The first-ever collaboration between Azuka Theatre — legendarily dedicated to giving a voice to those whose stories go unheard — and Teatro del Sol —the city’s premiere bilingual theatre company for Latinx storytelling — offers a gentle, multi-generational tale with ‘All My Mothers Dream in Spanish.’
Translated to ‘Todas Mis Madres Sueñan en Español’, the bilingual production comes from young playwright AZ Espinoza, is directed by Teatro del Sol co-founder José Avilés and has its world premiere at The Drake’s Proscenium Theatre starting March 1.
Touching on aspects of magic realism and radical liberation, Espinoza’s Afro-Venezuelan story speaks of the path of three generations of women whose fates collide under a mango tree, and how their queen mother watches over the gifts that she has passed on to her descendants. Using physical choreographed movement and dense percussion in pursuit of their “dream play” ideal, Espinoza — raised with a Latinx and Caribbean background — utilized its historical threads to localize their storytelling around a family, “one in very ways similar to mine,” they said. “And magical realism is very much a part of that storytelling.”
Cianna Castro, an Azuka actor whose family hails from the Honduras, tells Metro that all of the women in Espinoza’s ‘All My Mothers Dream in Spanish’ live within her, and resonate deeply.
“I find myself reflected in all of the women in this play,” she said. “My character, Camilla, is a fighter, all about justice. She is a revolutionary. She is a Spanish Black panther. Her mother and her grandmother try to guide Camilla in their own way… That is all very personal to me, and something that is rarely spoken of. We talk about the Black identity in America, but what of the Black identity across the globe? That identity is very vast.”
The authenticity of speaking in Spanish (starting with the play’s grandmotherly queen) and its bilingual rendition becomes this play’s realistic center.
“I’m working through a lot of third culture, diasporic identity,” said Espinoza. “I crave more narratives where I could find myself in them…. I have also tried to make this narrative hold other narratives that I feel are important when it comes to Black Latinidad that has a lot to do with Colorism and internalized racism, some of which comes from stories I heard within my family. Some of that comes from healing conversations that I’ve had with other people who share my background.”
From here, Avilés tells a story of aiding Espinoza in the fleshing out of the original story, “from three pages long at its start, but three beautiful pages,” he said. “With time, we were able to workshop and develop it, all very exciting.”
Making Espinoza’s voice into that of his and Teatro del Sol’s is a natural, “one embedded in our community,” noted the director-producer.
With that, Avilés notes that ‘All My Mothers Dream in Spanish’ asks what is it in their culture and their families that “we must confront and feel… that we need to face. And that makes Espinoza’s story universal.”
For more information and tickets, visit azukatheatre.org/all-my-mothers-dream-in-spanish
