Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Excavating their pasts in search of their authentic voices: Quiara Alegría Hudes’ MY BROKEN LANGUAGE and Madeline Sayet’s WHERE WE BELONG

• By drediman
• November 14, 2022
• No Comments

This past weekend, I attended a pair of autobiographical works by two female playwrights who use the form of the theatrical memoir to cathartically excavate their respective pasts in search of their authentic voices. As always, here are my thoughts.

MY BROKEN LANGUAGE
Signature Theatre Company
Through November 27

Over at the Pershing Square Signature Center, you’ll find Signature Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway production of My Broken Language,(RECOMMENDED) the stage adaptation of Quiara Alegría Hudes’ written memoir of the same name. Perhaps most recognized as the book writer of the Tony-winning musical In the Heights, Hudes here turns her attention to her formidable years as an impressionable youth and the experiences that have shaped her as a woman and artist, particularly as it relates to the generations of under-sung Latina women in her family. The theatrical memoir takes obvious cues from Ntozake Shange’s seminal for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf in its use of music and movement to contribute texture, in addition to Hudes’ richly evocative, keenly observant language. As such, the work registers more like a series of free-flowing arias than traditional playwriting. The performances by the ensemble cast – each of whom play Hudes at some point in the show – are spectacular, bringing different shades to Hudes’s personality and fierce intellect (particularly wonderful is the lived-in work of Daphne Rubin-Vega and Yani Marin).

WHERE WE BELONG
The Public Theater
Through November 27

Less successful in theatrically manifesting its playwright’s cathartic journey to claim her identity is Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED) at the Public Theater. Produced in association with Washington, DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Folger Shakespeare Library, the autobiographical solo work – performed by the playwright – focuses specifically on Sayet’s experience abroad in England as a PhD student in Shakespeare. As she struggles with her increasing realization of the prominence of colonialism underlying both American and British theater and society at large, Sayet turns to her Native American roots to come to terms with her responsibility as an Indigenous theater maker. Even with a running time of less than 90 minutes, the work unfortunately lacks sufficient variety in its storytelling, unlike the compelling invention of the presentation of Hudes’ My Broken Language. Despite the best of intentions, Sayet’s performance strikes a single declarative note which she very rarely veers from. Nevertheless, the production has been artfully conjured by director Mei Ann Teo, who brings an elegiac visual element to Sayet’s theatrical memoir.