Growing up Chinese-German in Southern California wasn't easy, but it sure was funny. For writer-performer Sandra Tsing Loh, her childhood experiences are the perfect comic material for her one-woman show, Aliens in America, making its Bay Area premiere Feb. 3-March at San Jose Repertory Theatre. The show, which has traveled around the West Coast for the last two years, chronicles Loh's life as the daughter of a miserly, multiply-married Chinese father and a party animal German mother. In three vingettes ("My Father's Chinese Wives," "Ethiopian Vacation" and "MUSK"), she recounts her father's search for a mail-order bride after the death of her mother, the family's adventures in Ethiopia, her mother's idea of a perfect vacation spot, and her triumph return from college with a drummer boyfriend, who completely unimpresses her family.

Loh is a writer, performer and radio personality, who can be regularly heard on L.A.'s KCRW and NPR. She made her Off-Broadway debut in Bad Sex With Bud Kemp, a show she developed in Los Angeles. Her books include "Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays from Lesser Los Angeles," "If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now" and "A Year in Van Nuys," to be released in April. She will sign copies of these works after most shows.

David Schweizer directs. His other credits include Bad Sex With Bud Kemp, the L.A. premiere of Charles Mee's Berlin Circle and Rinde Eckert's And God Created Great Whales.

Opening night is Feb. 9. Tickets are $37-$17. San Jose Repertory Theatre is located at 101 Paseo de San Antonio between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. For reservations, call (408) 367-7255. San Jose Repertory Theatre is on the web at http://www.sjrep.com.

— By Christine Ehren