Lily Tomlin in character mode

Ernestine, the snarky telephone operator, may not be able to make connections any more (as if she would ever want to), but her creator, Lily Tomlin, is still communicating just fine with audiences.

Tomlin, who first hit the big time when she brought Ernestine and other characters such as Edith Ann, the philosophical 6-year-old, to life on the avant-garde “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” TV show in the late 1960s-early ’70s comes to the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts next Sunday.

She’s been putting on one-woman shows of different forms since she was a child entertaining neighbors at the back porch of her working class home in Detroit. “I’ve never really stopped doing concerts,” Tomlin, 69, said during a recent telephone interview from her current home base in Los Angeles.

The current show — Tomlin’s first appearance in Worcester — could be billed as “Classic Lily Tomlin.” She said she’ll perform about 10 Tomlin-created characters

“And I talk about myself, and I talk about the world. But it’s all performance in the sense that it’s intimate but theatrical. You can be this character and that character. You can be whatever you want.”

Usually, at the end of the performance, she’ll do a Q & A with the audience.

So there should be plenty of opportunities to connect.

Here was one question that came to mind while talking to Tomlin — who came across as really a pleasure to talk to.

Do younger audiences “get” Ernestine — after all, it has been years now since uncooperative telephone operators were replaced by equally unhelpful automated voices.

“I suppose it depends on what she gets to talk about. But if the content is good and sharp, you can always find a way into a character, if you’re clear enough,” Tomlin said.

Tomlin and Ernestine have connected with the changing times. One of Ernestine’s most recent incarnations is working for a health insurance company. “She is denying health care to everyone,” Tomlin said.

The link to the characters that Tomlin has created over the years goes back to when she was a child watching the likes of pioneering women comedians Lucille Ball, Imogene Coca and Bea Lillie on television. Or listening to them on the radio.

“We didn’t get a TV until I was 10,” she said.

The first woman stand-up she ever saw live was Jean Carroll, who is now in her late 90s and was honored by Tomlin and others at the Friars Club this year.

Tomlin recalled some of Carroll’s one-liners zinging husbands and other family members. “ ‘I’ll never forget the first time I saw my husband standing on a hill, his hair blowing in the breeze, and he too proud to run after it.’ ”

For Tomlin’s shows she would put on a slip of her mother’s (making her look like she was wearing a cocktail dress), adorn herself with a string of pearls, and do jokes and perform skits based on things she had seen on TV. Oh yes, and Tomlin also did magic tricks, she added.

She would try to sell tickets to her back porch performances. “People could sit on the steps, and people could watch.”

How did she do?

“Pretty good.” Tomlin paused. “Probably only I thought I did,” she added modestly. “They probably just tolerated me.”

Probably not, considering the subsequent track record.

After a brief enrollment at Wayne State University, where she planned to study medicine, Tomlin was soon performing in local coffeehouses. Then came moves to New York City (appearing at such clubs as The Improvisation) and then Los Angeles and “Laugh In.”

Tomlin dialed up Ernestine based on the fact that “everyone hated the phone company back in the ’60s.”

Asked what she thinks of “Laugh-In” now, Tomlin said that if she does see reruns “I enjoy them.” Rowan died several years ago, and Martin died in May. She is still in contact with the producer and director of the show, George Schlatter, and gets together occasionally with cast members, most recently during a segment at the Emmy awards.

But besides being a comedian, Tomlin also harbored innate acting ability, something she has praised the late director Robert Altman for discovering when he cast her in the 1972 movie “Nashville” as Linnea, a gospel singer and mother of two deaf children. She received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Her working relationship with the renowned Altman continued until his death in 2006. Tomlin appeared in his last film, “A Prairie Home Companion.” “That last movie he was getting chemo every day, but he was the same Bob.”

The most important relationship in Tomlin’s life, however, has been with collaborator and domestic partner Jane Wagner. Tomlin has brought Wagner’s musing and amusing shows such as “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” to the stage and to film.

“I’ve always had social content,” Tomlin said about her shows and attitudes. And there is, almost literally, an elephant in the room right now.

Tomlin has taken up the cause of taking elephants from zoos and placing them in wildlife preserves. She would call it a rescue. At present she’s focusing on Jenny, an elderly elephant languishing on one-third acre in Dallas. “It’s a rotten life,” Tomlin said.

Why did she take up this particular issue?

“I’ve always been interested in animal issues,” she said. “As time was wearing on, the idea of a creature languishing and humans not getting it became symbolic for me.”

She talked at interesting length on the subject, then paused and apologized for talking so much. This was not the first time she had done that. She said that she gets wound up and can’t stop.

No problem whatsoever when someone is so engaging as Tomlin. It was too bad one had to disconnect.

With typical kindness and grace she gave this reporter her e-mail address in case there were any other questions about the story.

When: 7 p.m. Oct. 19. Where: Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester. How much: $35 to $65. For more information, call (877) 571-7469 or visit www.thehanovertheatre.org.

Lily Tomlin