Okay, it's not EXACTLY about that incident--she's using the story and changing NJ to Buffalo--at least as of this writing. It's part of a tapestry of memoirs about intimacy, romance and sex. Some of us groan at our bad memories and then try to force them out of our minds. Not Gomez, who makes plays out of them. This one also includes her hooking up with a public access television reporter and humping a statue. It's a saga, she says, of "pursuit, desire and getting it."

Her work has always been "teetering between performance art and standup," borrowing amply from her personal history and morphing into monologues that are " self-deprecating, sarcastic, with fits of brazenness" (Libby Molineaux, LA Weekly). Her "A Line Around the Block," devoted to her Hispanic impresario father, Willy Chevalier, was called "Affectionate, understanding, tinged with pain and regret but best of all nostalgic and funny" by Lawrence Van Gelder in the Times, who also deemed her "As splendid a mimic as she is a keen-eyed sociologist and captivating storyteller." Her "Memory Tricks," devoted to her mother, a Latin dancer who later turned belly dancer, inspired Tom Jacobs to write in Variety that she had raised the autobiographical monologue to a new level.

This production re-unites her with director David Schweizer, who last collaborated with her on "Jaywalker" (PS122, 1999). His performance art directing credits include Ann Magnuson's "Rave Mom" and "You Could Be Home Now", Sandra Tsing Loh's "Aliens in America" and "Bad Sex With Bud Kemp," Nora Dunn's "Small Prey," John Fleck's "Nothing Beats Pussy" and Carmelita Tropicana and Marga Gomez's "Single Wet Female." His recent New York work also includes Rinde Eckert's Obie Award-winning "And God Created Whales."

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.

Marga's website!