Photo/ Foto: Marlène Ramírez-Cancio

The Virgin Caberet

Biography

Marga Gomez has been writer/performer of five previous theater solos, "A Line Around The Block," (Public, 1996) "Memory Tricks," (Public 1993), "Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay," (Whitney Museum & PS 122, 1994) "Jaywalker" (PS122, 1999) and "The Twelve Days of Cochina" (which worked-in-progress at Dixon Place, as well as out of town in San Francisco and Boston during 2001). She received Theatre LA's Ovation Award for "Carpa Clash," a collaboration with Culture Clash at the Mark Taper Forum, and the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for "Memory Tricks." She was called "gut busting hilarious" and given "Best Comic Performance of 2002" for "Single Wet Female" by the New York Blade. Theatrically, she has appeared in three engagements of "The Vagina Monologues" (Twice in SF; once in NY in November, 2002).

Gomez started doing solo theater after building her stand-up career in the '80s, motivated by wanting to write something about her parents. Her father had been a comedian and founder of the Teatro Latino variety house during an earlier time (which fought a losing battle against television), so it was in her blood. She tested the waters in a theater festival in 1991 and subsequently wrote her first extended work, "Memory Tricks," about her mom. Now she lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn when in NY ("Life on the L train"), and divides her work between standuyp comedy and theater gigs.

Selections from Gomez' work have been published in several anthologies including "Extreme Exposure" (TCG Books), "Out, Loud & Laughing" (Anchor Books), "Contemporary Plays by American Women of Color" (Routledge) and "Out of Character" (Bantam Books). Currently she is collaborating on an erotic thriller with Carmelita Tropicana.