Alyssah Hall
Full Circle Players, the nonprofit theatre company in Riverside, presented “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” by Chicano playwright Luis Alfaro. Four performances of the play took place during Hispanic Heritage Month, from Sept. 26 to Oct. 4. Since 1988 Hispanic Heritage Month has been celebrated annually from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. The timeframe is meaningful because multiple Central American countries celebrate their independence days within these dates, according to the Smithsonian’ s National Museum of the American Latino.
Mojada is an impactful retelling of the mythical Medea tragedy by ancient Greek playwright Euripides. Alfaro centers Mojada on migration, survival and sacrifice in modern-day Los Angeles. Although the play was written by Alfaro about 10 years ago, themes of the dark truths behind America’s immigration system and the struggles faced by Latino immigrants are still relevant today, even more so under the Trump administration’s anti immigration policy and targeting immigrants of color.
In Mojada, husband and wife Jason and Medea courageously take on a devastating trek to California from the Mexican state of Michoacán with their young son, Acán, and Medea’s mother figure, Tita. The journey is harsh and physically, emotionally, and mentally abusive to the family, but specifically to Medea, who was taken advantage of by soldiers. Medea was never the same after the family’s traumatic journey to California, one of loss and grief on the road to a “better life.”
Tita attempts to get Medea out of her agoraphobia — the extreme fear of entering open or crowded places — by introducing her to Josefina, a local street vendor around Medea’s age, for companionship and inspiration. The story, however, begins to spiral when Medea’s husband, Jason, gets too involved with his boss, Armida. Jason’s dreams of his son’s and his own American assimilation and reach for power end in destruction by a blindsided and vengeful Medea.
“Performing Mojada during Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month felt like the universe aligning our collective purpose. This play reaches beyond Latinidad and reconnects us to our pre-colonial histories, to the ancestors whose stories have been suppressed and survived the atrocities brought to us by our colonizers. Bringing this piece to life during this month felt like fulfilling a life mission,” said Mojada director Steve Llamas.
Llamas felt that the story of Mojada is necessary when discussing anticolonial thought and what disrupts the social complacency that humans are often conditioned to participate in. Llamas said that Mojada reveals the harm of machismo, assimilation, and the patterns inherited by colonized people.
“It was important for me to be in this production to call out the harm men have done in my own lineage, especially to my mother and the women around me. I needed to hold a mirror to our community, to expose the wound, but also hint at healing. My hope is that audiences carry that reflection with them and begin to transmute their own harmful behaviors,” Llamas stated.
“The play shows exactly how laws are weaponized, manipulated, or outright ignored when it benefits the higher class. It also exposes that violence doesn’t just come from white supremacy but also from within our own communities. We see Latinos for Trump supporting their own oppression, Latino ICE agents kidnapping our people, and internalized colonization in action. The play forces us to confront both the external and internal perpetrators, and how we engage in these biases as well?” Llamas said.
The misunderstood Medea was played by Lourdes Castillo, a second-year MFA actress at UC Irvine, who made her debut with Full Circle Players in Mojada. Castillo said that it felt “right” performing Mojada during Hispanic Heritage Month in order to uplift her community. Castillo has been an admirer of
Alfaro’s work for her entire career, making the opportunity to bring Mojada to life “unpassable” for her.
“This play is extremely relevant and heart-wrenching, making performing it feel like a duty and a privilege at the same time. Stories like Mojada must be told right now. One of my favorite parts of this production has been witnessing the work our crew continues to put into uplifting our community beyond the telling of this story,” Castillo expressed.
“Our amazing costume designer, Janette, works in partnership with Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which supported and tabled at our Thursday night show. I hope to continue shedding light on the vast diversity among Latino immigrant stories and how all of our differences continue to inform our community’s ability to support one another,” Castillo continued.
Castillo hopes audiences who watched Mojada understand that Latinos are resilient, strong, and capable of surviving unimaginable circumstances. Castillo shared that by highlighting inter-community differences in the Latino community, they can understand how to counter assimilation and capitalism together.
“All of the characters in Mojada have different stories of immigrating here and assimilating to the U.S. Their misunderstanding and competition with one another ultimately led to their downfall since they couldn’t have uplifted their indigenous roots,” Castillo said.
The humorous and wise Tita is played by Esther Banegas Gatica, a multihyphenate in the arts, as well as a project manager for Black Voice News. As an aspiring playwright, Gatica discovered Alfaro when she was in grad school at UCR in her theatre history class. She marveled at his Greek adaptation brought to Los Angeles, “a city full of Latino immigrants.” Gatica studied his use of language and ability to carve a space for Latino stories in predominantly white institutions/theatres. Gatica wanted to be involved in Mojada because she wanted to act in a story that speaks to what is affecting her and her “Latino neighbors.”
“Medea is undocumented and fearful of leaving her home. That is the reality that a lot of immigrants are living through as we speak, afraid of being separated permanently from their families. This play shows the lengths and paths many immigrants have to take to find a way in this country,” Gatica said.
“I had the privilege of performing the migration monologue, which painfully depicts the arduous journey many immigrant families have made on foot through the hazardous desert. It is impossible not to think of the millions of undocumented families afraid of their sacrifices meaning nothing and their American dream vanished,” Gatica continued.
One of Gatica’s favorite parts of being in the Mojada production was her responsibility of delivering a five-page, 15-minute migration monologue for four nights. For Gatica, it was difficult to put herself in Tita’s position mentally, but she found it rewarding to help the audience understand the heavy story of suffering that many immigrants face while crossing the border. Gatica, like her co-star Castillo, shared the sentiment of appreciating the opportunity to work in a room full of Latine creatives.
“It was refreshing not to feel like I had to translate myself in the space I was in. This play taught me I can still be an actor. I had not acted in over six years, and I feel proud of the work I did,” Gatica shared.
Wendi Johnson, artistic director and co-founder of Full Circle Players, clarified that Mojada wasn’t chosen explicitly for Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month. Rather, it was chosen because it is a story that impacts the community as a whole and should be told often. Johnson hopes that the audiences in attendance saw themselves in one of the characters and left in dialogue and introspection about what is going on in America.
“We are a company focused on telling very old stories and very new ones. Mojada, being an adaptation of a Greek tragedy, fit our vision for performance…I was introduced to Mojada in grad school in directing Latinx plays. The story connected to me deeply as [it] connects to my own story. It is a timeless story of humanity and inhumanity,” Johnson said.
“Radical change requires radical bravery. Performing this work during a time of rising fascist censorship was terrifying. The threat of ICE raiding a Latine show is very real. But witnessing the bravery of these artists, the support of our artistic director, and the audience who still showed up anyway, proved how necessary these stories are,” Llamas said.