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Bask in the comic glow of Marga Gomez’s new show,
Half Cuban, Half Lesbian
n Oct. 19 a brilliant star will blaze
through Portland when M arga
Gomez, comedian extraordinaire,
performs her new show H alf Cuban,
H alf Lesbian at the Northwest Ser­
vice Center. Her management promises that this
will be “an evening of special-interest stand-up
comedy and victim art with absolutely no O.J.
references. Uninformed, but highly opinionated,
Marga will hold forth on her favorite subjects:
O
T
by Risa Krive
o me fix
pain, regret, self-pity, doom, and sex with Newt
Gingrich’s mom.” Perhaps not in that order.
The out Latina lesbian comic is acclaimed
worldwide for her piercing wit and laser-light
insights into the guts of relationships, queer poli­
tics, Latina lore and sexuality. The effect on her
audience is at once searing, healing and hilarious.
Marga Gomez’s numerous television and live per­
formances have established her as a major talent.
She has been featured on HBO’s “Comic Relief
VI,” Comedy Central’s “Out There,” Rosie
O’Donnell’s “Stand-Up Spotlight/VH-1,” and has
opened for k.d. lang, Linda Ronstadt, Todd
Rundgren and Cris Williamson. She performed at
“An Evening with Lily Tomlin and Friends” along
with Robin Williams, Harvey Fierstein and
Lypsinka. Barry Walters of The San Francisco
Examiner stated: “Gomez proved that she’s San
Francisco’s most talented rising comedy star....
Gomez’s humor is...on a par with anything by
Williams or Tomlin.”
Gomez hails originally from Spanish Harlem,
where her Cuban-born stand-up comic father and
Puerto Rican-born exotic dancer mother attained
celebrity status. Her father drove a Cadillac; her
mother wore furs and stiletto heels. But the show­
biz marriage crumbled, and her mother remarried
and moved with Marga and her stepfather into the
white world of suburban Long Island. Gomez
moved from wanting to fit in, to searching for her
own identity.
The journey took her to San Francisco in the
’70s, where she began to perform in notable ven­
ues, with the feminist theater ensemble Lilith and
the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and to her own
act, “The Mujer Show” (The Woman Show), at
one of the most important gay and lesbian show­
cases in the world, the Valencia Rose club. She has
since performed her own full-length performance
monologues throughout the world, from the New
York Shakespeare Festival to London’s Interna­
tional Contemporary Arts. Gomez has received
consistently rave reviews. London’s Evening News
described “a dazzling performance.” Montreal’s
Mirror writer Gaetan Charlebrois reported, “Even
Marga Gomez
Gomez has been featured on HBO’s “Comic Relief VI, ”
Comedy Central’s “Out There, ’’ Rosie O ’Donnell’s “Stand-Up
Spotlight/VH-1, ” and has opened fo r k.d. lang, Linda Ronstadt,
Todd Rundgren and Cris Williamson. She performed at
“An Evening with Lily Tomlin and Friends ” along with
Robin Williams, Harvey Fierstein and Lypsinka.
the hard-assed critics in New York melted for
Gomez, with the hardest-assed Frank Rich of The
New fork Times saying, ‘[it] shows its performer
as an actress and writer of serious promise. I
warmly recommend it.’ Rich doesn’t get warm
about anything.”
Gomez’s first full-length performance mono­
logue is Memory Tricks. It is the tragicomic story
of Marga’s relationship with her mother. Tom
Jacobs of Variety said: “Her memories are of a
specific subculture, but they explore universal
themes of neediness, guilt, longing and loss. It’s
wonderful stuff.”
Gomez’s second performance monologue is
set in her bedroom. Marga Gomez Is Pretty, Witty
and Gay covers a lot o f territo ry . The
thirtysomething Gomez trying to relate to younger
lesbians: “We wore those Frye Boots then, so you
could pierce your nose today!” Literature: (from
the “lost journal” of Anais Nin, found on the
subway, detailing in a seductive French accent the
passionate affair between Nin and Minnie Mouse)
“Leaning coquettishly against a plastic tree...her
big red bow undone...I wanted to take hurr, not
like a voman, but like a mouse.” The plethora of
homosexuals on television talk shows: “Lesbians
with long hair, tomorrow on Oprah. Lesbians
who’ve never been on Oprah, tomorrow on
Donahue." The ban on gays in the military: “I
don’t know what General Colin (Powell] and all
the other colons are worried about, it’s not like
we’re all going to enlist. Don’t you have to get up
early for that? I only do that one day a year—for the
parade—and that’s it. But we want to have the right
to enlist if we want to.”
Gomez’s third performance monologue, A Line
Around the Block, is about her father and com­
pletes the trilogy. Her newest piece. H alf Cuban,
Half Lesbian, will no doubt both entertain and
inform.
As Jack Helbig of Chicago’s Reader noted,
“There are two kinds of laughter in the comedy
world: the laughter of anesthesia and the laughter
of enlightenment. Most stand-up comics aim for
anesthesia, dispensing a kind of comedic narcotic
to deaden our pain and allow us to deny, however
fleetingly, our problems.... Marga Gomez does
something much more difficult in her performances.
She takes her most personal foibles and most
painful childhood memories and transforms them
into a very liberating kind of comedy.... Gomez is
a very funny woman—she also provides a kind of
psychological road map for self-discovery.” As
Gomez explains to people who think gays are
predators upon innocent youth, “We do not recruit,
we impress.”
Laughter, like an earthquake, is unpredictable.
One never knows when or from where the next
laugh is coming. But you can bet your $ 10 ($ 12 at
the door) that an evening spent with Marga Gomez
will have you in an uproar.
Marga Gomez performs Thursday, Oct. 19, at
7:30 pm at the Northwest Service Center, 1819
NW Everett St. in Portland. Advance tickets are
$10 from Fastixx 224-8499 and It's My Pleasure
236-0505; tickets are $12 at the door. The show
is wheelchair accessible and ASL interpreted.
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