AMERICAN THEATRE | The New ‘Actual Girls’ Musical Has Curves, However How About Complexity?

My abuela had a aptitude for the dramatic and quite a lot of womanly recommendation. She shared that recommendation freely whereas watching over a frying pan, dismissing the occasional splash of sizzling oil with a loud curse. It poured forth within the type of epic novellas with winding aspect plots in regards to the ladies in our household. It held a magical, virtually non secular high quality; within the sanctity of her kitchen, it was shared as a roadmap for residing below patriarchy. As an adolescent, after visits to her home in Inglewood, Calif., I might furiously kind her tales into the Notes app on my telephone, and later flip them into poetry.

A long time earlier and some miles to the north and east, in Boyle Heights, teenage Josefina López ritually listened to her sister, mom, and their buddies alternate laughter as they sewed clothes within the manufacturing unit the place they labored. Some days the tiny manufacturing unit acquired so sizzling that López needed to iron in her underwear simply to remain cool, however nonetheless, she appeared ahead to being there, among the many tales and the full-bodied cackles they provoked. For an undocumented lady, the echo of this laughter within the sacred circle of stitching ladies was the primary place she felt a real sense of belonging. She’d rush to the toilet between ironing and jot the tales down in her diary.

In 1988, when López was simply 18, she crafted these diary entries into Actual Girls Have Curves, a play about her and the immigrant ladies who sewed and laughed alongside her. It premiered in 1990 on the Mission Cultural Middle in San Francisco, Calif., and, within the 33 years since, has been produced greater than 130 instances at theatres throughout the nation. In 2002, the play was tailored into an award-winning movie, starring America Ferrera, for which López co-wrote the screenplay with George LaVoo.

Not too long ago the story was reincarnated as a musical at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Actual Girls Have Curves, the musical, primarily based on López’s play and film, follows 18-year-old Ana as she longs to go to varsity at Columbia College, whereas her mom, Carmen, desires her to remain and work on the household stitching manufacturing unit. With a e book by Lisa Loomer, music and lyrics by Pleasure Huerta and Benjamin Velez, and path and choreography by Sergio Trujillo, the musical was in improvement for about three years earlier than it hit the stage in Cambridge final December (it closed this previous Sunday, Jan. 21). Its producers have already got their sights set on Broadway.

This represents an thrilling chance. It’s no secret that the mainstream theatre panorama lacks tales exploring the criminalization of immigrants, intersectional feminism, and financial oppression. As a theatre lover and Mexican girl from California who, like Ana, left dwelling for New York Metropolis, it’s a sentimental prospect, and one I’m able to have fun. On the identical time, I’m apprehensive. I crave new tales about this subject material and yearn for the event of labor by rising Mexican artists. So the notion of a musical primarily based on a film primarily based on a play from 1988, with a script rewritten many years later by writers who don’t share the lived experiences of the present’s creator, set me slightly on edge. Earlier than I even stepped into the theatre, my emotions had been sophisticated. They had been additional sophisticated after I noticed the two-and-a-half-hour musical final month.

López, a seasoned playwright, producer, and founding inventive director of CASA 0101 Theater, wrote the unique play to honor herself and the opposite ladies of the stitching manufacturing unit, who taught her the worth of womanhood. At first, she felt sorry for herself, when, at 18, as an alternative of going off to an Ivy League College, like lots of her highschool friends, she needed to spend her days ironing. However the sizzling little manufacturing unit, she quickly got here to understand, was greater than that. It was a cultural middle. It was an area for storytelling, inventive manufacturing, and a type of feminist training she couldn’t have gotten at Harvard or Yale.

“Once I acquired to see the worth of being a lady for the primary time, I actually wished to have fun that, doc my life’s expertise, and affirm the worth of my life,” she advised me in an interview. 

As I contemplate the cost for López’s authentic story, I ponder the perform of adaptation, and methods to pretty consider and analyze it. Would the brand new musical model additionally purpose to honor these ladies, the complete spectrum of their humanity, and the worth of their lives? Can it, if it’s written by another person? 

When e book author Lisa Loomer was introduced onto the undertaking by director Sergio Trujillo, she was instantly impressed, she advised me, by what she feels to be the central questions of López’s story: “What will we owe ourselves? What will we owe our households and our cultures?” These questions guided her writing as she added characters and subplots round immigration politics and assimilation, what she referred to as “new emphases for a brand new time.” She added, “It speaks to the brilliance of what [López] did that it may be reimagined, virtually like a fable.”

