‘MALA’ SHEDS LIGHT ON CAREGIVING
IN SOLO SHOW AT OLD GLOBE, MELINDA LOPEZ SHARES HER EXPERIENCE ON A SUBJECT ‘WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT’
Seven years ago, playwright Melinda Lopez navigated alone the brutal, beautiful and ultimately healing role of caregiver for her 92-year-old mother in the final months of her life.
From that experience came Lopez’s solo play “Mala,” which she’ll bring to San Diego for an in-the-round production opening Saturday in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre at the Old Globe. In a recent phone interview from her Boston-area home, Lopez said the play’s title, “Mala,” is the name of the caregiver character she plays. But “mala” has
another meaning in Cuba, which her parents fled in 1959 after Fidel Castro’s revolution.
“It means bad, but more than bad,” said Lopez, who grew up in Massachusetts. “It means your essential self is bad. It’s the tension of wanting to be the good daughter and make the right choices (as a caregiver). You’re bound to fail and be mala.”
“Mala,” directed by David Dower, premiered at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company in 2016. It takes place during the famously cold Boston winter of 2015. Playing multiple characters, Lopez recounts medical emergencies, 911 calls, battles with her stubborn mother, and her resentment toward an older sister who didn’t share equally in the caregiving burden. The play tells Lopez’s story, but also that of many other caregivers she spoke with while writing her script.
“I think of Mala, the character, as a person who is a lot like me seven years ago ... deeply imperfect and struggling to do the right thing, and I have a great deal of compassion for her failings,” Lopez said. “My lived experience felt like one of great isolation. But as soon as I spoke about them, everyone around me seemed to have a story to share. I realized that it’s such a hugely collective body of experience. In telling stories, I’m hoping we recognize our shared humanity and also that we feel seen.”
Because adult caregiving is so common these days, Lopez opens
the play with a surprise line encouraging audience members to leave their phones turned on, so if a call comes mid-show about someone’s own sick parents, they won’t miss it. Sure enough, phones have gone off during live performances of ‘Mala,’ and Lopez said everyone has a shared laugh.
“The play is actually deeply funny because I think families are funny and honesty is funny,” she said. “I hear a lot of the laughter of recognition, like ‘oh I know that moment,’ ‘I’ve done that’ and ‘that’s my mom’ or ‘that’s my dad.’ The play is rooted in my experience as a first-generation American from a particular place in the world, but I’ve had people from China, Greece, Jewish families and a South Asian family stay after and tell me they needed to bring their whole family.”
Yet despite the universality of the play’s theme, Lopez said death remains a taboo topic for many families and most people never have the crucial end-of-life discussions that they should.
“Children benefit from the sacrifices the generation before us made. They gave us everything, except maybe the tools to talk about the most important part,” she said. “We don’t know how to talk about it and we don’t. Things are starting to change with more media coverage and awareness, but I’m hoping to normalize the journey.”
The Old Globe will present several performances of “Mala” in Spanish by actor Yadira Correa. “Mala” will also go on tour June 15-19 for English and Spanish invitation-only performances at a San Diego women’s jail, rescue mission, park and library, as well as at the Centro Cultural in Tijuana.