Latin Standards is Marga Gomez’s 12th solo play: a love letter to her blustery Cuban father and the ways his passion to perform influenced her career as a comedian. Started in New York, Gomez has toured the country over the last year and now brings the show home to the Bay Area in 2018.
San Franciscans will remember Gomez launching a hipster comedy night at “Esta Noche,” a doomed Mission district drag club, during the onset of San Francisco’s gentrification crisis.
Her father’s glory days — with the stage name Willy Chevalier — were the 1950s and 60s in New York. By the 70s, he was struggling for work as live entertainment venues in the Latino community declined. An entertainer’s life is often one of ups and downs, and she talks about her own as well as his. Marga Gomez performs Latin Standards at the Brava Theater Jan. 11-28, and then Feb. 9-11 at MACLA in San Jose.
Catch a sneak peak of Latin Standards as performed at The Public’s Under The Radar Festival:
