Marga Gomez says she knows that in the next 24 hours, she’s going to break down and cry.
It will not be about a lost love, a death in the family or even a chemical imbalance. It will be because Gomez–once again–has booked herself for a show that doesn’t exist, that she hasn’t even written yet.
“Honest, I don’t know what I’ll be doing on stage 36 hours now,” says Gomez, the creator and star of such terrific alternative theater fare as “Memory Tricks,” “A Line Around the Block,” and “Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay.”
She’ll be in Chicago tonight, performing her newest piece, “jaywalker,” as part of the International Latino Cultural Center’s Autumn Ensemble series. Show times are 7 and 10 p.m. at the Black Orchid Theater, 230 W. North Ave. Tickets are $20, $17 for Center members and can be purchased by calling 312-944-2200 or 312-431-1330.
And, swears Gomez, unlike the show she was prepping when she talked to After Hours, “jaywalker” is a finished, polished product.
“I’ve been working on that piece for two years,” says Gomez. “Last November, we had a two-month run in San Francisco. I worked with a director, which was great because prior to that I’d been goofing around on my own. I didn’t want to be bossed around; I just wanted to find out why I was doing it. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m doing something.”
In “jaywalker,” a very funny look at trying to make it as a Latina in Hollywood, Gomez uses the quaint Los Angeles notion of walking as a metaphor for reaching success. In the process, she has a run-in with agents, producers, smirking hotel clerks and even a momentarily sapphic Jennifer Lopez.
“I’m from New York,” Gomez says to explain her inability to drive and her need to rely on the old pedestrian mode of transportation. “I spent two years in L.A. but I still don’t know how to drive. I’ve tried to learn. When I was in L.A., I called a hypno-therapist to help me. The deal is, he gives you a hypnotic suggestion: `I can drive, I’m good enough to drive’. Of course, he’s probably fondling you the whole time.”
As soon as she saw his brochure though–it had a picture of frightened woman–she cancelled the appointment. But this left her stranded, depending on others to get around.
“During this time, I had a relationship with someone who lived in Santa Monica,” she remembers. “But she wouldn’t come pick me up all the time. I had to take a bus to see her because she wanted to make a man out of me. I felt helpless, like I was expected to make it big, have a chauffeur. And I’m thinking: Less people should drive. It’s a lot of responsibility.”
In “jaywalker,” Gomez also riffs on California eating habits, public transportation and the nature of ambition. All the while, she works a bare stage in what is easily the most physically demanding piece of her career. Viewing “jaywalker,” it’s impossible to imagine that anything that detailed and precise could have come from the work process she describes as typical for herself.
“Oh yeah, when I first did `jaywalker’, it hadn’t existed two days before,” she admits. “But this is how I work. Believe me, I know it’s unhealthy. It’s bad on relationships. And then, you know, as soon as I hone (the plays), people want new things!”
Gomez begins most pieces not by improvising or sitting at a computer or notepad, but by just using free association to toss around words and phrases. When she gets a rhythm going, she uses sketch paper to write things out, creating a “tree of ideas” that she later fills out.
“When I get a beginning, middle and end, I outline it more formally,” she says. “Some things, though, only gel in performance. That’s why I don’t really know anything until I do it, until I try it out.”
Right now she’s working on a new piece titled “Cochina,” or “Pig” in Spanish. “It will be disgusting–that’s all I know right now,” says Gomez. “That’s why I just know I’m going to have a breakdown.”
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The Oak Park Area Gay & Lesbian Association will sponsor “Image/Artist: Gays & Lesbians as Artists and Subjects from the Mona Lisa to Mapplethorpe,” an irreverent survey of the fine arts and photography by community historian, independent scholar, and Windy City Times columnist Marie Kuda on October 11. Kuda’s brilliant and pretty irreverent. Learning and laughing are guaranteed.
It’s all at the Buzz Cafe, 906 South Lombard in Oak Park (just off the CTA Blue Line in the heart of Oak Park’s studio district). Show time is 7 p.m. For more information call the Buzz Cafe, 708-524-2899 or the association, 708-848-0273.
