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Plays by or about Chicano/a, Hispanic, or Latinx
María Irene Fornés (May 14, 1930 – October 30, 2018) was a Cuban-American playwright, theater director, and teacher who worked in off-Broadway and experimental theater venues in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Her plays range widely in subject-matter, but often depict characters with aspirations that belie their disadvantages. Fornés, who went by the name "Irene", received nine Obie Theatre Awards in various categories and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for 1990. Read more on Wikipedia.
Josefina López (born 1969, San Luis Potosí, Mexico) is a Chicana playwright, perhaps best known as the author of the play (and co-author of the screenplay) Real Women Have Curves. López is also the Founding Artistic Director of the CASA 0101 theater located in Boyle Heights, California, which began in 2000. She is also the Founder and Artistic Director of CASA 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, California. CASA 0101 was founded by López in 2000 to fulfill her vision of bringing art and live theater programs to Boyle Heights, the community in which she grew up. Read more on Wikipedia.
Cherríe Moraga (born September 25, 1952) is a Chicana feminist, writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Chicana Indígena which is an organization of Chicanas fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights. Read more on Wikipedia.
Luis Santeiro is a Cuban-American television screenwriter and playwright born in Havana, Cuba, in 1947. Among his most notable plays are Our Lady of the Tortilla (1987), The Lady from Havana (1990), and The Rooster and the Egg (1994). For his musical Barrio Babies, Santeiro received the Edward Kleban and Richard Rodgers Award, and in 1995 was honored with the National Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences Award for his play A Royal Affair. Santeiro has also been recognized for his contributions to Latino arts and culture with honors such as the Hispanic Achievement Award (1991) and the Hispanic Heritage Award (1993). Read more on Wikipedia.
- New Play ExchangeFind more scripts online through the NPX database.
- Anna in the Tropics byPublication Date: 2003the tale of a Cuban-American cigar factory in 1929 Florida where cigars are still rolled by hand and “lectors” are employed to transport and inspire the workers as they toil on the factory floor.
- Dolphins and Sharks byPublication Date: 2017Three employees of Harlem Office, New York, a neighborhood copy shop where promotions are rare, raises are even rarer, and racism is often on display. Dolphins and Sharks is set in a mundane copy shop, but paints a brutal picture of life as an employee. The boss, Mr Timmons, is never on stage, but his orders must be obeyed by his staff. When one staff member is given the chance to move up to manager, friendships are tested and loyalty turns out to be less valuable than cold hard cash.
- Marisol and Other Plays byPublication Date: 1997Marisol -- Each Day Dies with Sleep -- Cloud Tectonics.
- The Panza Monologues byPublication Date: 2013The Panza Monologues is an original solo performance piece based on women's stories about their panzas. Tú sabes - that roll of belly we all try to hide.
- Plays One byPublication Date: 2019A collection of three plays: The book club play -- Destiny of desire -- Native gardens.
Barrio Hollywood by Call Number: PS3568.O563 B37 2008ISBN: 9780573662591Publication Date: 2008Drama / 2m, 2f / Unit set In Barrio Hollywood, a tense family drama, a young Mexican-American boxer dreams of fighting his way out of his family's economic plight in his barrio neighborhood. His sister, a passionate ballet folkl rico dancer and dedicated cultural artist, dreams of owning her own dance studio to pass her Mexican traditions on to another generation. Their flamboyant mother dreams of taking her poker winnings and going on an extended vacation to the Canary Islands.- Dog Lady and the Cuban Swimmer byCall Number: PS3569.A4693 D64 1988ISBN: 9780822203209Publication Date: 1988Ín DOG LADY, the setting is a barrio street in Los Angeles, where a young Hispanic woman is in training for a marathon sponsored by a local church. Egged on by a dogged suitor, she is unable to achieve her best until the local curandera, or faith healer, a loony old woman who lives amid a horde of dogs, endows her with magic powers. THE CUBAN SWIMMER deals with another instance in which Hispanic-Americans use athletic skills to propel themselves into the mainstream of middle-class life. Here the action involves a young woman endurance swimmer who races from San Pedro to Catalina Island while her family follows her in a leaky boat.
Dry Swallow by Call Number: PS3602.A576 D79 2021ISBN: 9781350291706Publication Date: 2021-11-04Sitting within the confines of a shipping container, people are rendered commodity and turf is marked for value. Chula and Pal create competition on a Boyle Heights street corner. Nasir and Porter offer medicinal intake as artistic practice. Sik and Dori turn to drastic measures in order to save their family. Dry Swallow explores surrogacy, consumption, and substance abuse, while provoking the question: who's allowed a healthy life?
Earthquake Chica by Call Number: PS3607.A7255 E2 2007ISBN: 9780881453614Publication Date: 2007In present day Los Angeles, Esmeralda, feisty with a capital "F" and frustrated, desperately wants out of her secretarial job. The escape act begins when Sam, a shy, literary accountant, asks her out. Amidst the poetry of Latin American and Spanish romantics and, well, mathematical equations, a comedic "marriage of the minds" ensues catapulting them out of their work-a-day lives and into an unforgettable lesson in how to love.
Evening Star by Call Number: PS3569.A4693 E94 1989ISBN: 9780822203650Publication Date: 1989Working on a project for his high-school science class, Junior Rodrigues scans the night sky with his telescope, searching for comets and shooting stars while his shy teenage neighbor, Olivia Pena, stands dutifully by, hoping that he will take notice of her.
The Hungry Woman by Call Number: PS3568.O753 H86 2001ISBN: 9780970534408Publication Date: 2001In The Hungry Woman, an apocalyptic play written at the end of the millennium, Moraga uses mythology and an intimate realism to describe the embattled position of Chicanos and Chicanas, not only in the United States but in relation to each other. Drawing from the Greek Medea and the myth of La Llorona, she portrays a woman gone mad between her longing for another woman and for the Indian nation which is denied her. In Heart of the Earth, a feminist revisioning of the Quichí Maya Popul Vuh story, Moraga creates an allegory for contemporary Chicanismo in which the enemy is white, patriarchal, and greedy for hearts, both female and fecund.
The South Texas Plays by Call Number: PS3557.A657 A46 2009ISBN: 9780578019130Publication Date: 2009Four plays by US Chicana dramatist Amparo Garcia-Crow that chart the violent, beautiful, hard-bitten lives of characters in South Texas. Cross-cultural collisions abound in the spirited geographies of her incandenscent prose for the stage. With preface by acclaimed dramatist Octavio Solis and introduction by scholar Jose Limon of the University of Texas-Austin, this quartet of plays is a vital addition to published works of Chicana literature.
Unmerciful Good Fortune by Call Number: PS3569.A4675 U56 1996ISBN: 9780881456455Publication Date: 1996The play centers on two Latinas: Fatima, a clairvoyant, uneducated hourly wage earner-turned-murderer, and on a successful, highly educated assistant district attorney, a single parent caring for her dying mother.
