Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles

Medea and her husband Hason have fled Mexico with their son Acan to forge a new life for themselves in Los Angeles. Medea feels uncomfortable and unwanted in her new home while Hason longs to assimilate into U.S. culture as quickly as possible. Their son becomes the battleground on which they play out their disparate ideas of how to live in their adopted land. 

In this retelling of Medea, OSF’s resident playwright Luis Alfaro blends tragedy, wry humor, Mexican folklore and a bracingly modern setting to unleash the power of Euripides’ ancient tale, seen through the lens of immigrants in the United States. True to the tradition of classical Greek theatre, the violence inherent in the Medea legend occurs offstage. Onstage, however, the harrowing lead up and end results of rape and murder will be seen and heard. There is also a scene of sensuality between a husband and wife, and some profanity spoken in Spanish.

The Angus Bowmer Theatre is outfitted with an elevator that takes patrons to either Row E or Row K.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is committed to accessibility. We recognize the needs of persons with disabilities and strive to make our facilities and productions accessible to all. OSF offers a variety of accommodations, outlined here.

Para Jason, las cosas por fin empiezan a mejorarse. El horroroso viaje que sufrieron él y su esposa, Medea, desde el sur de México hasta Los Ángeles, ya quedó en el pasado, y ha encontrado trabajo estable y un futuro brillante – cuando menos es lo que le promete su jefa. Pero Medea, aún traumatizada por la experiencia, teme que no se les haya pasado la pesadilla. En este recuento de Medea, Luis Alfaro, autor residente de OSF, armoniza la tragedia, el humor irónico, el folklore mexicano y un escenario vigorosamente moderno para soltar a la fuerza del viejo cuento de Eurípides, visto por la lente de inmigrantes a los Estados Unidos. 

Idoneidad Fiel a la tradición del clásico teatro griego, la violencia intrínseca de la leyenda de Medea ocurre fuera del escenario. En cambio, el desarrollo y el resultado horrendos de la violación y el asesinato se presentarán en escenario, vistos y oídos. Además hay una escena de sensualidad entre esposos, y hay algo de profanidad en español.

You can prepare for directing a play by researching, imagining and planning, but nothing can prepare you for the discoveries you will undoubtedly encounter once you enter a rehearsal room. Every day you see the play anew; an actor’s comment, an image a designer creates, or a writer changing a sentence can all contribute to an awakening of thoughts and ideas. 

Early in our rehearsal period, our youngest cast member—the actor playing Acan, “JJ” (Jahnangel) Jimenez, an 11-year-old whose Mexican immigrant parents spoke only Spanish to him as a young child—shared what it was like to enter kindergarten as a monolingual Spanish-speaker. He was surprisingly open and very articulate when he spoke about it, which made it all the more painful. He told us of the bullying he received: “Go back to where you came from!” the kids would yell. I imagined “JJ” as a California-born, innocent five-year-old hearing this, and it was a soul-crushing image. An incredibly astute and observant little boy, he continued by saying that with our new administration, he fears it’s only getting worse.

Yes, this is a play about the painful experience of an immigrant, but to hear about the experience from the perspective of a child in the room made it all the more real.

In Mojada, an ambitious Jason says to Medea, “Everyone pays in this country.” If you want to live in America, you’ve got to give up part of yourself. “It all comes with a price,” he says.

How is it that, as Americans, we can so easily undervalue our layered history? How is it that the intense pressure to conform overshadows the opportunity to welcome our rich cultural differences? Treasured values, legacies and traditions are bulldozed all in the name of progress, without the blink of an eye. What are we afraid of?

The painful and complicated event at the end of the play is much more than simply an act of rage; It is a desperate act of declaration. Medea is saying, “I am here! As an indigenous person, as a woman, as a mother and as an immigrant! We belong here, all of us, with our cultural identity and our history! We are American!”

She is a warrior declaring war.

—Juliette Carrillo