May 27– June 29, 2008
Interview with playwright Melinda Lopez
Last season, The Laguna Playhouse presented the West Coast Premiere of Sonia Flew by Melinda Lopez, a critically acclaimed drama that explored the issue of Pedro Pan and the immigration of Cubans to America. After that successful production, The Laguna Playhouse commissioned Lopez to write a play. She came up with Alexandros, a warm human comedy with a Latin heart. Lopez recently talked to Callboard editor Christopher Trela about the process of creating Alexandros.
Q: After The Laguna Playhouse presented Sonia Flew, the play had subsequent productions at notable theaters around the country, including Steppenwolf, Miami, Portland, and others. Did you have any idea that Sonia Flew would prove to be so popular?
A: I never imagined that it would catch fire like it did, but I also never envisioned that the original production could be so moving. I think I finally understood when I saw the play on stage how powerful it was, and I got the sense that something great would happen with it.
Q: Once you received the commission from The Laguna Playhouse for a new play, were you given any guidelines as to what you should write?
A: There were no guidelines or restrictions. The Playhouse artistic staff suggested they were interested in something lighter, but there were no restrictions, which is great yet terrifying.
Q: How did the idea for Alexandros come about?
A: Like a lot of my work, it is real life made theatrical. I lived through an experience similar to what is portrayed in the play. I originally wrote a short 20 minute performance piece, a monologue, that I performed at a few festivals. It was basically a narrative of the main plot line of Alexandros, but I thought it would make a really delicious play. When you start working on a theatrical piece, the play starts making its own demands, so it’s a blend of fiction and reality.
Q: You have a lot of activities in your life in addition to playwriting. How do you manage to fit them all n?
A: It is a constant struggle to carve out writing time. No one has time if you are married and you have a family, there’s no time to do anything, ever, so you have to carve out your time and protect it. When I write a play, I manage to carve out a couple of months. When I am not performing or my teaching load is very diminished, I can work on a focused period of time. The ideas are often around for years, and sometimes I get a lot of ideas when I am dreaming. Sometimes I dream a solution to a play, or I dream a scene of a play.
Q: You’ve created some fascinating and dynamic characters for this play. They are mainly Cuban characters, and they all speak Spanish to varying degrees. Do you thing this might be challenging for non-Spanish speakers, or does the action transcend the language?
A: I am very excited to see how it will all play on stage. It was a wonderful challenge to write a character who does not speak English, but you need to make sure that the Spanish is understood by the audience. I think it’s like music, a collision of languages, which was something I grew up hearing. It is hard to read on the page, but I think it will play well.
Q: Alexandros is set in Miami, not specifically in Little Havana, and one of your characters lives in Texas with her family. Was there a specific reason for this?
A: I thought it was important to show that these people were from a very strong immigrant community, and that people from the same culture in many cases did not have to adapt, which is a difficult and touchy thing for Americans to understand. Major cities have enclaves of immigrant communities. I have one character who goes out into the world and becomes as American as she can, and another one who has not done that at all, so you have the tension of adapters and the question of what is the cost of maintaining your identity and clinging to the identity you have created.
Q: Your characters are Cuban and the play takes place in 1974, but the setting and situations somehow seem very familiar and easily understood no matter your nationality.
A: The family dynamics of the play are universal. We know that family. We have all experienced those feelings in some way. And it is so much fun to have people arguing about Nixon and impeachment trials, especially for those who can’t always remember that time period. I feel like history is always present, and because this is a comedy I have fun at the expense of history. That time period was a fun time.
Q: Did this play go through many revisions after you drafted the initial version?
A: I have made big changes since the first draft, which was actually funnier and more fantastical, but lacked the emotional truth that I wanted. I pulled back some of the more comical elements, and that made some of the subplots more focused on the emotional truth of the characters’ wants and needs. I expect to do more changes once rehearsals start. I like to work very closely with actors and really listen to them. I take a lot of feedback from them because they have a lot of good information for me since they are the ones in the roles.
Q: Do you feel that your experience as an actress has made you a better playwright?
A: I can’t compare it to not being an actor and a writer, it is the only way I know how to write—through an actor’s imagination. There are a lot of writers I love that are not performers. The one thing I do when I am writing is to protect the actor and make sure they have fun things to do. I know what amuses actors, and what actors like. I hope I provide them with a script they will be excited about, and that the audience will be excited about. I try to write for big performances. It’s not a Merchant-Ivory kind of play, its much bigger. My characters are larger than life. They are real, and big.
Q: One of your characters, a young girl, has aspirations to be a classical pianist. Are you a classical music fan?
A: I studied piano for many years, yet cannot play at all. I love music and consider myself very musical. While I cannot make music, I have the greatest admiration for people who can. It is wonderful in the theater to hear live music, it’s a great metaphor for assimilation. I felt like the young women who is studying piano has to make a choice about who she is going to be, what sort of American she is going to become, and that spoke to me in musical terms.
Q: How would you compare this play to Sonia Flew?
A: Sonia Flew was a drama with a capital D, and dealt with pretty heavy issues. Alexandros is as light and fluffy a comedy as you are going to find, much more like Neil Simon than Garcia Lorca. It is funny and silly and delightful. It may make you cry but definitely makes you laugh.
