Marga Gomez Brings Workshop Performances Of SWIMMING WITH LESBIANS To Marsh SF

Fan favorite Marga Gomez returns to The Marsh San Francisco for workshop performances of her latest work, Swimming With Lesbians. Taking place on The Celesbian cruise ship, this solo sapphic searing spoof follows the adventures of high-spirited poolside emcee Pru Perez. Passengers look up to Pru as a leader and Boss Lesbian of the sea - until the fateful sunny day of the Wet T-Shirt Relay Race when an old boarding school nemesis appears and Pru suddenly finds herself deep in murky waters. Swimming With Lesbians will be presented June 11-25, 2023, with performances at 5:00pm Sundays at The Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. For more information or to order tickets ($15-$35 sliding scale, $50 & $100 reserved), the public may visit www.themarsh.org.

Marga Gomez has been subliminally developing Swimming With Lesbians for many years. Inspired by her fondness for black and white films set on cruise ships (and for lesbians), Gomez set out to create fun lesbian characters for a theater world in which they have hitherto rarely been featured. Gomez's past experience as a lesbian cruise ship emcee in the '90s was also a driving force behind the creation of this fantasy. Development began in earnest in January 2023 at Solo Sundays Stagewerx in San Francisco, where Gomez was invited to perform 20 minutes of something new. After three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, she admits to craving the most fun possible while creating a show - and is setting sail with this one.

As the writer/performer of 14 solo plays and a stand-up comedian, Marga Gomez has been described as "deliciously cheeky and incendiary" by The New York Times, "astonishing" by Armistead Maupin, and "amazing... a lesbian Lenny Bruce" by Robin Williams. Her solo plays have been developed with and staged by renowned New York director David Schweizer, as well as Adrian Alea, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and David Ford. Gomez's collaboration with Carmelita Tropicana on the erotic horror comedy Single Wet Female has been produced nationally, internationally, and in New York at The Public Theater, 47th Street Theatre, Performance Space New York, Dixon Place, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club. Accolades include the GLAAD Award for Off-Broadway Theatre, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship for Theater, 2021 Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, Los Angeles "Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress, and the 2010 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for "Best Performance." Gomez is also a three-time winner of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Best Of The Bay Comedian" and was nominated for the 2006 New York Drama Desk Award for Los Big Names. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues and A.C.T.'s Fefu and Her Friends, roles in Warner Bros films Sphere and Batman Forever, and a guest role on Netflix's Sense8. She also teaches solo performance online via her website: margagomez.com. A beloved performer at The Marsh, Gomez's solo theatre career began at The Marsh San Francisco in 1991, where she has since been seen in award-winning, long-running productions including Latin Standards, Love Birds, Memory Tricks, Not Getting Any Younger, among others.