Although Loomer’s mother and father have lived in Mexico for 50 years and she or he partly grew up there, she will not be of Mexican descent, nor has she ever been undocumented. What does it imply for her, then, to rewrite a narrative initially by and about an undocumented Mexican lady?

“My household’s background is Spanish, Romanian, and Sephardic, though I choose to not actually speak about myself that a lot in articles,” she mentioned. “Definitely, Mexico is all via this undertaking. It’s important to know Mexico with a purpose to speak about Mexicans.”

Loomer, whose performs embrace Roe, Dwelling Out, and The Ready Room, feels a private connection to López’s play and film, as Loomer tends to discover ladies’s voices and our bodies in her work.

“A few of my expertise doesn’t parallel Ana’s, however that central query—of what we owe others versus what we owe ourselves, if we’re going to completely understand what we’re meant to do and who we’re meant to be on this planet—is one thing that strikes an enormous chord for me,” Loomer mentioned.

The present struck some chords with me too. Although nonetheless a piece in progress, the musical proves an excellent format to have fun the humor, want, and pleasure of the ladies at its coronary heart. There’s one thing highly effective about watching a gaggle of immigrant ladies of shade loudly and boldly take up area, dancing and singing about the whole lot from their enduring our bodies to their knowledge about resisting patriarchy. A tune titled “Adios Andres,” about Ana’s mom’s entrance into menopause, is a hilarious, warm-hearted romp that jogged my memory of conversations with my grandmother, mom, and sister in regards to the trials and pleasures of womanhood. It’s not usually I see intimate moments like these rendered onstage so joyously.

“White folks may need all the cash and all the ability, however we’ve all this creativity and all this resiliency, and we’re having all of the enjoyable,” López advised me of her time within the stitching manufacturing unit. 

Within the musical, the manufacturing unit ladies definitely have enjoyable. And it was enjoyable watching them.

It’s the not-so-fun components that gave me pause. At instances, I felt that the musical shrinks advanced dynamics into trite dialogue and catchy tunes, and falls again on oversimplified tropes. The nuances of immigration standing, intergenerational trauma, and feminist politics—as they manifest within the lives of resolute, imperfect ladies—are too usually flattened. Maybe unfairly, I discovered it troublesome to swallow a sanitized model of López’s story, when the realities upon which it’s primarily based are so wealthy, dynamic, and delightful, and hardly depicted in mainstream musical theatre.

The musical’s central dynamic is the fraught, tense relationship between 18-year-old large dreamer Ana and Carmen, her cynical, overworked mom. Ana desires to go to varsity, however Carmen doesn’t approve, as an alternative hoping to maintain Ana in Boyle Heights, working within the household stitching manufacturing unit. 

Within the musical, the primary solo Carmen belts (“Blood Thicker Than Mole”) is a stern warning: “You dream of faculty and of writing for a paper? / Nicely, mija, put these desires on maintain and begin doing as you’re advised.” All through the musical, Carmen repeats that Ana’s desires are unrealistic and unworthy of pursuing. She says, basically: I’ve labored since I used to be an adolescent and you’ll too. She’s afraid of Ana transferring away. She’s resentful that Ana has choices past labor within the manufacturing unit. She’s bitter, however—spoiler alert—ultimately turns into much less so, permitting her daughter to succeed in her full potential.

For me, this central mother-daughter relationship solely hovers on the floor via a lot of the present. In a couple of stronger moments, it cracks to disclose glimpses of the advanced, contradictory matrix of emotion that would stop a mother like Carmen from embracing her youngster’s dream. However they’re simply that: glimpses. Certainly, the musical units up dynamics that would give depth and shade to its central relationship, then units them apart with out exploring them. As an example, the musical suggests Carmen’s anxiousness about having family members out of attain—a torment pervasive amongst displaced households—with out unpacking it. It hints at Carmen’s personal unrealized desires, however doesn’t excavate them. One will get the sense that Carmen yearns for Ana to acknowledge the data that Carmen holds that would by no means be taught at an Ivy League college—particularly on condition that such establishments had been constructed on the bones of the oppressed—however once more, this isn’t actually delved into.

One other implied rigidity within the musical is Carmen’s worry that her daughter, just like the forces that oppress her, would possibly see her merely as a workhorse somewhat than a full particular person. Not like within the movie, the place these tensions are expressed in dialogue (Carmen: “You’re ashamed of me? You’re ashamed to work with us? You suppose I’m a canine. No good for something however work.” Later, Ana: “You’re all low cost labor for Bloomingdale’s!”), within the musical, these subtleties make it briefly right into a tune lyric, then are dropped in favor of neat resolutions.  

I discovered myself wishing the musical had extra moments rendering the layered messiness of Ana’s relationship together with her mom, embracing the complexity and full humanity of them each. If, because the present develops, the musical’s writers might discover extra space for Ana and Carmen’s relationship to breathe, the characters would possibly really feel extra actual, entire, and lived in.

Not like the movie’s Ana, who’s grounded, brooding, and filled with angst, the musical’s Ana is a doe-eyed dreamer, naïve and spirited, with shallowness and sense of hope that appear completely unimpeded by her mom’s restricted view of her prospects. Admittedly, in lots of moments, this Ana is undeniably lovable. Her fierce perception in her personal desires and people of others is inspiring. López herself advised me she welcomes this distinct method to Ana. Her story, she believes, belongs to many ladies. 

“I wrote it about my life at 18, and I had a restricted scope of what I might write as a result of that was my expertise,” she mentioned. “I’m not treasured about, ‘It must be this fashion,’ as a result of in the end it’s in regards to the energy of the message and the ability of the reality.”

In the meantime, the musical’s Carmen has two central truths: She works loads and sacrifices loads. I fear that by not totally coloring Carmen in, and never affording her an opportunity to claim that she’s good for greater than work, the musical does the very factor it appears to need to fight: It reduces her character to her labor and sacrifice. In a way, Carmen turns into Ana’s restricted view of her. It jogs my memory of one thing López mentioned to me about her personal mom, on whom the Carmen of her play and film was primarily based.

“At dwelling, I all the time thought she was a doormat, and my dad had all the ability,” she recalled. “Once I acquired into the manufacturing unit, I noticed how all the ladies revered my mom and the way my mom was so humorous, and my mom was such an ideal seamstress. I actually acquired to see my mom in a brand new gentle. I assumed, ‘Wow, my mom is a Third World feminist, I simply didn’t understand it.’”

That resonates with me. Maybe it’s an unfair burden to position on this explicit adaptation of this singular story, however basically, I can’t assist however need extra from tales about our (relationships with our) moms. I would like them to be layered, sophisticated, and compelling. I would like these ladies to be outlined in phrases apart from youngsters, husbands, labor, and sacrifice. I would like them to get to have want, pleasure, insecurity. Not solely as a result of our moms are way more than what they needed to do to provide their youngsters and husbands the lives they’ve, however as a result of rendering them as such makes for richer, deeper, extra fascinating human tales.

Each the play and film finish in an advanced jumble of hope, sorrow, and ache. Ana heads off to New York with out her mom’s blessing. Shut-up pictures of Carmen present anguish, brokenness, and longing, after which the movie fades to black on a last shot of Ana, strutting with confidence via Occasions Sq.. Between Carmen and Ana there’s a lot unresolved ache.

The musical ends extra heartwarmingly, with Carmen giving Ana her blessing. It wraps a healthful bow on Ana’s story, permitting for a celebratory curtain name and a happy stroll out of the theatre. There’s a sure energy in giving a lady like Ana the glad ending she fights for, onstage, in tune, for all to bop alongside to. However at what value? Is it value papering over the damage and complexity of Ana and Carmen’s relationship? Is it value patching up Carmen’s wounds earlier than we perceive precisely how deep they’re, how they got here to be, and what they may have to heal? On this model, does Carmen exist solely to serve Ana’s arc?

Then once more, is a conclusion like this essentially a nasty factor for a musical? The glad ending appears, partly, to be Loomer’s try to remain true to the mandates of musical comedy, as Actual Girls Have Curves is her first enterprise into the shape.

“It was a gaggle determination,” she mentioned. “Individuals who had extra expertise and extra knowledge in regards to the kind than I do felt strongly that it ought to have a optimistic ending. I’m all for presenting a optimistic ending to younger Latina ladies.”  

