Marga Gomez's SWIMMING WITH LESBIANS To Play La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club This Spring

GLAAD award winning solo performer Marga Gomez will return to The Club at La MaMa with the world premiere of Swimming With Lesbians, her 14th one person show, which will run from March 29th through April 7th, 2024.

Written and performed by Marga Gomez and directed by David Schweizer the piece is a buoyant and bawdy romp, set aboard a fictional lesbian luxury ocean liner rolling on a sea of absurdity.

Blending her past experience as a cruise ship entertainer (and lesbian) with her delight for nautical tropes and sea shanties, Gomez morphs into a boatload of lustful characters including: Isabelle, an accident prone Lacrosse player yearning for her first Lesbian affair, the ship's commander, Captain Debbie, who goes strictly by the book (in this case it's The Kama Sutra) and Pru Perez, the butch presenting but secretly meek bingo caller, spending her days at sea hiding from a boarding school bully who booked passage. The performance runs 65 minutes with no intermission and is recommended for adult audiences.

Swimming With Lesbians began development in 2023 with workshop performances in San Francisco at The Marsh and Brava Theater and in New York at Dixon Place. The San Francisco Chronicle described Gomez as mixing “an anthropologist's observational prowess with a musician's ear for the funny-sounding word” Bay City News declared her a “sublime gift to the comedy world.” Marga Gomez and director David Schweizer's previous New York collaboration was the 2017 premier of Latin Standards at Under The Radar which received a New York Times “Critic's Pick”.

About the Artist

 

Marga Gomez is the author and performer of 14 solo plays which have been produced nationally, internationally, and in New York at The Public Theater, Puerto Rican Travelling Theatre, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club.  Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues, A.C.T.'s Fefu and Her Friends, Ars Nova's Dr. Ride's American Beach House. She has played roles in Warner Bros. films Sphere and Batman Forever and a guest role on Netflix's Sense8. Her awards include a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater, a 2023 San Francisco Artist Commission Grant, a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship for Theatre and Performance, a 2021 Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, a Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress, and the 2010 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Performance. Gomez is a winner of the 2023 Best Comedian Award from both 48 Hills and Bay Area Reporter. Gomez was born and raised in Washington Heights to a Cuban comedian father and a Puerto-Rican dancer and actress mother. She currently lives in San Francisco.

About La MaMa

 

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 62nd "Radical Access" Season comes on the heels of its 61st season when the company re-opened its newly-renovated, original theater at 74 E. 4th St. The building's $24 million makeover provides the return of the fully accessible Club, a new Community Arts Space for neighboring groups in the East Village, and an expanded public lobby and galleries. The "Radical Access" initiative builds an infrastructure of opportunity that supports new ways of connecting people and communities around the world, expanding a means of connectivity and providing space where artists and digital tools converge from multiple points of entry.  

La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation. La MaMa is a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ed Bullins, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Playhouse of the Ridiculous, Tom Eyen, Pan Asian Rep, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Mabou Mines, Meredith Monk, Peter Brook, David and Amy Sedaris, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O'Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.

To post a comment, you must register and login.