Lea DeLaria has done it all: from music, to Broadway, to film, to comedy, to television, to even being a bestselling author (Lea’s Book of Rules for the World is a gem!) there is nothing she has tried that she’s not been absolutely great at. While her fans (including this writer) know her work in every field pretty well, many are surprised when they discover her suave energy as a jazz musician. A simple YouTube search ought to dispel any incredulity at the brass, extroverted DeLaria turning one’s heart into putty with a smooth rendition of something like Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”. Fortunately audiences who have never heard her sing before, as well as dedicated fans, will get to see her do an all new show at NJPAC’s intimate Chase Room(April 9, 2016) where she will perform selections from her discography including her breathtakingly beautiful House of David album where she pays tribute to David Bowie. We talked to Lea about her NJPAC show, some of her dream roles and a unique episode of Orange is the New Black we’re all dying to see.

Can you tell me a bit about the kind of show you’ll be doing at NJPAC?

I’m going to be doing quite a bit of Bowie, which is my latest record, and then highlight some favorites from my singing career. It’s a mish mash of everything, plus you know I will be funny, that’s part of what you get when you get me in concert.

What’s the process of selecting songs to perform? How do you settle on a setlist you don’t want to change every two seconds?

Actually one of the reasons why I think people enjoy coming to see me is that I tend not to do the same thing always. I try to have stuff in there that people want, it’s only quite recently that I haven’t done “I Can Cook Too” at every concert. Since the Bowie record has come out, people are more interested in that than in Broadway songs. I try to cater to people give them what they want from me as a singer, but I like mixing it up. That’s the beauty of working with a tight trio who I work with all the time. We can create new stuff, we don’t have to do stuff just from my records. So the process for me becomes more about what NJPAC wants from me and what I want to do and then combining that.

You’re a comedian slash actor slash singer slash everything…

I’ve got a lot of slashes, I’m sure there’s a lesbian joke in there somewhere (laughs)

...do you find for instance that people who discover you first on TV go out and buy your records? Or people who first see you onstage will go find your comedy work?

I find that the musician aspect of what I do, unless you knew me first as a singer, people tend to find it harder to believe. “Anybody” can sing, we all have voices. Whether we all are good at it or should sing that’s a different story. So even people within the industry look at my singing career with a sideway glance, but all they have to do is hear me once to know there is no need for that. Before I became very well known in the jazz world when people would buy a ticket to see me because they heard me on the radio - and keep in mind this predates social media, this was before MySpace - and when they saw what I looked like, they were shocked. Complete total bull dyke. People would come to clubs like when I did shows at Joe’s Pub, when I walked onstage I could see the looks on their faces like “what the hell is this dyke gonna do?” But then I do this monster opening with my version of “Welcome to My Party” and they get blown away by it and we proceed. It’s always been a little bit of that for me. Same with the acting, people who knew me as a standup would wonder why do all standups think they can act? I remember Isherwood writing about me in Happy Days at Classic Stage Company, he did a two page article in the Times about why comedians shouldn’t act.

That’s gross.

And also not true! I can name many comedians who have won awards for acting including myself (laughs) I’ve got an Obie, a Theatre World Award, a Drama Desk, two SAG awards sitting up there...and I started out as a standup comic and a singer. When you do all these things in different stages all over the world, it’s really interesting how people respond, let’s just put it that way.

You’ve been doing this post-gender/post-sexual orientation thing forever, your Hildy in On the Town was funny and sexy.

I’ve been doing this since 1982, hun. I’ve never been in the closet, I’ve always been me.

Now that one of your "slashes" is being a TV star, and since you were in The Rocky Horror Show, I wonder if all these live TV adaptations of musicals make you more excited about the future of theatre?

They get me really excited! I hope they do do something, at this point they haven’t done any musical I can have a part in. I could’ve been one of the nuns in The Sound of Music but I’d rather do something more interesting. I could’ve played the role Marni Nixon played in the movie. But actually I can’t because she’s a way high soprano. I’m sure something will come down the pipe that I can be really good in.

With that in mind, are there any parts that Stephen Sondheim wrote that you’d love to play? And which are your fave songs that he made?

I’m hoping that I will be around long enough that eventually I will be in Follies and get to sing “I’m Still Here”. I’m a huge fan of Sondheim, in fact my swing version of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” is one of the things that brought me into the jazz world. Probably my favorite musical of his is Sweeney Todd, again it’s one of those situations where I can’t play Mrs. Lovett because I’m not a soprano, I could act the shit out of her. But you know Sondheim doesn’t like to change the register that the singers are in, so he won’t cast an alto in a soprano role. But boy would I love to play Mrs. Lovett.

I know you can’t tell me anything about the new season of Orange is the New Black, but I’m curious, after all these years how easy or hard is it for you to slip back into Big Boo’s skin when you have to go back and shoot the show?

Big Boo is very easy for me to portray because let’s face it, Big Boo is me. It’s the least acting I’ve ever done for any role in my life. They wrote the part for me, there was a minor character named Big Boo in the original script and when they saw me, when Jenji Kohan saw me, they realized there was no character like me in this show and that there should be. Women like Big Boo are prevalent in women’s prisons, Jenji really liked me and as soon as she saw me she decided to write a larger Big Boo and wrote it for me. They knew my work well, so they knew how to write for me. For me it’s as simple as pie, like getting a cup of coffee in the morning.

Any way we can pitch a musical episode of Orange?

If you think we haven’t, I can’t even...You understand how many of us are Broadway performers, it’s a New York based show, these are all women who have been New York actors all their lives. If you’re a New York actor you’re pretty much a Broadway person. Many of us aren’t, Nick Sandow is a New York actor but even though he can’t sing or dance he’s done tons of theatre as an actor, but there are so many of us...We have pitched it so many times, I even told Jenji “this is how the musical works: the musical is actually happening backstage”, she was like “what?” (laughs) We are filming a regular episode of Orange is the New Black but every time the director yells “cut” it turns into an opera, she’s like “go away Lea” (laughs).

For more information on Lea DeLaria at NJPAC click here.