Written by Enrique Urueta

Directed by Greg Maraio

Boston Playwright's Theatre

I met Enrique in my first year of graduate school, dramaturging his play The Columbian Book of the Dead as a part of one of Paula Vogel’s “Bakeoff” workshop processes. We hit it off right away. After we both graduated, I was lucky to work on his insanely funny Learn to Be Latina: A post-9/11 race farce/lesbian romantic comedy (with dance breaks). In the play, a group of record label higher-ups convince a Lebanese-American singer to market herself as a Latina so she can seem “palatably ethnic.” Researching the play, I discovered that the seemingly far-fetched premise was actually a reality within the world of commercial pop: Paula Abdul, Shakira Meybarak, and Selma Hayek all have Middle-Eastern parents, but conceal this component of their identity from their public profiles. Recently, I got to teach Latina in my Dramaturgy course at FSU and introduce my students to Enrique’s wild and wonderful work.