Sandra Bernhard is what Gay & Lesbian Times editor Russell O’Brien calls “a gay icon.”

“She would be every gay man’s dream hag. She has an offbeat sort of crude, blunt and very ‘call it like it is’ humor that the gay and straight community totally love. She often talks about sex, relationships and comes off as a real BITCH (but that’s why we love her!).”

Those qualities are precisely why California Center for the Arts presents Bernhard in a special OUTstaged performance at 7:00 p.m. Sunday, May 14. Included in the ticket price are special pre and post-performance celebrations, and couples get a discount. The evening bears the caveat “this show is recommended for mature audiences only,” but I guess we already knew that.

Born in Arizona, Sandra Bernhard began her career in stand-up comedy. According to film critic Leonard Maltin, she was employed as a manicurist in a Beverly Hills salon during the 1970s to support her nighttime forays into stand-up comedy.

In 1983 Bernhard got her big-screen break as a psychotic fan named Masha in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. We know about her 1988 one-woman, off-Broadway show, Without You I’m Nothing, and the subsequent, subtle and hysterically funny film it became.

Bernhard’s status as a gay cultural icon was bulwarked by her friendship with Madonna and through numerous appearances on “ The Late Show with David Letterman.” She may be most familiar to some as a lesbian character named Nancy Bartlett on “Roseanne” (1991-97).

This February she guest-starred as a sexy detective in two episodes of NBC’s hit crime drama “Crossing Jordan,” and began a series of appearances portraying a straight author and writing teacher on Showtime’s “The L Word.”

The phone rang at 8:00 a.m. It was Bernhard from New York, six hours early.

Sandra Bernhard: It’s kind of a crazy day, and I was wondering if we could do the interview now.

Gay & Lesbian Times: Well, no. I need to read everything over one more time; formulate some intelligent questions.

SB: Oh. OK.

When she phones at 2:00 p.m. she tells me she has 15 minutes max to do this.

GLT: Had I known that, I would have struggled through this morning.

SB: Why? I don’t ever do more than a 15-minute phone interview because it’s too much.

(Guess I should have flown to New York.)

GLT: Let’s start with my editor’s questions then. He asks the one about your sexuality, which I think is probably…”

SB: That’s not anybody’s business but my own. I’m outspoken about sexuality in the sense that I think everybody should be able to express it comfortably in a politically free atmosphere, but in terms of talking about my own sexuality, my life is my life. At the end of the day, I’m pretty private about my life. Even when I talk about it in my act it’s theatrical.

GLT: You were one of the early women who talked about her sexuality in their stand-up routine…

SB: From the beginning when I talked about sexuality it’s been kind of free flowing and amorphous. And really about people and their inner feeling about their life and their sexuality. It hasn’t been like,”Right on, sister.”There’s a big difference. My work is much more fluid and much more artistically and emotionally driven. I’m not a didactic kind of performer.

GLT: Let’s talk about your new show.

SB: When I come to Escondido I’m not doing my new show, Everything Bad and Beautiful. I’m doing like An Evening With, which has some elements of it, like the political stuff, the topical stuff that I’ve been doing over the last year and a half. Because the new show takes a more technical kind of preparation, I can’t put it up in a one-nighter situation. Also, I don’t want to over-expose it in markets because that takes away the specialness of it.

I’m being careful where I do it, but there are some elements of what I’m doing in the new show in this [Escondido] show. But it’s really kind of An Evening With, some prepared material, some spontaneous stuff and musical stuff I’ve been doing over the past two years, songs that I’ve co-written.

GLT: There’s a subtlety about what you do that I really admire.

SB: Thank you. Well, that’s what I like about what I do, too. It’s kind of getting harder and harder to do in today’s over-the-top, obvious marketplace of television and film. Everybody just kind of like, yeah, drives it home with a mallet, and this is not what I’m interested in doing. But when you do other people’s work, you know, it’s like you can’t always do your own thing, so it’s nice to be able to do other work that has some credibility.

GLT: Your daughter is 7?

SB: Almost, yeah.

GLT: Does she have any idea what you…

SB: Of course. Absolutely. She’s a very smart and aware person. She enjoys what I do and she admires me and loves me and she’s my little girl and that’s really not what we focus on in our day to day life. She definitely knows what I do, yeah. I’m still with my girlfriend of five years. That works out very well. She’s a wonderful person.

GLT: What next?

SB: Hopefully I’ll find a film that I’m excited about that they’re excited about me being in. I’m going to be doing Everything Bad and Beautiful in San Francisco this summer, then most likely off-Broadway in the fall, depending on my schedule, because if something TV-wise comes up, I’ll probably defer to that and come back to the show.

There’s always stuff going on. I’m busy creating and writing and getting together and working on musical stuff. I’m always flowing creatively.

GLT: What are the three most important things in your life now?

SB: Number one, being a good mother, conscious and aware and guiding my daughter in the direction that I think is going to make her life fulfilling and successful.

In terms of the world, hopefully every day contributing something as a person that makes it a saner place and a healthier place; and as a performer and an artist imbuing and infusing my work with the right consciousness, spiritually, politically, emotionally. To also uplift people and hopefully inspire people to get out and at the very least live their lives in a creative fashion and not be stuck in depression or self-indulgence.

And third, enjoying my life and my family and people around me and just exploring and enjoying the world and the good things that are still available to us environmentally and in terms of travel and experiencing other cultures, so that I’m constantly filling myself with inspiration that I can turn into my work.

Considering the world we live in and the fast pace of self-destruction that our government has us on, I think it’s more important to address these essential things right now. Everybody knows about me already. Obviously, I stand for freedom of expression and that’s always been the overriding, number one part of my work.

We’re on a mission to really save the environment and save people’s sanity first of all. And yes, sexuality may get folded in there, but without a healthy environment and people being able to sustain themselves, the rest is kind of a moot issue.

You have to be a warrior and get out there and fight, and not go ‘ooh,’ and cower from [scary times]. People need to be in healthy relationships and constantly be taking care of themselves on a physical and a spiritual level so that they have the strength to go out and do the right thing and not fall victim to self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior. Right now that’s the key to survival of the world.

GLT: Now if we can just figure out the new food pyramid…

SB: If you’re a smart person, you know how to eat healthy. If we have to guide people in the Midwest and the red states away from the Twinkies and Fritos, so be it. But that’s their decision. I’m only going to be concerned about the people I think we can reach without having to pry their faces off the television set and out of their doldrums.

That said, I think we’ve captured the most important elements of what I’m concerned about. That’s why people come to see my shows, because I have an uncanny ability to talk about this stuff and still make people laugh and entertain them.

That’s what you need to tell people.

OUTstaged with Sandra Bernhard plays at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 14, at the California Center for the Arts, 340 N. Escondido Blvd.

Ticket prices for performance, pre- and post-performance receptions: $58 ($105 couples). Call (800) 988-4253 or visit this article at www.gaylesbiantimes.com to link to their Web site.