Comedian, actress and singer-songwriter Margaret Cho is a woman of many talents — and she plans on deploying all of them in the current culture war.

“I’m trying to forge every weapon in my arsenal. We have to empty our armories and really go to war. And mine happens to be really crude jokes,” she said on GBH’s The Culture Show ahead of a show at The Wilbur on March 14.

Her “Live and Livid” comedy tour celebrates Cho’s 40 years as a stand-up comedian tackling homophobia, sexism, racism and what Cho calls “the fight to stay alive in a culture that is killing us daily.” She described her current show as a response to the “chaos” in the United States under President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the administration.

“It’s just very disturbing, so I think that the only thing we can do is laugh at it in order to find some hope to survive it,” she said. “And of course they hate being made fun of, especially Elon, especially Trump. Both of them hate to be made fun of. But that’s the one thing that they can’t afford: it’s jokes being told of them. They’re the richest people in the world, but they can’t afford jokes being told at their expense.”


This type of social commentary has been a mainstay of Cho’s work, and of her childhood.

“I come from real labor union people. My grandfather was a labor union leader in Korea, and he was nearly assassinated every time he went outside of the house because of his staunch views on how class needs to equalize itself,” she said. “In the late ’70s and ’80s, my father owned this gay bookstore in San Francisco, and so he had all these employees who were early followers of Harvey Milk. … So, you know, that was very familiar to me.”

While many know Cho through her outrageous comedy, her published music career began back in 2010 with the release of her album “Cho Dependent.” Last month she put out a new musical album, “Lucky Gift.”

“I have played music and sang my whole life, and for me, it’s just part of keeping my mind alive and the joints working,” Cho said. “It’s an exercise to get my brain away from dementia and all these things as we get older. And I had all these songs and sort of collected them over the years.”

You can find tickets to Cho’s performance at The Wilbur on her website .