The playwright speaks to De Los about her East L.A.-inspired manufacturing, which opens in New York on April 27
Earlier than “Real Women Have Curves” was a stage play or an award-winning movie, it was only a dream that Josefina López jotted down in her journal throughout toilet breaks from her job at a garment manufacturing facility in Boyle Heights.
She drew inspiration from her fellow seamstresses — ladies on the margins of society — who nonetheless radiated pleasure and knowledge regardless of their exploitative circumstances.
“My intention was to show people the courage it takes to be a person who’s been marginalized and to still love yourself,” mentioned López over a Zoom name.
Greater than 20 years for the reason that 2002 launch of the movie — which launched audiences to the Emmy-winning actor America Ferrera — López’s L.A. dream is now getting its shine in New York. Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, “Real Women Have Curves: The Musical” makes its official Broadway debut on April 27 on the James Earl Jones Theater.
This basic Eastside story facilities Ana García, a headstrong teen with instructional aspirations, who is commonly at odds along with her conventional, menopausal Mexican mom, Carmen. The story touches on issues of physique picture and sexual autonomy inside their group of immigrant ladies, who are sometimes proven toiling inside a garment manufacturing facility amid the sweltering summer time warmth of 1987.
The corporate of “Real Women Have Curves.”
(Avery Brunkus)
Newcomer Tatianna Córdoba, a Bay Space native and graduate of the Boston Conservatory, performs the lead on this coming-of-age story. Puerto Rican TV and movie star Justina Machado, finest identified for her function in Netflix’s “One Day at a Time,” takes on the function of Carmen — 32 years after she first performed Ana within the Chicago premiere of the play. Mexican actress-singer Florencia Cuenca will co-lead within the function of Estela, the eldest daughter of the García household.
The Broadway musical will spherical out the assorted iterations of this timeless story with music by Mexican singer Pleasure Huerta — one half of the duet Jesse y Pleasure — and composer Benjamin Velez.
López considers the musical’s premiere “divine timing.”
“This story is coming out exactly at this time when we need a story to change the narrative about immigrants being criminals,” mentioned López, referring to the Trump administration’s newest try and mass deport immigrants to El Salvador’s infamous prisons with out due course of.
“It takes getting to Broadway to change culture,” López added, with a nod to the cultural affect that Jonathan Larson’s 1996 musical “Rent” had on the nationwide dialog surrounding HIV/AIDS.
On the primary day of manufacturing rehearsal, López gave an emotional speech about why she felt referred to as to jot down “Real Women Have Curves” 37 years in the past. Born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, López primarily based a lot of the story on her personal expertise as an undocumented younger lady.
“I knew there was something magical and special about this moment in my life,” López informed the forged. “This story matters even if the whole world says you’re replaceable, you don’t matter, you’re not even human. There was a part of me that said, ‘No, I am human.’”
Just like the character Ana, who leaves Boyle Heights to observe her desires within the Large Apple, López moved to New York Metropolis at 18 years previous. She attended the INTAR (Worldwide Arts Relations) Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Laboratory; led by Cuban American playwright María Irene Fornés, it was the place she started formalizing her concepts right into a play, additionally referred to as “Real Women Have Curves.”
“I wanted to fight for my humanity and write about my humanity,” López recalled, “and about what it is to be a real human being and a woman.”
Her first stage drama would premiere in 1990 on the Mission Cultural Heart in San Francisco, with numerous productions going down throughout the nation thereafter, together with in San Diego, San Antonio, Chicago and Los Angeles. In 1998, it caught the eye of movie producer George LaVoo, who later approached López about adapting it for movie. Collectively, they co-wrote the script.
With HBO supporting the manufacturing, America Ferrera, then 17, was forged as Ana — her greatest movie function but, after showing in Disney sports activities comedy “Gotta Kick It Up!” Lupe Ontiveros, who carried out in stage productions of the play and in numerous Gregory Nava movies, was forged as Carmen.
“She reminds me of my mom,” mentioned López.
The 2002 movie, directed by Patricia Cardoso, proved a success on the Sundance Movie Competition — it received the esteemed Viewers Award for dramatic movie. The onscreen mother-daughter pair, Ferrera and Ontiveros, collectively received the Particular Jury Prize for performing.
America Ferrera, left, and Lupe Ontiveros as daughter Ana and mom Carmen within the film “Real Women Have Curves.”
(Nicola Goode / HBO)
Trujillo, who’s initially from Cali, Colombia, was undocumented for a number of years in Toronto earlier than transferring to New York to pursue a profession in musical theater choreography. López referred to as the partnership “a match.”
“He’s the right director because I don’t have to explain to him the pain of being undocumented,” mentioned López. “He understands how you suffer and feel invisible.”
The Broadway musical represents a full-circle second for López, who as soon as fantasized about “Real Women Have Curves” being on a marqueeduring her New York residency. She may need even manifested its future in one of many remaining scenes of the 2002 movie, when Ana surfaces from the subway station and finds herself in entrance of the field workplace of a Broadway present.
The filming location was not intentional, López recalled — it was merely the closest subway station to LaVoo’s condominium— however one thing about that second seems like kismet now.
“It is my story and it is my fate,” mentioned López.