It was additionally necessary to Loomer that Carmen have a change of coronary heart. “I don’t suppose it’s optimistic in a light-hearted or simply gained or saccharine method,” she mentioned. “I’m pleased with that ending. As a result of why don’t folks get to develop and alter?”

Injecting recent relevance, whereas additionally introducing extra problems, the musical fleshes out the unique’s immigration story. That is clearly a extremely embattled subject within the U.S. immediately, because it was in 1987, the yr wherein Actual Girls takes place. Particularly, Guatemalan and Salvadoran characters have been added, in reference to the tense politics of the Nineteen Eighties, when U.S.-funded dictatorships, wars, and loss of life squads in Central America brought on violence and poverty, from which refugees fled in unprecedented numbers to L.A. In 1986, President Reagan’s Immigration Management and Reform Act allowed sure undocumented immigrants to use for authorized standing after paying a wonderful, studying to talk English, and demonstrating “a very good ethical character.” Certainly, López herself gained authorized standing after the act was signed into legislation.

In its efforts at “management,” although, the act additionally criminalized employers who employed undocumented staff, which led to elevated office raids by Immigration Naturalization Providers (INS) and the seizure, arrest, and deportation of many undocumented immigrants. In Boyle Heights particularly, a largely Latiné immigrant neighborhood in East L.A., INS raids had been a continuing menace to undocumented households. This time of anti-immigrant sentiment within the metropolis and nationwide is the backdrop for the brand new Actual Girls Have Curves.

“Whenever you have a look at the previous, at instances you’ll be able to see the current much more painfully,” Loomer mentioned. “The truth that our immigration system has been damaged for that lengthy—you understand, oh my God, it’s 2023 and it nonetheless hasn’t modified. After which that’s a query for our proper now.”

It’s a worthy topic to deal with onstage, however as with the household story, the musical has bother making area for all the private and political dynamics the immigration storyline introduces. A heavy-handed hen metaphor and an upbeat group quantity about operating from “la migra” cut back the experiences of undocumented immigrants within the U.S. to a dichotomy between the frantic state of hiding from the legislation and the transcendent state of flying above all of it. What about the whole lot in between?

Loomer has added a 17-year-old Indigenous Guatemalan refugee to the manufacturing unit’s solid of ladies. Izel is quiet, candy, and susceptible, however filled with hope. In the end, she is detained and deported, however not earlier than singing “If I Have been a Hen,” a warmhearted tune about hovering above her difficult circumstances. 

For her half, López celebrates the addition of Izel to her authentic story.

“Now that we’ve a author outdoors of me who can have a look at the story and return to ’87, we will add the entire expertise of the Guatemalan and Salvadoran refugees,” López  advised me. “It grew to become an even bigger story via the musical.”

It’s Izel’s incarceration that spurs Ana to a fiery resistance in opposition to the methods that oppress the folks she loves. At first, after unsuccessfully making an attempt to get Izel launched from detention, Ana feels powerless. However after speaking to the manufacturing unit ladies, she realizes their (and her) energy. The messaging is self-contradictory, although, as a result of Izel’s character herself isn’t afforded company. We don’t study her fears (past detention and deportation), or her needs, hopes, and desires (past avoiding detention and deportation). Her character lacks specificity, seeming to be a stand-in for a class of one who would have been current within the manufacturing unit at the moment. And she or he’s passive: Issues occur to her, and people issues, in flip, serve the arcs of different characters. Izel, too, then, doesn’t get to be totally human. She’s a hen. She’s a trope about rising above hardship. She’s a plot machine for the radicalization of Ana.

General, within the musical, the expertise of being undocumented is depicted as deportation=unhealthy, (monetary) success within the U.S.=good. Unexplored is the liminality of residing in a rustic the place you’re gainfully employed however aren’t afforded primary rights, whereas additionally not feeling a way of attachment to the nation you’ve left behind, in order that neither place actually looks like dwelling. Lacking from the present are any doubts about whether or not coming to the U.S. was even the best alternative. Untraversed are the radicalizing contradictions of getting to obey the very legislation that deems one legal, second-class. 

