{"id":24266,"date":"2021-09-27T15:29:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T22:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=24266"},"modified":"2021-09-27T15:29:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T22:29:11","slug":"threats-and-rewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/threats-and-rewards\/","title":{"rendered":"Threats and Rewards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I hadn\u2019t been to a live performance in a theater in over a year.\u00a0 Since I am totally vaxed and masked and meet the guidelines set by The Marsh, I decided to attend Marga Gomez\u2019s Spanking Machine last night. Everyone obeyed the safety protocols throughout the performance.<\/p>\n

Gomez is the perfect act to open at the Marsh to a live audience in over 18 months.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve been following Ms. Gomez\u2019 performances for decades.\u00a0 I believe I saw one of her earliest performances at Theater Rhinoceros.\u00a0 Even then, I thought she was unique and very funny.\u00a0 Also poignant and very physical in portraying various characters.\u00a0 Last time I saw her was at the Central Works theater in Berkeley.\u00a0 She was acting in King of Cuba by Cristina Garc\u00eda, a full-length play in which she appeared as Fidel Castro.\u00a0 Since I hadn\u2019t seen her in years, I wondered if I would recognize her.\u00a0 However, as soon as she came on stage in typical Castro military garb, I knew it was her.\u00a0 She has said that Spanking Machine would be her last solo performance.\u00a0 She wants to write for other actors.\u00a0 Hopefully she will appear in other people\u2019s plays.\u00a0 Whatever she does, I\u2019m sure she\u2019ll be a huge success.<\/p>\n

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In Spanking Machine, Gomez as Gomez talks about friendship with Scotty the boy in the third grade of her Catholic school who became her best friend and the first boy she ever kissed which made them realize that they were both gay even at that young age.\u00a0 She knew it, but he didn\u2019t- then.\u00a0 She relates their friendship as being very sweet, poignant and devilish in that they were bent on pranking big people.\u00a0 Spitting on them. Shooting them with water guns in subways, and doing other mean things children cook up to harass adults.\u00a0 They, of course, as kids, think they\u2019re hysterically funny.\u00a0 However, if you misbehaved in class, you were threatened to be sent to the principal\u2019s office to face the spanking machine.\u00a0 The children didn\u2019t exactly know what this machine did but all feared it.\u00a0 Anyone who came back from suffering its effects did not want to talk about it for fear they would be sent back to face it again.\u00a0 It was a threat that hung over them all through their school years.\u00a0 Upstage on the set is a cardboard box with a black block letters on it that read: Spanking Machine.\u00a0 We think that we are going to actually see this device.\u00a0 But, of course, we don\u2019t; however not seeing it, we can only imagine it as the traumatized children can.<\/p>\n

She and Scotty lost contact with each other for 40 years until one day, she gets an email from him.\u00a0 Gomez, as Scotty, types out his email, verbalizing the text in the raspy asthmatic Cuban-accented voice she gives him.<\/p>\n

Gomez creates her characters not so much physically- well, that too- but relies more on voice.\u00a0 He tells her he lives in Miami and invites her down for a visit.\u00a0 She somehow gets the impression that he\u2019s very wealthy.\u00a0 Turns out differently as we find out during her stay in Miami.\u00a0 \u00a0He now lives with his wife and mother-in-law- a Cuban thing- who do not appear in the piece.\u00a0 However, Margo gives us glimpses of their characters through her vocal delivery.\u00a0 To indicate different situations and physical locations, she announces a costume change and will change to a tropical blouse for her Miami visit, a bomber jacket when she becomes truly comfortable as- what she comes to realize- a dyke.<\/p>\n

Gomez doesn\u2019t shy away from speaking about the sexual abuse that she suffered not only from men but from women as well.\u00a0 She gives anecdotes about responding to an interesting man\u2019s invitation and visits him in his apartment to see his collection of tropical fish only to hear him lock all the doors in his apartment. After managing to escape, she came away with a water-filled plastic bag of guppies when she was promised exotic tropical fish- one of the reason she agreed to visit him.\u00a0 One of her male abusers has an extensive ceramic collection which in a wonderful depiction she doesn\u2019t hesitate to destroy in order to get him to release her.\u00a0 At one point she relates graphically how she was sexually abused. Thankfully, the necessary revelations about other bad stuff- sadistic treatment of brown kids by Irish nuns: Sister Kevin McGillicuddy (?) for one, for instance, are scattered among humorous anecdotes. \u00a0Her only props are a table, a tall stool,a chair and a shopping bag containing a few items. Through her verbal delivery alone she allows us to magically see the scene.<\/p>\n

Spanking Machine does not run smoothly.\u00a0 It has stops and starts. It as though she takes time to gather herself to talk about the trauma she has undergone throughout her life as a gay, dark-skinned Cuban, Catholic girl growing up in New York, whose only friend in the third grade was Scotty the first boy she ever kissed.<\/p>\n

Marga Gomez\u2019s one woman show Spanking Machine, is at The Marsh in San Francisco on Valencia Street between 21st<\/sup> and 22nd<\/sup> through October 23.\u00a0 Tickets and information can be found at the Marsh web site: TheMarsh.org<\/p>\n

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I hadn\u2019t been to a live performance in a theater in over a year.\u00a0 Since I am totally vaxed and masked and meet the guidelines set by The Marsh, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"