Annotations for People: Kahlo-frida

Recently, San Francisco-based comedian and performance artist, Marga Gomez received rave reviews for her one-woman off-Broadway show called Memory Tricks. Now, Gomez is working on a television adaptation of Memory Tricks, which looks back at her New York childhood with a showbiz family. From New York, Mandalit Del Barco reports.

Marga Gomez is the funniest simulated lesbian comic and performance artist who describes herself as somewhat of a misfit Latina.

My name is Gomez, and I look Latina and I feel that. I mean, I can eat spicy food, but I can't dance salsa or speak Spanish.

Marga is the daughter of a Puerto Rican exotic dancer and a Cuban impresario. Her solo show Memory Tricks is set in her precocious New York City childhood, when her flamboyant mom and dad were considered the Lucy and Ricky of New York's Latin vaudeville scene. [highlight music]

[background music] I thought of them as big, big stars. You know, you couldn't get to be bigger stars than my parents. Actually, they were stars in their community, and their community was a very poor community, so they were like poor stars, but I thought we were just like royalty. [highlight music]

In the 1960s, Marga's dad, Willy Chevalier, was a comic actor who produced theater reviews known as Spanish Spectaculars, [background music] featuring salsa stars like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, female contortionists, magicians and other acts. He put together sketches called La Familia Comica, which sometimes showcased her mom's Afro-Cuban dancing, they're pet chihuahua, and little Marga Gomez.

[background music] I had delusions of grandeur from a young age, because my father would just tell me all these fantastic things, I was going to be the next Shirley Temple and all that. You know? I couldn't sing, couldn't dance, but somehow I was going to be the non-singing, non-dancing, Puerto Rican-Cuban Shirley Temple.

[background music] Marga says when they got divorced, she had to choose between her dad and her mother, Margarita Estremera, also known as Margo the Exotic. Memory Tricks is Marga's tribute to a bleach blonde, fem fatal mom who used to try to teach Marga to be a perfumed lady, how to hold her pocketbook and glide, glide, glide on high heels. In a scene from a recent off-Broadway show, she remembers going on a picnic with her glamorous mom.

Let me tell you about the picnic. Remember the picnic, the one I sold my father out for? My mother promised that we would go that Sunday, right after church. I was so excited. I prayed extra hard in church. "Father, God, please, don’t let her see any stores on the way." When the priest said, "The mass is over. Go in peace," [snapping] I was gone. I ran all the way home, ran upstairs to my room, changed into my play clothes. That's what I wear all the time now, my play clothes. Then, I ran to my mother's room to see if she was awake. See, my mother couldn't go to church with me on Sundays. She was a good Catholic, but after a hard night of belly dancing, you need your rest.

In Memory Tricks, Marga talks about not wanting to grow up to be like her mom, who always wanted a Caucasian nose like Michael Jackson's. But she's found you can't escape your roots, even if they are dyed.

She'd sing all the time in the house, but she'd sing like this. [Singing] What a difference, la la la besame, besame la la She'd sing--She knew so many songs and none of the words. So that's sort of, the way I sing, too, so don't sit next to me at a rock concert. [Singing] I can’t get no la la la la la la.

Marga now lives in San Francisco where she began her adult career in show business with the feminist theater company, Lilith. She honed her comedy talents with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and is one of the original stand-up comics with Culture Clash. [Piano playing “I feel Pretty”] Not long ago, for the biennial celebration of New York's Whitney Museum, she performed her second show, "Marga Gomez is Pretty, and Witty and Gay", which deals with her sexuality.

[Piano playing] It has to do, some of it with my relationship and jealousy. My parents were very jealous of each other, and just because I'm not in a traditional relationship doesn't mean that I can't be dysfunctional. So, I talk about being a jealous girlfriend. I also have this little interlude where I'm reading from the Diary of Anaïs Nin, and I read from her Lost Diaries where she goes to Disneyland and has a tryst with Minnie Mouse.

Marga continues to do stand-up comedy and is reading for movie parts.

[background piano music] I've heard about a Frida Kalo project, and I'd like to do that because I got the eyebrows and everything, little mustache too. I'll just stop bleaching that sucker.

This summer, marga Gomez is writing the screenplay of Memory Tricks for the PBS series "American Playhouse". For Latino USA, I'm Madalit Del Barco in New York.

Un río dos Riveras, one river two Riveras is the title of a book written by Dr. Guadalupe Rivera, a writer and historian. Dr. Rivera is the daughter of famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Dr. Rivera is visiting this country, and she joins us now from Austin, Texas where an exhibition of her father's work is opening at the Mexic-Arte Museum. Welcome, Dra. Rivera.

Thank you, Maria Hinojosa. I am very pleased to meet you.

There are probably a lot of people who don't know all of the facts about your father, and they may have one question on their mind about you. And that question might be, are you the daughter of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo?

No, no, no. My father was married several times. And I am the daughter of Diego Rivera and Lupe Marin. She was the second wife that my father had.

Dr. Rivera, there is so much known about your father. I mean, his murals inspired a whole movement across the world. I mean, he's one of Mexico's most important artistic icons, but what is the one lasting memory that you have of your father that might tell us a little bit about who he was as a human being, as a person, as a father.

He was an extraordinary person because he allow my sister and I to become professionals and to go to university and to study and to learn how Mexico is and how revolution was and to be a real Mexican because he was very proud to be a real Mexican, and he teach us how to really appreciate who we are as member of a very important cultural movement.

One of the things, Dr. Rivera, about your father was that he really wasn't into... As far as I can tell and remember just from reading about him and seeing his work, which was very political, is that he really wasn't into the commercialization of art. I mean, he was really into art for communicating, what you've said, a history of the people of Mexico. But your father's work has now sold in this country and across the world for hundreds of thousands of dollars and really has an incredible market value. How do you think he would've reacted to this what is, I guess, the commercialization of his art in the art world?

Well, I think that he was not so proud of that as he was proud about the mural painting he realize in public buildings. He never want to commercialize his art. He painted paintings, let's say this small paintings, all canvas or all things like that or watercolors because he thought that he must have a way of life when he cannot paint murals. But in a way, his enormous desire was to paint murals much than everything in life.

Your father also of course loved Mexico, his country, and he was really quite radical in his politics and extremely nationalistic. What do you think your father, Diego Rivera, would've thought of NAFTA, the tratado de libre comercio- the free trade agreement?

I think that he was not very, very happy about it.

Why?

He always talk about that the necessity that each country keep his own identity. And maybe, he will realize that with NAFTA, the identity of Mexican people is going to be lost an enormous way.

And there's an interesting turn of events right now because on this celebration of el dies y seis de septiembre, or Mexican Independence Day, the 16th of September, you will be here in the United States. Your father's paintings will be on exhibit in Texas, and Governor Ann Richards of Texas will be in Mexico during the grito there. What does all of this say about Mexico y los estados unidors, the United States at this point in time?

Personally, I think it's a paradox, but at the same time, I am very pleased to be asking to come here as a guest to this exhibition because, in a way, my father is, again, a bridge between both countries as he was before in the '30s when he was asking to come to United States to paint the murals. It was in a special moment in the Mexican history in the '30s in which it was necessary for the Mexican government to establish a stronger contact with United States. And I consider that now, it's important to Mexico, to my country to establish a stronger contact with United States again.

Dr. Guadalupe Rivera is the daughter of Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, the exhibit Diego Rivera and the Revolution in Mexico in Times of Change will be on view at Austin's Mexic-Arte museum through December 31st.