\n<\/p>\n
Joy Huerta wasn\u2019t so sure about musical theater.<\/p>\n
When the director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo approached Huerta in 2019 about adapting Josefina L\u00f3pez\u2019s play \u201cReal Women Have Curves<\/a>\u201d into a musical, she had her doubts.<\/p>\n Huerta, best known as half of the brother-and-sister pop duo Jesse & Joy<\/a>, was unfamiliar with the 1990 play, and she had never seen the popular 2002 film adaptation starring America Ferrera<\/a>. But then she began reading the script. And it was then, she said, that she understood why the story could be so compelling set to song.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember being so excited about it, because I was like, \u2018Anyone can relate to this,\u2019\u201d said Huerta, 38, who composed the music and wrote the lyrics with Benjamin Velez, 37, for the show, which is now a Broadway musical scheduled to open on Sunday.<\/p>\n Set in 1987 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, \u201cReal Women Have Curves\u201d explores immigrant experiences through the story of a group of Latina women working at a garment factory. The focus is on an 18-year-old who is torn between staying home to help her undocumented family members and relocating to New York to attend Columbia University on a scholarship. The production had an earlier run<\/a> in 2023 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Shortly after performances began on Broadway this month, Huerta, Velez and Lisa Loomer, who wrote the book with Nell Benjamin, discussed their inspirations and approach to adapting the story for the stage. In a separate conversation, Tatianna C\u00f3rdoba, 25, who stars as the musical\u2019s young heroine, Ana Garc\u00eda, spoke about making her Broadway debut in a role she identifies with so closely. Here are five things to know about the production.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n More than a decade before \u201cReal Women Have Curves\u201d made waves in 2002 as a film, it began life as the diary entries of L\u00f3pez, an undocumented Chicana teenager who recorded her experiences working in a sewing factory in Los Angeles\u2019s Boyle Heights neighborhood.<\/p>\n When she was just 18, she expanded on those entries and turned them into a play. \u201cReal Women Have Curves\u201d had an initial production in San Francisco in 1990, and has been staged many times since. L\u00f3pez (and George LaVoo) wrote the screenplay for the movie, which starred a young America Ferrera in her feature film debut.<\/p>\n Loomer, who also lived near Boyle Heights in the 1980s, pulled from the original works and added some new characters. \u201cThe movie is quite different from the play, and the musical is quite different from both of them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they have the same DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since body positivity is a relatively new concept, Loomer had to find a way to write about the story\u2019s celebrated appreciation of full-figured bodies for a contemporary audience. One of the musical\u2019s characters, Ana\u2019s blunt, family-first mother, Carmen, is constantly criticizing her daughter for her weight in the film.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of Carmen, I felt she would be better understood if we left it in 1987,\u201d Loomer said.<\/p>\n For the musical, she softened the edges of the character, who is played by Justina Machado on Broadway. (Lupe Ontiveros played her in the film.) In short: Less fat-shaming, more back story to help the audience understand the generational and cultural roots of Carmen\u2019s harsh approach. (Though some jabs remain, such as telling Ana she could stand to skip a meal.)<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to hate her for what she just said, but at the same time, she\u2019s not saying it in a way that she\u2019s meaning to put Ana down,\u201d Huerta said. \u201cShe\u2019s thinking as she speaks, because that\u2019s where she comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was a delicate balancing act, Loomer said: They wanted audience members who do not speak Spanish to be able to follow the story, but they also wanted to add as much authenticity as possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t speak in English to each other at home, and certainly not in the factory,\u201d she said. \u201cSo you have to give the feel of Spanish \u2014 the rhythms \u2014 and yet the Anglo audience has to understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sixteen of the show\u2019s 19 cast members are of Latino or Hispanic descent. Most are making their Broadway debuts. \u201cI just love to see how, when that curtain comes up every night, we see people that we feel like, \u2018Oh my God. That could be me onstage.\u2019 And ultimately, that could be my aunt, or my cousin, or my t\u00eda,\u201d Huerta said of the cast.<\/p>\n During the show\u2019s Cambridge run, they tested how much Spanish to include in the songs. \u201cWe never wanted the amount of Spanish to take people out of the story,\u201d Velez said. \u201cSo it\u2019s been a kind of a dance as we figure out the right balance.\u201d<\/p>\n The musical is set in the summer of 1987, when a Reagan-era amnesty program<\/a> was in place for longtime undocumented immigrants. (The playwright became a legal citizen through this program.) In a change from the film and the play, Ana is the only U.S. citizen among her family and co-workers. The other employees at the factory are undocumented as are her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), who owns the factory, and their mother, Carmen, who also works there.<\/p>\n \u201cI made this change because it increases her family\u2019s need for Ana to stay,\u201d Loomer said. \u201cIt also increases the responsibility and guilt Ana feels when she wants to leave and pursue her own dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Loomer also expanded the cast of undocumented characters, adding Guatemalan and Salvadoran women, including the sweet and vulnerable 17-year-old Indigenous Guatemalan refugee Itzel (Aline Mayagoitia), who sings about rising above life\u2019s challenges in the song \u201cIf I Were a Bird.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty sometimes about doing a play that\u2019s set in the past, it shows you what hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d said Loomer, who has spent a majority of her four-decade career writing plays that deal with the experiences of Latinas and immigrant characters. \u201cAt times, it allows you to see the present even more painfully.\u201d<\/p>\n When Tatianna C\u00f3rdoba, who is making her Broadway debut as Ana, read the script for the musical, the family dynamics resonated with her.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the mother-daughter exchanges that Justina and I have in the show remind me of my abuelita so much,\u201d said C\u00f3rdoba, who grew up in Los Angeles and whose parents are of Costa Rican and Filipino descent. \u201cThere\u2019s that motherly judgment, but also love.\u201d<\/p>\n The discussions around body image also felt true to life, said C\u00f3rdoba, who studied ballet when she was younger before feeling pressure to quit. \u201cI realized very quickly, when puberty hit, that my body was changing in ways that a lot of my ballet friends\u2019 bodies were not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One thing she wishes she\u2019d had as a teenager: Her character\u2019s self-assurance.<\/p>\n \u201cAna is who I wish was at 18,\u201d she said. \u201cShe just has this belief in herself, this confidence in her body that I really wish I had at that age. She\u2019s far more concerned about everything else going on with her \u2014 her brain, her hopes and her desires.\u201d<\/p>\n She loves being part of a scene in Act II when the fuller-figured women in the boiling-hot factory strip down to their undergarments, reveling in their bodies. It\u2019s been receiving mid-show standing ovations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something infectious about just watching other people be joyful, about watching people being brave,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that\u2019s what makes people stand up and clap \u2014 they feel really empowered, and they feel loved in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIt all started with a diary.<\/h2>\n
The show celebrates body positivity.<\/h2>\n
Spanish is sprinkled throughout.<\/h2>\n
Illegal immigration is a theme.<\/h2>\n
The show is personal for the lead actress.<\/h2>\n