Comedian, actor and Latin pop singer Jade Esteban Estrada is also a history

buff, and he believes history is best told through personal stories.

     He cites a phone conversation he had with the City Weekly as an example. Historians from the future "could get a very good idea of what we were thinking just by the way we talked," he said.

     Estrada brings his one-man show, "ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. I and II" to Omaha March 24 through 26. He will then perform it in Des Moines on Easter Sunday, only to return to Nebraska on Monday for a Lincoln show, and Wednesday for a performance in Norfolk.

     People get to witness Estrada's personal interpretations of historical icons of the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered) community, although Estrada prefers LGBT because women continue to get a bad rap.

     By the way, these are also icons of Western Culture from Alexander the Great to Gertrude Stein to Michelangelo to Oscar Wilde to Billie Jean King.

     "My show is not a gay show," Estrada said. "It's a show for everybody."

     Born in San Antonio, to a United States Army officer and a stage actress, Estrada won a scholarship to a New York performance academy where he studied dance alongside Jennifer Lopez.

     From a large, conservative and highly religious family, Estrada said New York is where he had his "awakening," because a larger city is a safe place for one to explore oneself.

     He has since made appearances on HBO and Comedy Central, and musically he has released one solo album and been featured on two compilations.

     "ICONS" is an ideal vehicle for Estrada because it mixes elements of comedy and song and dance with his "first love," history. And history just happens to be densely populated by GLBTs.

     Appearing in "ICONS I" are: Sappho (Ancient Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos), Michelangelo, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Rivera (of Stonewall Riots fame) and Ellen Degeneres. In "ICONS II" are: Alexander the Great, Queen Christina of Sweden, Susan B. Anthony, Billie Jean King, Harvey Milk and 9/11 hero Mark Bingham.

     Many and earnest thought was put into choosing the characters, Estrada said, but they're also characters that interest him, and, most important, are figures who people can connect with and cheer for.

     Knowing that he generally wouldn't be playing to a history-buffed crowd, Estrada obviously wrote the show to be as entertaining as it is informative.

     "Everything has been done before," he said. "But for a generation that has been exposed to anything you can imagine, you have to be very creative on how you keep their interest."

     "ICONS I" runs 75 minutes and "ICONS II" just over an hour. Estrada goes out into the audience in both shows and interacts with the crowd during his monologues, and he changes costumes to switch personas right on stage. In "ICONS I" Estrada's characters address a 2005 crowd. In part II they are in their own historical element.

     "Intellectual" is not a term Estrada likes to use in referring to himself, even though as a kid his room was littered with history books, maps and globes. He prefers to think of himself as a showman who is also "scholarly."

     Estrada realizes his show may be considered "controversial" outside of larger cities, but "whether it's the laughs, or people crying and thanking me, or jokes going over people's heads, I realize that those reactions, themselves are historical landmarks," he said.

     "For instance, the whole gay marriage thing wasn't even an idea - in my world anyway - when I first debuted "ICONS" in 2002. And now people are thinking I composed the whole Gertrude Stein segment (due to her relationship with Alice B. Toklas) because of the gay marriage thing."

     "That's very interesting how someone's perception will change just because of something that's happening in society."

     Estrada said he is a deeply religious person and can count the number of people in his family on one hand "who aren't in church three times a week," but he emphasizes the separation between church and state in his play because they "make messy bedmates."

     That's all part of the educational aspect, but his show has been described as innocently coy and naughty - and overall entertaining - at the same time.

     Asked whether it's more important to be entertaining or informative, Estrada said the two aren't mutually exclusive.

     "Anyone who's on stage - our job is to take you somewhere else, like a magic carpet, because life can be hard," he said.

     "Enlighten would be the verb I would choose. To entertain, yes, of course, but that reminds me of a tap dance routine; and then educate makes me think of a history class or a math class, but there's a deeper reason why anyone would ever entertain or educate in the first place. Ask any teacher. Ask any tap dancer. It's to enlighten. It's to brighten the inner world of anyone who comes to the show and might groove with something you have to say.

     "What I'm doing is just telling stories, " Estrada insists. "And I tell stories via my interpretation of what happened. This is my research and my gut feeling about how they were."

     "ICONS" opens Thursday at the Millennium Theatre, 601 S. 16th Street. Proceeds from the show go in part to Nebraska Pride's 20th Anniversary Celebration.
 

©2005 Omaha City Weekly