Prompt Book is a research of a play, made to gather important information before and during the rehearsal process.
This is a prompt book made by me when assisting directing Omar Cruz on the Play Mojada by Luis Alfaro (An Adaptation of Medea by Eurupides)
Playwrite Luis Alfaro
Alfaro was born in 1963 in California, son of Mexican-American farmworkers. He is a performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist that grew up in Pico Union, a very violent and poor district near Downtown Los Angeles. His parents were very religious (his mother was Pentecostal and his father Catholic) and even though they were loving, Alfaro had a hard time to be accepted in a very macho-oriented culture. In his early ages he had a passion for social justice and he advocated for farmerworkers and the LGBTQ community. Alfaro discovered his passion for arts when he was 15. After being arrested for shoplifting, he had to do community service at a theatre, where he found his way to poetry and the performing arts. Now he teaches in the School of Dramatic Arts at USC in Los Angeles, and he often holds classes at public sites in struggling parts of the city to help young artists. According to Darleen Ortega, “his own process of play development often arises from living with people at the margins—among drug addicts in Medford, young undocumented immigrants”
The list of plays he has written includes: The Gardens of Aztlan; Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner; Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl, Piñata Woman and Other Superhero Girls, Like Me; Lady Bird ;Bitter Homes and Gardens; Straight as a Line; Body of Faith; No Holds Barrio; Downtown; Electricidad; Oedipus El Rey; Bruja; St. Jude; Alleluia, The Road; This Golden State Part One: Delano; Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles. Some of Alvaro’s best work is based on ancient Greek plays, where he rewrites the story touching on delicate modern society problems.
Alfaro’s interest in classic plays came later in his life. While teaching a poetry workshop in Tucson, he met a girl who, later, murdered her mother to avenge the death of her father, who arranged her mother’s murder. Shortly after that, Alfaro read Sophocles’s Electra, an classic Greek play that has a similar story. That episode made Alfaro think that classic plays have a lot to say about modern society and he thought he could rediscover those important messages and present them in a different way. Alfaro says “Our questions about the world get answered in the Greek plays, because they talk about things we don’t want to look at.” According to Aristotle, the purpose of the Greek play is to install pity and terror in the audience, who will feel cathartic relief at having to go through darkness and come out the other side.
Alfaro began with Electricidad in 2004. He brings Euripides’ tale of revenge in the family of the the King Agamemnon as a contemporary Latino drug boss in the Southern California desert. In 2010 he rewrites Oedipus el Rey, in which Sophocles’ born-to-lose hero transforms into a Mexican American fated to a life of imprisonment. His latest work is Mojada, a reinterpretation of a 2,446 year old play by Euripides, where the life of a princess betrayed by her husband becomes a story of a Mexican immigrant family living in the United States.
The process of adaptation allows Alfaro to celebrate immigrant communities, as cultural and ethno-racial centers of US national identity. Alfaro’s plays represents millions of people that face the challenges of being an immigrant, but also speaks about the battles within themselves, their culture and their freedom. Alfaro has performed biographical pieces that explore his own journey with his identity as a Latin American gay man, and Latin American family life. Alfaro often questions in his plays how much trauma influences our actions and he creates space for his audience to think what would they do if they where in the character’s shoe. He says he wants to instigate in others the inicial conversation of understanding the immigrants’ communities. “The community gives you the language and the authenticity,” he explains.
Play Mojada
mojada(moh-hah-dah) – feminine noun
- (effect of wetting)
mojada (“wetback”), derogatory slang for Latinx immigrants who arrive in the United States “wet” from furtive border crossings through water
The play Mojada (2015) is a retelling of the original play Medea, an Greek tragedy written by Eurupides and first produced in 431 BC. The plot of the original centers on Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason. She is devastated when Jason leaves her for a Greek princess. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering Jason’s new wife and her own children (two sons), after escaping to Athens to start a new life. Euripides play has been explored and interpreted by playwrights across the centuries and the world in a variety of ways, according to wikipedia “offering political, psychoanalytical, feminist, among many other original readings of Medea, Jason and the core themes of the play.”
Luis Alfaro nicely reinterprets the immigrant crisis of the era and parallels it with the story of Medea, the witch who kills her children after her husband Jason dumps her and marries the king’s daughter. However, he makes significant changes in the characterizations. According to Carol Editosti he softens and humanizes Medea and Jason and removes the notions of vengeance and anger by changing it to despair, isolation, loneliness and desperation for the character of Medea.
In Mojada, Medea is a Mexican imigrant that crossed the border with her husband Jason, her son Acan, and her adoptive mother Tita, seeking a better life in the United States. The author showcases the unthinkable struggles families go through in the process to succeed in the American dream. Acording to Carol Editosti “Alfaro seeks to show the faces of the undocumented, the starkness and extraordinarily high stakes for the choices they must make, the brutalities against which they are utterly defenseless. We have little appetite for such stories, but framing the tale inside literature that has already been identified as classic, and which poses ultimate questions, makes it possible to go to the deep places we would otherwise avoid.”