I struggled watching characters scurry across the stage to a catchy jaunt titled “At all times on the Run,” about hiding from the INS. The tone and subject material appear at odds. The quantity in query goes as far as to explicitly state that respectable characters like these depicted within the musical don’t should be criminalized or deported, whereas “actual criminals” do. Why critique the oppressive system that deems people “unlawful,” then legitimize it in the identical tune? Why invoke the dichotomy of fine and unhealthy immigrants that harms the very characters whose tales are being advised? And what’s this saying to and about individuals who have been incarcerated or deported for legal exercise? 

So the musical’s politics are lukewarm. They are saying: Good immigrants who by accident steal lobsters at their gangster boyfriend’s coercion (the rationale Ana’s sister Estela doesn’t qualify for amnesty) can keep, unhealthy immigrants who commit extra sinister crimes can go. Democratic political figures like Nancy Pelosi are glorified. Aspiring to hitch the very Congress that has failed for many years to make systemic change in immigration coverage is uplifted as a method to finish the injustice dealing with undocumented immigrants. At a time when immigrants, together with youngsters, are imprisoned and routinely sterilized and sexually assaulted in federal detention, and widespread calls to abolish ICE go unanswered by the powers that be, a politic that legitimizes the U.S. authorities falls wanting the calls for of this second. 

Nonetheless, it’s gotten me pondering. These political matters are worthy of being musicalized, and begging to be put in entrance of audiences of immediately. Maybe Actual Girls Have Curves could possibly be the start of many extra musicals that discover these themes with larger nuance. Somebody has to boldly declare, “This too is usually a musical,” for others to see and seize the chance to go additional.

Whereas I left with quite a lot of questions in regards to the musical, I can single out one second as a surprising victory. Overheating within the tiny, stuffy stitching manufacturing unit, Ana (like López all these years in the past) takes off her garments and irons in her underwear. One after the other, the opposite ladies comply with swimsuit. This results in an infectious musical quantity that strikes viewers members to ecstasy; on the night time I noticed it, folks stood up, danced, and clapped. This scene was additionally in López’s play and within the film. However there’s one thing distinctly particular about seeing it onstage, in actual time, set to music. I can’t recall a second once I’ve seen so many actual ladies, with actual our bodies, taking on actual area, on an actual stage, in entrance of an actual viewers. It felt euphoric. And lengthy overdue.

“I’m shocked each night time that that’s nonetheless such an enormous assertion—that it nonetheless speaks into the listening a lot,” Loomer advised me. “I believe it says, ‘I’m who I’m. That is me. Take it or depart it, it’s time for me to be comfy in my pores and skin. It’s time for me to be comfy in my politics. It’s time for me to be comfy in my life.’”

The musical format is good for this unapologetic self-acceptance. Our bodies take up extra space after they sing and dance. Put to music, this second transcends self-acceptance. It’s self-celebration. 

“I believe it’s an ideal medium for this story, as a result of we’re trying on the pleasure and we get to win and have fun, which is one thing that could be very uncommon for Latino tales,” López advised me. “I believe a musical does that. It lastly exhibits the enjoyment.”

Perhaps pleasure is sufficient. As I click on via the previous images López despatched me of her actual mother and the opposite actual ladies within the small Boyle Heights stitching manufacturing unit, I can’t assist however desire a musical about them in all of their sophisticated, messy, particular glory. I can’t assist however desire a musical reflecting a politic centered on their full liberation, that doesn’t legitimize the forces that oppress them. I can’t assist however desire a musical wherein the Izels of our neighborhood get to be human. Actual Girls Have Curves isn’t fairly it. However it’s one musical, by one workforce, in a theatre panorama woefully missing tales by or about Mexican immigrant ladies. It will possibly’t probably do the whole lot I ask of it. And it’s not the accountability of this workforce of (principally) Latiné creators to create a story advanced sufficient to dismantle the stereotypical tropes that hurt our neighborhood.

Regardless, there’s an simple magic within the making—and endurance—of a contemporary fable. It’s outstanding that the tales of ladies López knew in a manufacturing unit 30 years in the past stay on in any respect.

“I didn’t find yourself in a stitching manufacturing unit, however I carry the tales of those ladies,” López advised me. She’s carried them throughout the nation to Cambridge. The place to subsequent?

Citlali Pizarro (she/her) is a author, producer, and theatre artist primarily based in New York Metropolis. She presently works in producing on the Public Theater.

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