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Thursday March 10, 2005

Motherhood gives Jewish comic new shtick

by dan pine
staff writer

Like many standup comics, Cathy Ladman is up a lot during the wee hours. Only these days it’s not from hanging out in smoky all-night comedy clubs. It’s because she’s a new mom.

Ladman’s 19-month-old daughter, Milan, is still a handful, but it’s all good as far as the Jewish comedian/actress is concerned. It’s just a new source of comedic material, even if some of it is potty humor.

“Everyone said, ‘Your life will not be the same,’ and now it’s happened and it’s almost like I’m living someone else’s life,” says Ladman of motherhood in a phone interview from her Los Angeles home.

Diapers and high chairs aside, Ladman is still very much in the comedy game and will headline the annual “Funny Girlz: a Smorgasbord of Women’s Humor” on April 1 in San Francisco. She shares the bill with five other women comics.

To do the S.F. gig, Ladman will leave her baby behind with her husband. The trip allows her to regain a taste of her former life when she was a swinging single standup comic going from town to town purveying wry takes on life, love and airline food.

“I’ve had a certain type of life,” she says. “I lived alone and always worked a lot. In fact I just did a show in San Antonio and got to sleep as late as I wanted.”

That audience happened to be primarily Jewish, which was a treat for Ladman. “San Antonio has a tight Jewish community, as it would have to be,” she says with a laugh. “There’s something about Jewish culture that is very universal. Jewish audiences are for the most part very intelligent, not big drinkers, well educated and they listen.”

That matters to her, since Ladman always has written smart, thoughtful comedy. It’s due in part to her Jewish upbringing in New York. Her parents still live in the old Queens homestead where she grew up.

“We all went to Hebrew school,” she says of herself and her sisters. “We celebrated the holidays, went to the temple. My parents wanted me to go to into the temple youth group, but I hated it.”

Instead, she was drawn to the comedy world of Manhattan, going on to make her mark during a latter-day golden age of comedy. She counts as colleagues Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres and other big names from the circuit.

But the scene began to weather. “People stopped going to the clubs,” she remembers. “The money got worse, the acts got worse, the audiences got worse. What I considered a thinking person’s comedy stopped drawing a crowd because people saw too much sophomoric comedy.”

Instead of lamenting the changes, Ladman moved to L.A. and began working in film and television, including a recurring role in “Caroline in the City.”

Ladman is a writer as well as a performer, having recently sold a story to the sitcom “King of Queens.” But time tends to play tricks on actors, especially women in Hollywood. “I’m not going up for as many roles,” she notes. “When a woman reaches her late 40s, the roles change. But I’m a very career-oriented person, and I’m seeing how much so these days.”

That’s due to the impact of marriage and motherhood. Together with her husband, she journeyed to China to adopt Milan. “I’ve traveled a lot,” she says, “but China is the most foreign culture I ever encountered.” Of course, part of that is the profound language difference, which does not go unnoticed by a word-oriented person like Ladman. “The thing about Chinese is, you can’t sound it out.”

She hopes to give her daughter ample exposure to Chinese culture and also hopes to imbue her with the Jewish values Ladman has come to respect.

But comedy still matters to Ladman, and no matter what the demands of motherhood, she intends to keep on going. “I was given a talent,” she says. “This is something I love that I do well, and it gives me a high like nothing else.”

“Funny Girlz: a Smorgasbord of Women’s Humor” plays 8 p.m. Friday, April 1, at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness St., S.F. Tickets: $22.50-$27.50. Information: (415) 522-3737 or www.koshercomedy.com.

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