The journey to cross the border leaves physical and psychological marks that are impossible to forget. The play has a flashback in time when Medea is victim of rape by one of the American officers, which is the reason of her fear to go out of the house. There is when the Dramatic Question is presented. Will Medea be able to succeed, live her life in the United States, and make herself at home in New York City? The goal of the Protagonist (Medea) is to overcome her traumas, live a good life besides the man she loves and to be happy with her family.
The twist of the plot happens when Jason tells Medea he got married to Pilar, his boss, so he is able to apply for a green card. Later, Acan is taken from her. Different from the original Medea, in Mojada Alfaro focuses on the bond between Jason and Medea, always as a loving one so the betrayal is a complete surprise. He shifts the conflict away from the aspect of revenge and justification for vengeance that the classic Euripides’ Medea emphasizes. Alfaro shows the honor in those who seek a different life in another country and culture, often not completely understanding that the life they seek is filled with corruption, devastation and dishonor. Alfaro’s Medea tries to hold on to the little health/innocence she has. When evil threatens her and her family, she defends herself in the only way she knows, so she kills her son.
Mojada was first produced at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in 2012 under the title Bruja. Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles was then produced at the Getty Villa in 2015. Mojada received a production at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2017 under the direction of Juliette Carrillo. The cast featured Sabina Zúñiga Varela, Lakin Valdez, VIVIS, Nancy Rodriguez, Vilma Silva, Jahnangel Jimenez, and Connor Chaney. Mojada played Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre in 2019 under the direction of Chay Yew with Sabina Zúñiga Varela again, but with the play itself set in Queens.
“If a more harrowing immigrant trek from Mexico across the border and through Middle America has ever been presented on stage, I haven’t seen it. From there, Alfaro closes in on Medea’s predicament, turning her isolation into the most insane kind of claustrophobia.” (Robert Hofler, 2019) The play has been a success and the performance in NY received tons of impressive reviews. Elysa Gardner thinks that “certainly Mojada is not a work to be dismissed, given its vital subject matter and the lyrical passion that both Alfaro and director Chay Yew have invested in this production.” Aaron Riccio states that “Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, the backyard of a rundown two-story house, suggests both shelter and a place of danger, as if this family’s American dream might collapse at any moment.”
The Broadway show starts with her performing an ancient Aztec incantation that allows her, and the audience, to hear the sounds of her home in Mexico. Haydee Zelideth’s costuming reflects her style of merging two cultures, which she grew up in, Mexico and the United States. She believes that clothes, in their own way, tell stories about who we are, who we are not, and who we want to be.
Although Medea may be the hardest Greek tragedy for modern audiences to connect, Alfaro has written an amazing play referencing the classical tragedy. In his work he references a lot of the Mexican/Latino culture, which reflects his style, and makes us appreciate what immigrants endure for a better life. Additionally, accordingly to MIike Boehm “we empathize because his work covers timeless themes about the powerless vulnerability of migrants like Medea.”Mojada: A Medea in Losangeles, after adapted to NY, was a third attempt to rewrite Medea. In “Bruja” (“Witch”), Alfaro focused on the black-magic aspects of the Medea story, making her a curandera (a healer). Latest attempt of Mojada focus in the immigrant strugles of being uncredited because of the fact that they are undocumented, while they have incredible work ethic and honesty. The issues raised in the play provoques discomfort to the white supremacists and social politics, which can be observed in many of Alfaro’s plays. “Alfaro gives us just enough beauty to make us hang on grimly as the play gets hotter and hotter in our hands.” (Donna Herman, 2019)
Work Cited
Allatson, Paul. “Luis Alfaro.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.366. February, 2021
Boehm, Mike. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-getty-villa-mojada-medea-los-angeles-20150906-story.html. September, 2015
Editosti, Carol. https://caroleditosti.com/2019/07/18/mojada-by-luis-alfaro-at-the-public-a-superb-update-of-medea-via-the-migrant-crisis/. July, 2021
Gardner, Elysa. http://nystagereview.com/2019/07/17/mojada-a-medea-in-the-barrio/. July 2019
Gluck, Victor. http://www.theaterscene.net/plays/offbway-plays/mojada/victor-gluck/. August, 2019
Herman, Donna. https://www.newyorktheatreguide.com/reviews/review-of-mojada-at-the-public-theater. July 2019
Hofler, Robert. ‘Mojada’ Theater Review: Euripides’ Medea Now Lives and Murders in Queens https://www.thewrap.com/mojada-theater-review-euripides-medea-now-lives-and-murders-in-queens/.
Ortega, Darleen. https://www.osfashland.org/en/prologue/prologue-spring-2017/prologue-spring-17-mojada-a-medea-in-los-angeles.aspx. Spring, 2017
Riccio, Aaron. https://www.slantmagazine.com/theater/review-in-mojada-immigration
-is-an-ill-fitting-costume-for-a-modern-day-medea/. July, 2019
Shaw, Helen. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/mojada. July, 2019
The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/art/2017/11/mojada_portland_center_stage.html. Novembro, 2017