‘Pretty, Witty’ and Mainstream : Lesbian Comedian Marga Gomez Says There Are Signs of Acceptance

Marga Gomez calls herself a person “full of contradictions.” It’s not a surprising description, coming from the Harlem-reared daughter of a Cuban-born comedian and Puerto Rican dancer named Margarita Estremera, a.k.a. “Margo the Exotic.”

But don’t let the unusual family background fool you. The real surprise may be the broad-based attention this Latina lesbian comedian is starting to get. With a successful New York run and a number of TV appearances under her belt, the San Francisco-based Gomez is making her L.A. stage debut at Highways tonight through Oct. 24 with her solo “Marga Gomez Is Pretty, Witty and Gay.”

Gomez cut her performing teeth doing bits in her parents’ variety shows. After college, in 1979, she moved to San Francisco where she worked with such theater groups as Lilith and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and was a member of the Latino comedy group Culture Clash. Gomez also developed her stand-up act, and she’s since opened for k.d. lang, Los Lobos and others.

She began to create one-woman performances in response to a 1990 request from the UC San Diego Multicultural Theatre Festival. The result was “Memory Tricks,” a solo in which she explores her relationship with her mother and the latter’s bout with Alzheimer’s. The piece ran at New York’s Public Theater in April of this year.

“Pretty, Witty and Gay,” which was part of the 1993 Whitney Museum Biennial Performance Series, was written shortly after “Memory Tricks” and focuses on Gomez’s sexuality in a way that the earlier work does not. “It’s clear that I’m gay, but that’s not what ‘Memory Tricks’ is about,” Gomez says. “I wanted to reveal my sex life and my neuroses--so it turned out to be comedy.”

Set in the performer’s bedroom the night before she’s set to go on a TV talk show as an “adult female homosexual,” “Pretty, Witty and Gay” finds Gomez being hassled by an extortionist, rewriting the Bible and doing a fantasy riff on the lost journals of Anais Nin. In the course of her comic musings, she also ranges into some politically sensitive terrain, including outing and the men’s movement.

“Pretty, Witty and Gay” is, in some ways, more fictional than “Memory Tricks.” Struck by what she describes as “the phenomenon of all these homosexuals on television talk shows,” Gomez set out to make a funny yet serious point about tokenism. “I have this line in the show: ‘Lesbians with long hair tomorrow on Oprah. Lesbians who’ve never been on Oprah, tomorrow on Donahue.’ ”

And Gomez’s timing may have been just right, especially given that “Pretty, Witty and Gay” is hitting L.A. at a time when pop culture and the media have become increasingly infatuated with lesbian imagery. “It’s funny that I did the show and now it’s such a big trend, the ‘lesbian chic’ thing,” Gomez says. “I didn’t know what that was at first. I thought it was lesbians of Arab descent.”

On a slightly more serious note, Gomez does see lesbian chic as a response to some tangible advances. “Public figures coming out of the closet has been important,” she says. “k.d. lang got the ball rolling, although how could people be surprised?”

Which doesn’t mean Gomez is a poster girl for outing. “I made my decision to be out gradually,” Gomez says. “When I first came out I went way out, living in the country on a commune (with) lesbian separatists, vegetarians. We didn’t even use forks because they were weapons: You could only eat with spoons or chopsticks. But I don’t want to be out of the closet because leaders say I should. I want to be out because that’s what makes sense to me.”

Then again, Gomez suggests, lesbian chic may be less a political statement than a fashion statement. “The ‘70s revival is another (factor),” Gomez says. “A lot of lesbian fashions are back--you know, flannel shirts, Birkenstocks. How about Doc Martens? Who started wearing those? You wear those clothes and you become a lesbian. I think it’s subliminal.”

Yet for all her quips, Gomez, like so many other gay, lesbian and non-white performers, struggles to keep her sexual orientation from becoming her entire artistic identity. “I don’t feel like I have to address my sexuality,” Gomez says, “because it’s not like I have enough sex to do all my work about it.”

Gomez gives partial credit for the acceptance of her material to the higher mainstream lesbian profile. “It’s just the right timing for this show. . . . All these people from Hollywood are going to come see it, no problem. My agents will come. Five years ago I would never have thought that was possible.”

Still, career paradoxes seem to apply doubly to Gomez--since she’s a double-threat, i.e., a non-white lesbian.

“C’mon, I can’t salsa. It’s sad,” she jokes, when the subject of her ethnic identity comes up. “Second-generation Latinos really feel a lot of Angst over losing their language because it has to do with internalized racism. The only thing I can do is eat really spicy food.”

* “Marga Gomez Is Pretty, Witty and Gay,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Wednesdays-Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 24. $12. ($20 for tonight’s benefit for VIVA, the organization for lesbian and gay Latino artists; No show Saturday). (213) 660-8587.