Playwright Cherrie Moraga and Brava! for Women in the Arts are collaborating to further develop and fully stage a new play, The Mathematics of Love. This meditation on death and dying examines the role of “spirit” as told through the bodies of people forgotten by history. It considers human existence and colonization through the lens of women of color. Moraga’s concept for the play began as a Mexican and American story and history shaped by the sexual encounter between a European man (Hernan Cortés) and the indigenous woman Malinche Tenepal.
Brava and Moraga are assembling a team of artists to work on the piece: director Shayok Misha Chowdhury, set designer Peiyi Wong, scenic painter Jessica Sabogal, the two-spirit visual artist L. Frank Manriquez (Tongva-Acjachemen), Jose B. Cuellar (Dr. Loco), and emerging sound designer and musician Jonathan Leal. Visual artist Celia Herrera Rodriguez is serving as the project’s design consultant.
In the last decade, Cherrie Moraga has turned the focus of her theater work from the Western gaze to an indigenous point of view, and The Mathematics of Love emerges from this new perspective.