Dusting off the new material

With her 50th birthday approaching this June, Sandra Bernhard was presented with a suitably monumental proposal: the staging of a one-woman show built around classic songs and comedy bits from her past.

Bernhard gave the ambitious plan some serious thought -- and then promptly tossed it out.

“I started trying to dust off the old pieces, and I just wasn’t connecting to the material,” she said. “I get tired of my own act. I’m the type of person that likes to be on the edge while I’m out there, to start fresh and then let things continue to grow. If you can do it and it’s good, there’s no greater experience.”

Yet when it came time to assemble new material for what would become the show “Everything Bad and Beautiful,” which opened this week for a March residency at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, she stalled.

With a six-year relationship and a 6-year-old daughter as part of her bicoastal life, she questioned whether she had the time, energy and inspiration to mount a new production.

“The last thing I wanted to do was put a new show together,” she said. “I was freaking out and nervous. But then slowly the pieces came together. I did three shows in Australia and also traveled to Hong Kong for the first time, and it all just jelled over there.

“Something always happens when I travel; it regenerates me. Something about crossing the time zones and sleeping in strange places, you listen to your iPod and it becomes the soundtrack to all those experiences. The themes and options, the visual things and the things that inspire me, it all started flowing.”

The resulting show has all the basic Bernhard elements -- songs, anecdotes, star-skewering and political rants -- but filtered through a new sensibility.

“I wanted it to be more real than I’ve ever been about my life and my daughter,” said Bernhard, whose best showcase to this point for her broad talent, apart from her live shows, was perhaps 1983’s “The King of Comedy,” Martin Scorsese’s dark meditation on celebrity.

“Traveling to other countries right now gave me the feeling of escaping America, which has been locked in such an oppressive and repressive battle since Bush came into office. It’s crazy -- there are no connectors between people, and that’s very tormenting for an artist who has faith in humanity.

“George Bush has a terrible lack of self-awareness. I think he’s afraid of things bad and beautiful, and my show addresses all this. It brings together my emotional state and my reaction to the government and the world.”

Bernhard had hoped to promote the tour on the David Letterman and Jay Leno nighttime gabfests, where she’s had many memorable moments, but no invitations have been forthcoming.

“They’re not having me right now,” she said. “I thought that since I’m doing guest spots on NBC’s ‘Crossing Jordan’ that Jay would have me on, but no. I haven’t been on Letterman since he moved to CBS. He got very weird and distant with me. I don’t know what it is.”

Bernhard, who also has an extended guest role on Showtime’s “The L Word,” says the flurry of activity in her career has nothing to do with turning 50.

“Everyone has a year that they almost got trapped in, and I feel as if I just left high school,” she said.

“I feel the same enthusiasm I felt then. That’s why I didn’t need to look back to create the new stage show. I think it’s much more interesting to look at where I am than where I’ve been.”

As for the future, she admits that the reality-TV genre intrigues her as a niche that might be a good fit.

“About nine years ago, a friend and I pitched an idea for ‘A Day in the Life of Sandra Bernhard,’ but they didn’t know what to do with it back then. But I think there’s a place out there now for the things I do. I’m not going to reinvent the Sonny and Cher show or ‘Carol Burnett,’ but there’s a way to do it, and I feel as if I’m just on the precipice of that. I want to be embraced somewhere, whether it’s on Showtime or even network television. I think my time has come and people are catching on.

“I’ll tell you,” she says with a sigh, “life really takes you down some interesting paths.”

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Sandra Bernhard

Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday; 5:30 and 8 p.m. Sunday. Call for rest of schedule. Ends March 25.

Price: $22.50 to $50

Info: (323) 655-2520; www.silentmovietheatre.com