" Last week I was heading toward the gate at the airport in Toronto, where there was a SARS outbreak, " says comedian Margaret Cho. " I noticed about 20 big American snowboard guys with those little face masks hanging around their necks. They took one look at my glaring Asian-ness and immediately put their masks on. So I started coughing and gasping and collapsed. I reached out to one of them to help me, and they all ran. It was so funny — these huge guys, and through their own fear and racial bias, I became Godzilla. " Cho’s feigned attack was more than an example of her quick, offbeat sense of humor. " That’s what my idea of revolution is, " she explains by phone from her home in Glendale, California. " If you see something that offends you, don’t swallow it. Up-chuck it and hurl it back. "
Revolution is also the name of Cho’s new production, which she’ll bring to Symphony Hall for two shows this Friday. " It is a crash course in learning the art of defending one’s self with humor and compassion. " But the performance is also her first that deals with world politics rather than those of sex and race — two themes that have won Cho many gay and lesbian fans and put her on comedy’s cutting edge. She began performing at age 16, using what she knew — coming of age with her gay friends and her Korean-born immigrant parents — as the font of her material. She thought she’d struck gold in 1994 when, after a national tour opening for Jerry Seinfeld, she was hired to star in the sit-com All American Girl. But the experience turned nightmarish as the network neutered her humor and browbeat her into losing 30 pounds so she could, uh, play herself. A crash diet caused her kidneys to fail, and Cho left television with a shaken sense of identity. Her efforts at self-discovery sparked a one-woman Off Broadway show, I’m the One That I Want. A smash that Cho took across the country, it was adapted for a bestselling book and turned into a film that grossed more per print that any movie in history: $1.4 million from only nine prints. Two years ago, she launched another successful show, Notorious C.H.O., turning its Carnegie Hall stop into a film and two-CD set that were released in 2002.
Today, Cho is a cottage industry. She’s documenting the Revolution tour on film, developing a line of clothing called High Class Cho, and writing " a book of daily affirmations for cynical assholes " in response to the cloying Chicken Soup for the Soul series. She also manages all aspects of her career. Although Revolution has been touring since March 1, she says it’s a work-in-progress. " The underlying message doesn’t change, but the jokes do, almost daily, with world events. This is the first time I have people I know and love in combat, and it’s very distressing. So is the censorship that’s taking place. Our culture is completely ruled by fear of the unknown. Take the ticker on CNN, which all the stations use now after 9/11. Then, it was necessary because there was so much going on, but now they put in worthless bullshit — like ‘Barbara Mandell turns 59,’ and who the fuck cares — to keep everybody overwhelmed and nervous. "
Of course, Cho hasn’t altogether abandoned her old themes. There’s room in Revolution for jokes about her ex-boyfriend and her mother, bartering sex for chores, and Thailand’s red-light district. Cho took refuge in the last-named when her vacation to Nepal was interrupted by the disruption following the murder of that nation’s royal family two years ago. " I went to Bangkok for a few days to reacclimate and spent most of my time at the gay sex shows. The best one I saw was called Wonderboys, and it had nothing to do with Michael Douglas. Let me tell you, they totally dispel the myth that Asian men have small penises. These guys had dicks with dicks on the end of them. And they do amazing, funny comedy sketches that somehow always end in anal sex. "
Margaret Cho plays Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, this Friday, April 25, at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Call (617) 266-1492.
