Marga Gomez

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Marga Gomez (b. June 19, 1960) is one of the first openly gay comedians in America. She is also a playwright and actress of Puerto Rican-Cuban descent who was born in Manhattan.

Gomez got her start in the gay comedy clubs of San Francisco in the mid 1980s. She tours nationally in concert, at universities, nightclubs, cruiseships, and political events. She has appeared on HBO's Comic Relief, Showtime's Latino Laugh Festival, Comedy Central's Out There and the PBS series In The Life. Marga's comedy recording, Hung Like a Fly, is available on Uproar Records. She is profiled in the 2003 award winning documentary Laughing Matters along with Kate Clinton, Suzanne Westenhoefer and Karen Williams.

Gomez won a GLAAD award for Off-Off Broadaway theater in 2004 and is the author/performer of numerous theater pieces:

Los Big Names,
A Line Around The Block,
Memory Tricks,
Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay
jaywalker,
The Twelve Days of Cochina and
Marga Gomez’s Intimate Details.

Her seventh and most recent solo performance, Los Big Names, was presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2004 and opened Off Broadway at the 47th Street Theater in April of 2006 receiving nominations for the Drama Desk Award and New York Outer Critics Circle Award. The work was inspired by the lives of her entertainer parents Willy Chevalier and Margo the Exotic. ^[1]

Marga has been produced Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. In 2002 Marga co-wrote and co-starred with Carmelita Tropicana in Single Wet Female for a three week sold out engagement at New York's Performance Space 122 under the direction of David Schweizer. She has also joined the casts of The Vagina Monologues several times, sharing the stage with Rita Moreno, Jobeth Williams, Barbara Rush and others. Gomez’s film and television credits include HBO's Tracy Takes on, Sphere, and Batman Forever. She is featured in indie festival hits Rosa Negra, The D Word, Desi’s Looking for a New Girl, and Fabulous.

Selections from her solo plays 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). Marga was one of eight playwrights to be commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum's Latino Theater Initiative as part of the 2005 Amor Eterno project. Marga is the recipient of Theater LA’s 'Ovation Award' for her collaboration with Culture Clash at the Mark Taper Forum.