This presidential election year immersed us in coconut tree brat summer (thanks, Kamala), and there’s no telling what comes next. But whither the much-contested Latine vote? Two recent comedies investigate, with performances in hot-topic, high-tension states. Neither mentions a specific political party, empowering audiences to look afresh at their own beliefs and at the divides within Latine communities.
“Around election time, I’m asked, ‘What about that Cuban vote?’” said Carmen Pelaez, who regularly runs communications for Democratic Party campaigns and whose play The Cuban Vote was commissioned by Miami New Drama’s Michel Hausmann and staged there around the 2022 midterm elections. “Everybody makes all the wrong assumptions about it and accepts that our vote is a monolith when it’s not.” With her play, she said, “I wanted to show that diversity.”
In Miami, director Loretta Greco noted how audiences laughed at themselves and found humility. “I’m not saying that when the house lights came up everybody did another thing politically,” she said. “But for a couple of hours it was community. It was Miami, together.”
The play reemerged with a recent reading at D.C.’s Folger Theatre, directed by Kelsey R. Mesa, and the script still sang, even with fewer Latine folks in the audience. The audible laughter and understanding sighs underscored that polarization is not just limited to a single demographic. Pelaez said, “That divide has cyclically affected us all at one point or another.”
Bernardo Cubría’s new play The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine Vote, now in the midst of a National New Play Network rolling world premiere, explores that point within the larger community of Latin Americans living in the U.S. It’s a play that “tries to open up space for dialogue,” Cubría said, in contrast to the sketch comedy he used to do with a troupe called Bad Hombres. “All I did was make fun of people I disagreed with—and nothing changed. I just further siloed myself. I want people to know this play is for everybody.”
Cubría’s play emerged from a series of interviews with residents of Sarasota, Fla., some of whose voices have made it into the play. While phone banking, one character starts asking “more personal questions, like, ‘Is there someone in your family you haven’t spoken to in a while?’ It’s my favorite moment,” said Cubría, “and I didn’t write it—it comes from an actual experience.”
The play is now running in Cubría’s hometown, with a production at Stages Sept. 19-Oct. 6. Said the writer, “This is for my friends in Houston with whom I disagree.”
For his part, director César Jáquez feared that audiences with preconceptions about political theatre might stay away. “This is such a stressful time in American society,” he said. “I want people to open up, enjoy themselves, and feel we’re not just numbers. We’re human beings. And there are different ways of making theatre about politics.”
Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/her) is American Theatre’s digital editor.
