This will be easy, I thought. Having interviewed Lea DeLaria twice before, I knew that all I had to do was get her going and let the tape roll. DeLaria, who tours Australia this month with her jazz band and stand-up show, improvises wildly, crafting setups, punchlines and call backs like the seasoned comic that she is. And like the professional jazz musician that she also is, she riffs, swings and scats, creating her own edgy harmonies. It’s the word according to DeLaria, and it’s hard to get a word of your own in edgewise. Nevertheless, I had a few questions up my sleeve. For starters, what has she been doing in the decade since we last spoke? “I don’t even know where those fucking years went,” she quips. “It’s like this runaway freight train, my career.” Indeed. Since her successful show Muff Diva, she’s done Broadway, TV, films, and recorded several jazz albums. “I haven’t looked back since.”
DeLaria has a big mouth, which is indispensable for a performer of her ilk. But sometimes it gets her into trouble. “In the last few years I found myself in a lot of trouble for making political statements about the Bush administration. I’ve pissed off a lot of people in the queer community as well because I think we’ve become complacent idiots.”
Her opinion on gay marriage is a case in point. “If you want to get married, you go out and do it. Good for you. Get a priest, get a rabbi, go for it. I don’t want to be told I can’t get married just because I’m gay. But whether or not that becomes the main focus of what we should be fighting for when queers are still being beat up and killed and murdered on the street and kicked out of their families and ostracized teenagers are committing suicide I’m not so sure.” All of this she says without drawing a breath. “That’s the short answer, not the funny one,” she adds.
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