Want to stop feeling downcast and dejected about the hand that life has dealt you?

Joan Rivers has the cure.

The remedy is not jewelry or beauty products, although she sells both these days. It’s something much more basic – laughter.

“If you want to laugh and stop being depressed, come to my show,” she says in that throaty rat-a-tat-tat voice.

“But, for God’s sake, be ready to be shocked. Comedy is the last bastion for the First Amendment. You can talk about anything and you can talk about it truthfully.”

Rivers is the headliner of this year’s Women’s Week. Previous performers have included comics Paula Poundstone and Lily Tomlin and author Maya Angelou. Rivers is set to perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

The weeklong event began Sunday and features programs designed to improve women’s physical, emotional and psychological well-being. It is sponsored by Eastern Maine Healthcare, WLBZ-TV Channel 2, the Bangor-Brewer YWCA and the Bangor Daily News.

Fliers for Women’s Week 2003 describe it as a “series of great events to captivate your mind, invigorate your body, and satisfy your soul.”

Rivers believes that laughter satisfies all of those criteria.

“I just make everybody happy,” she says of how her act fits into this year’s theme. “I’ve been through a lot. I talk about it and laugh about it.”

What she’s been through includes not just the ups and downs of her show business career, but the suicide of her husband 16 years ago.

Edgar Rosenberg was a producer and her manager, as well as her husband for 22 years. His suicide from an overdose of tranquilizers in a Philadelphia hotel room in 1987 came soon after her late-night show was canceled.

Following her husband’s death, almost immediately, Rivers cracked jokes but has admitted that she also contemplated suicide. A few years later, she started giving “survival seminars” and even played herself in a film charting the events leading up to Rosenberg’s death.

The comedienne rebuilt her career, taking her stand-up act international, teaming up with daughter Melissa to rate and berate the stars as they arrive at awards shows such as the recent Emmys and branching out to create jewelry and beauty product lines sold on QVC.

In a phone interview last week, Rivers defended the oft-maligned fashion-sense of Maine women. She knows they wear more than flannel, Bean boots and Bag Balm to bed.

“On QVC, we do a very good business in Maine,” she points out. “A lot of women there paint their toenails too.”

Her connection to the Pine Tree State goes back almost 60 years to a time when she spent her summers at a camp whose name she’s can’t remember.

Rivers also understands why so many Maine women operate their own businesses or are part of family ventures.

“It’s just so wonderful to go to work with someone you trust,” she says of working with her 34-year-old daughter. “It’s the best thing in the world. We know and trust each other. I was very close to my mother, so I just think it really goes back to having the same relationship with our children that we had with our mothers.”

The entertainer, who turned 70 this summer, was born Joan Molinsky but changed her name to Rivers in the early days of her career. In those early years, with the exception of Phyllis Diller and, after “Laugh In,” Lily Tomlin, Rivers was the only woman on the comedy circuit with Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, George Carlin and Richard Pryor.

Rivers believes that people are born, not taught to have a sense of humor.

“You’re either funny or you’re not. It’s in your DNA” insists Rivers, adding that her father, a physician, and her sister, a lawyer, are very funny people.

Although she’s reached retirement age, the comedienne has not mapped out her golden years.

“I could retire and go into stand-up comedy,” she muses. “My life is so amazing. I go out and make people feel better and get a check for it!”

Joan Rivers will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For information, call 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX.

Judy Harrison is a Bangor Daily News staff writer. She can be reached at jharrison@bangordailynews.net.

Show Time

Where: Maine Center for the Arts, Orono

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 4

Admission: $25-$38

Information: 581-1755 or (800) MCA-TIXX