Marisela Treviño Orta got the idea for The River Bride in 2010 while doing laundry. She was watching a TV nature show called River Monsters, in which a man was throwing fish into the Amazon. The fish were disappearing, being pulled down by something below the surface. When the camera went underwater, she could see dolphins snatching up the fish. By chance, she looked up at the screen and saw the following trivia scroll by: “In the Amazon, there’s folklore about Amazon dolphins turning into men. I thought, ‘Oh, let’s look that up right now.’ ”
At the time, Orta was working on a cycle of fairy tales inspired by legends, folklore and mythology and needed more ideas. “I’m a poet,” she says. “I like things in threes. I’ll do a cycle of fairy tales— not necessarily a trilogy but I do want some sort of connecting theme, so there’s shape-shifting in all of them. I was working on the first one, Wolf at the Door. It’s got a shape-shifter and is set in Mexico.”
It took one year to start working on the play. But after that, it slid out quickly, almost writing itself: Three months for the first draft. The River Bride was the co-winner of the 2013 National Latino Playwriting Award and had its first-look production at the Alter Theater in San Rafael, California, in 2014.
Beware of strange men in June
In the play, a mysterious man who calls himself Moises gets pulled out of the river next to an Amazon village. A young woman in the village, Helena, is intrigued with him. The attraction between them grows, but Moises wants to marry her right away—within three days. Cautious by nature, Helena asks for more time. But Belmira, Helena’s younger, more impetuous sister, who is already engaged to be married, sees in the handsome stranger a way out of their stultifying village. But the stranger is not what he seems.
Even though Orta calls The River Bride a fairy tale, she didn’t write it for children. She likens it to the old Grimms’ fairy tales: “They were scary cautionary tales to try and help instruct people about living their lives so they could avoid things like death and dismemberment. So I think of The River Bride as a cautionary tale about love and regret especially, and hopefully not having regret when it comes to love.”
When Orta began the play, she imagined it being about the youngest daughter in the family. Belmira is the belle of the village who gets everything she wants and is so charming that everyone forgives her selfishness. But something funny happened during the writing: Helena became much more interesting to her. “The older sister’s always pushed aside by the younger one and she allows that to happen,” says Orta.
As she researched the folklore about the river dolphins that live in the Amazon, Orta discovered more. “The folklore is that for three days in June, dolphins come on shore as handsome men and seduce women. It’s the way Amazonian people explained children who don’t look like their fathers.”
“Part of me says, ‘I want their hearts to be broken a little bit.’ I like going to theatre that reaches out and grabs hold and makes me feel something.”
— Marisela Treviño Orta
Director Laurie Woolery added to that. “What’s interesting is this tale has many different versions throughout various South American countries,” she says. “The husband of our scenic designer, Mariana Sanchez, heard one about white dolphins; women have to be careful of white dolphins because they’ll end up having white babies. It’s really fascinating when you start digging in, because it’s about women being very aware of men, learning cautionary lessons and exploring origin stories.”
A character who breaks the mold
In the folklore, the dolphins are trickster characters who are not to be trusted. “If you meet a man in the month of June and he’s a stranger,” says Orta, “you have to ask him to take off his hat and feel the top of his head, because the one giveaway would be a blowhole still there.”
In the end, “it’s about people settling or hesitating or not being bold in love,” Orta says. “It’s really sad in a lot of ways.”
Orta says she has a thing for tragedy. “Part of me says, ‘I want their hearts to be broken a little bit.’ I like going to theatre that reaches out and grabs hold and makes me feel something. That’s the cautionary tale part of this: Here is this amazing love. They have this amazing opportunity. The lesson for our audiences is: Be brave. Take those risks, especially with love, because there’s so much you can lose.”