Philly playwright brings bilingual play to Center City
By Ross DeMattei
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PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — A unique new play is hitting the stage at the Drake Hotel in Center City. It combines the themes of family, heritage and culture and it’s portrayed by a diverse cast of bilingual actresses.
“Part of why I wanted to write the play was because, as a Black person, a lot of conversations about my experience didn’t include the fact that I’m Latinx and as a Latinx person, vice versa,” Philadelphia playwright AZ Espinoza said.
They reverted to their roots while writing “All My Mothers Dream in Spanish,” a new bilingual play inspired by Afro-Venezuelan folk history.
“I am always Black and I’m always Latinx. It’s not like one turns on and one turns off. And I think that … I hope that the play shows that those are identities that coexist, that complicate each other, that enrich each other in the same way that we all share multiple layers of who we are,” Espinoza said.
The show centers around three generations of women from the same family whose paths cross under a mango tree at center stage.
“Each of them is kind of confronting choices about how to heal from different types of trauma and making very, very different choices,” Espinoza said.
The plot takes an enchanting turn when the characters are visited by their ancestor, a magical queen named Guiomar who passes on her abilities to her descendants.
“We have to, in ways, really use the production aspects of the show: sound, lights, music, gestural elements and movement to actually communicate that to the audience,” José Avilés, director of the play, said.
Adding another layer of authenticity and intrigue, the play is bilingual, meaning the main characters speak on stage in both English and Spanish. But neither Espinoza nor Avilés expect the audience to have to translate in order to understand the show’s themes and lessons.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who’s going to walk away and say, ‘I 100% understood every single word that I heard, and I 100% understood everything that I saw.’ I think it’s a play that’s asking you to see what you see and hold that for yourself and walk away with what matters to you,” Espinoza said.
“We need to really communicate with each other, really find ways of healing, personally, with family, with other people in our communities, to sort of build our communities up,” Avilés. “And I think there’s a sense of huge hope at the end of this play that says, ‘this is possible and this is the time, right?'”
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