides on Sundays at LunaPark--it was indeed a kind of therapy. “Doing the Un-Cab was definitely a release and a rant and I felt like I wasn’t crazy,” Sweeney says. “Now, even though I feel the emotions, it doesn’t provide the same function.”

She workshopped “God Said ‘Ha!’ ” at the Groundling Theatre last November, then took it to the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in January before bringing it back to L.A. last June.

In some ways, it has continued to be therapeutic. “The show has allowed me to distance myself from [the events],” Sweeney says. “Sometimes I think I’m not going to really go through the realization of everything that happened that year until I stop [performing the show].”

Yet there are some aspects of autobiographical performance to which Sweeney has yet to become accustomed. “On the one hand, it’s really intimate because you’re being yourself and talking about true events,” she says. “On the other hand, you’re trapped in the truth. And sometimes it’s humiliating.

“When you’re doing character material, you can always talk in the third person,” Sweeney continues. “Not being able to objectify it is really embarrassing and, on the other hand, kind of freeing.

“One thing that’s kind of horrifying is that you really are marketing yourself and this piece of your life. There’s something really creepy about that.”

* “Nude Nude Totally Nude,” Canon Theatre, 205 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills. Today, 5 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. $25-$37.50. (310) 859-2830. Closes Sunday.

* “God Said ‘Ha!’,” Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St., New York. (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250. Opens Nov. 19.