CLOTHING SHED FOR LAUGHS; COMEDIANS PERFORM FOR NUDISTS TO AID DOMESTIC ABUSE VICTIMS.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

As a group of female comics prepared to take the stage Sunday at Elysium Fields, a Topanga clothing-optional club, one of the audience members offered a piece of advice.

``If you get nervous, just try to imagine the audience in their underwear,'' he said.

Most of the crowd, of course, was wearing nothing at all. The comics, who opted to keep their clothes on, visited Elysium to present Stand Up Against Domestic Violence, a performance benefiting local women's shelters and domestic abuse counseling programs. The event coincided with Elysium's 23rd annual celebration of National Nude Recreation Week.

``My mother really wants me to marry a Jewish man, and they're much easier to pick out here,'' joked comedian Carol Ann Leif in front of the 25 naked or mostly naked people gathered at Elysium's outdoor amphitheater.

Leif admitted to being nervous about playing to an audience in the buff, announcing, ``OK, I'm over it,'' after taking her first look at the group.

Leif is one of several female comics who regularly participate in benefits for the North Hollywood-based Theatre of Hope for Abused Women. The performers were organized by fellow comic Heidi Joyce.

The Theatre of Hope puts on plays every Sunday at the Bitter Truth Theater in North Hollywood and also offers educational plays and art therapy programs at shelters and transitional homes for victims of domestic abuse.

The comic activists came together to entertain the nudists Sunday mostly because Elysium's program manager, Betty Lesley Meltzer, has become involved with Theatre of Hope.

For many people, Elysium is a way to get away from the stresses of daily life, Meltzer said.

``Being into nudity is certainly a nonviolent activity. If people are left to naturalness they are not prone to violence,'' Meltzer said. ``There's no way you can get hot around the collar because you don't have a collar.''

Cliff Gartside, a 44-year-old Arco employee from Santa Monica, agreed, saying the atmosphere at Elysium is the perfect antidote for domestic stress. When he and his wife, who is also a member, get into an argument, she frequently suggests that he ``go to the club and relax.''

``For me it's a little piece of heaven in the metropolis of Los Angeles where there's no crime and no hate,'' Gartside said. ``Then I go home and I give my wife a big hug. It's really simple.''

Elysium Fields, a nonprofit educational organization, has called its eight-acre Topanga campus home for 30 years, surviving numerous battles with Los Angeles County over its right to exist.

Dana Lange, whose late father founded the club in 1968, said the comedy show was just one of many special events it puts on. Some of the performers wear clothes, others take it all off.

``We had a magician perform nude once, and I didn't think he'd be able to do the tricks without any clothes, but he did,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO People at the clothing-optional Elysium Fields club in Topanga enjoy comedy by Heidi Joyce in a benefit show for anti-abuse programs.

John McCoy/Daily News