“Titles are a really big thing for me,” said playwright Alvaro Saar Rios, who has given his newest play a really big one: Quetzali and the Comic Book Queen vs. the Alebrije of Darkness: Live in the School Cafeteria, bowing at Kentucky’s Lexington Children’s Theatre, Feb. 7-16, before touring in early May. “Even now, as an adult, if I saw a play that had such a long title, I would be like, ‘You know what? I’m curious what this thing is.’”
Quetzali goes big in another way: It’s part of the national TYA BIPOC Superhero Project, a Theatre for Young Audiences/USA effort designed to connect playwrights of color with TYA theatres. The effort, announced in 2022, matched 20 playwrights of color with 24 U.S. theatres to commission plays featuring superheroes of color.
Rios’s story follows Lali Marquez, a teen who notices a mysterious Quetzal feather sprouting from her arm and goes on to uncover secrets and fight evildoers. Rios said he was inspired by his son’s interest in Greek mythology, particularly as popularized for young readers, and wanted to do the same for Aztec mythology. He’s not citing specific myths, he noted, but is drawing on cultural influences, including the green and red Quetzal feathers Aztec rulers wore as adornments. Lali’s Quetzal feather is a bit like Thor’s hammer or Batman’s utility belt, Rios explained: the special object that helps her achieve superhuman feats.
Rios has also incorporated alebrijes, brightly colored Mexican folk art depictions of fantastical creatures, originally created in 1936 by artist Pedro Linares and seen in Pixar’s Coco. While that film linked alebrijes and the Day of the Dead, they are also ripe for other magical associations.
Said Rios, “I was like, why don’t we create this character called the ‘Alebrije of Darkness’? Even just hearing that, I was like: This character just seems kind of evil.”
Jerald Raymond Pierce is the managing editor for American Theatre.
