Press Release: Los Big Names
Acclaimed Latina Comic Actress MARGA GOMEZ
TO star in LOS BIG NAMES
OPENING April 9th with Previews beginning April 1st
at Off-Broadway's 47th Street Theatre
Tickets may be purchased by phoning Telecharge at 212-239-6200.
Download Microsoft Word version of this release: January 18th, 2006 Los Big Names Press Release
Marga Gomez, one of the country's most versatile Latina playwright/performers, will star in Los Big Names, a new play showcasing her signature blend of hilarious storytelling, spirited physicality, and emotional muscle opening Sunday, April 9th (7PM) at the 47th Street Theatre (304 West 47th Street /Between 8th & 9th Avenues). Directed by David Schweizer, Los Big Names will be produced by Tony Award-winning producer Jonathan Reinis and co-produced by The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre /Miriam Colon Valle in association with Jamie Cesa for a limited 6-week engagement with low cost ($30) previews performances starting on Saturday, April 1st.
Los Big Names is an autobiographical play set in two eras: the New York Latin show business world of the 60s and Hollywood of the 90s. It follows the lives of an unconventional Latino family of three pursuing their dreams of fame and fortune. Ms. Gomez's fate was sealed at a young age when her parents, Cuban comedian Willy Chevalier and Puerto-Rican dancer Margarita, gave her a bit part on the stage of one of New York's legendary Teatros. The author uses her later misadventures on the set of Barry Levinson's science-fiction flop Sphere of 1998 as a counterpoint to the aspirations and lives of her parents. Ms. Gomez portrays her mom, dad, the bodega busybody, Queen Latifah, Kathleen Turner and all of the vivid characters in this wild but true tale interweaving a moving family saga with an all-out skewering of celebrity.
Marga Gomez was born in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn. She tours nationally as one of the first openly gay comedians in the country as well as the writer/performer of six other solo plays: 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. Ms. Gomez also co-wrote Single Wet Female with Carmelita Tropicana. Her plays have been produced nationally, internationally and in New York at The Public Theater, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place and La Mama ETC. Ms. Gomez is the recipient of the 2004 GLAAD Award for Off-Off Broadway theater, and the 1994 Theatre LA's Ovation Award for her performance with Culture Clash at the Mark Taper Forum. Her acting credits include The Vagina Monologues at the Westside Theater, HBO's Tracy Takes on..., Guiding Light, Batman Forever, Sphere and indie favorites Rosa Negra and The D Word. Ms. Gomez was one of four gay comedians profiled in the 2003 documentary Laughing Matters (Here Network.) 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. Her comedy recording, "Hung Like a Fly," is available on Uproar Records. Selections from her work have been published in several anthologies including "Extreme Exposure," "Out, Loud & Laughing," "Contemporary Plays by American Women of Color" and "Out of Character and When I Knew." She was one of eight playwrights to be commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum's Latino Theater Initiative as part of the 2004 Amor Eterno project. Her website is www.margagomez.com
Director David Schweizer has been a frequent collaborator of Marga Gomez since 2000. He was most recently represented off-Broadway with William Hamilton's White Chocolate and he made his New York City Opera debut last fall with The Mines of Sulphur. His production of Rinde Eckert's Obie Award-winning chamber opera And God Created Great Whales ran at the Barbican Center in London and other recent productions of note include Wintertime by Charles Mee at Second Stage and James Magruder's adaptation of Moliere's The Miser at CenterStage in Baltimore.
Los Big Names will feature scenery & lights designed by Alexander V. Nichols and sound by Mark O'Brien. Producer Jonathan Reinis has won Tony Awards for Dame Edna: The Royal Tour (2000) and for Russell Simmon's Def Poetry Jam (2002). He has been nominated for two Tony Awards: Bill Maher's Victory Begins at Home and It Ain't Nothin But the Blues (1999). He built Theatre On The Square in San Francisco (1982) and ran it until 2002.
Los Big Names was produced last season at San Francisco's Magic Theatre after earlier workshops at The Marsh, Dixon Place, and a presentation by Woolly Mammoth Theater at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
Los Big Names will be play through Sunday, May 14th with performances scheduled as follows: Monday &Wednesdays through Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2 & 8PM, and Sundays at 3 & 7PM.The running time of the performance is 90 minutes with no intermission. Preview tickets through April 9th are $30 and beginning April 10th all tickets are $45. Tickets may be purchased by phoning Telecharge at 212-239-6200.
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