Comedienne Margaret Cho is taking her show on the road with her first stand-up concert tour since 2005’s Assassin. Her newest show, Beautiful, is an insightful, hilarious commentary on celebrity status, political-points-of-view, and what Cho calls “identity politics.”

Cho, who is candid about her body-image issues and struggle with an eating disorder, has her own definition of beauty.

“It’s kind of the experience of just being in your body, owning your own beauty, enjoying yourself,” Cho said. “Feeling beautiful is a feeling more than a look; it’s a feeling more than a vision. I think everybody has the potential to be beautiful; it’s just about acknowledging that beauty and feeling it – and I think that this is really the key, not only to happiness, but it’s an important political thing, especially for queers.”

Cho includes herself in the “queer” community, perhaps rightfully so. The comedienne is a vocal advocate of GLBT rights and identifies as bisexual, and says love of one’s self is key to maintaining unity in the GLBT community.

“We have to deal with the world-at-large all the time in a way that is sometimes very unpleasant and upsetting,” she said. “So, if we can just feel beautiful, that will just bolster our strength, it will strengthen our community. I think this is a very important issue for everybody.

“There’s a long gay tradition of ‘reading’ people, you know like being mean to people and reading them, telling them what’s wrong about them and pointing out all of their flaws. So I am looking to turn around these ideas: instead of reading people, you celebrate them; instead of insulting people, you buoy them up. I think it’s a basic way to help us all to move forward. It’s a scary thing to be out and live out; it’s like we have to deal with enough stuff from the mainstream culture and the mainstream world – why should we hurt ourselves and hurt each other?”

Even though her stand up has been on hiatus, Cho kept busy emceeing the inaugural True Colors Tour last year, and performing in The Sensuous Woman, a burlesque celebration of the female form.

“I was doing a lot of different stuff last year – going on tour with the True Colors Tour with Cyndi Lauper and playing these huge music venues,” she said. “After that, I went off-Broadway to do The Sensuous Woman, which is my big variety burlesque show. The last couple of years I’ve spent collaborating a lot with other artists and talking about political issues and body issues. So this show, Beautiful, was a combination of doing a very political tour, and doing a very bawdy, feminist show.”

The show has been likened to Cho’s breakthrough 2000 comedy show, I’m The One That I Want. The critics’ accolades even please Cho’s toughest critic – herself.

“I think it’s marvelous,” Cho said of rave reviews the show has received. “I’m so excited and so amazed that people write that about what I do. I love what I do and I’m proud of it, but I have to satisfy myself – I’m a really tough critic on myself. I give myself reviews every day; praise and criticize my own value system of what I think is good. I really try to push the envelope to do better.”

With the tour underway, Cho’s also prepping for the debut of “The Cho Show,” the comedienne’s foray into Celebreality on VH-1. The show, according to the network, “chronicles her interactions with her friends and her beloved parents … as she fights to be herself in an industry that, in the past, wanted her to be something other than herself.”

During Cho’s last single-season television show, “All-American Girl” in 1994, Cho was told by studio executives she was “too round,” which resulted in significant weight loss and kidney failure. As herself in the Cho show, she found more acceptance and less trepidation.

“I’m really amazed at what I am able to accomplish now without censorship that I had on a different network, when I was doing a family-time sort of show,” she said. “As opposed to now, television has changed so much, there’s so much more you can do – it’s become so much more accepting and so much more queer. So, I found a great home at VH-1.”

Cho gave us a peek at what to expect on her new show.

“I do pretty much what I do in stand-up comedy in a television show, which is really amazing,” Cho said. “It’s (the TV show) not exactly reality; it’s sort of reality as I would say my stand-up comedy is. I’m taking my stand-up comedy and making it into a sitcom format in a very true way – using all real players, which would be myself, my real gay friends, my real parents.

“So, it’s definitely not exactly reality, it’s very different. I feel like I’ve created a new genre here. We are telling specific stories out of my daily life. It’s hard to explain, because there has never been anything like it – the closest thing would be ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ It’s almost like an improv show where they set up comedic situations. It’s the best work I’ve ever done, I am really proud of it. I would never say that if I didn’t completely believe that. …

“When I did my first screen test for ‘All-American Girl,’ one of the producers was so horrified that I wore this midriff top,” Cho said. “And she said, ‘Never ever show your stomach in public ever again!’ And in my new TV show, I am virtually naked the entire time. That’s the greatest freedom and I think that’s really important and fun for everybody.”

Speaking of fun, we asked Cho which television series she’d like to see make it to DVD soon.

“‘Solid Gold’ was so awesome! Oh, the choreography! OK, Darcel? She was my favorite! It was just really kind of everybody figuring out they were gay, everybody that watched it,” she said, laughing.

If there were a revamped version today, Cho just may qualify – she’s incorporating music into her stand-up tour.

“In my TV show, I’m doing some music, which is a new kind of thing,” Cho said. “I do some music in my Beautiful show. I found I have a voice, which is cool, so that’s something I’d like to pursue a little bit more. I have a single that will probably come out during the television show when that comes out – so we’ll see what happens.”

Cho will bring her Beautiful tour to Viejas Concerts in the Park on Friday, May 16 and Saturday, May 17 at 8:30 pm. To keep tabs on this fabulously funny lady, log on to http://www.margaretcho.com.