Sixteen months after a dramatized reading of “The Black Beans Project” at the Old Globe’s Powers New Voices festival, Melinda Lopez and Joel Perez’s Globe-commissioned play, now titled “Stir,” is about to have its world premiere at Sheryl’s home. the Harvey White Theatre.
But the life of this play, about siblings coming together after their mother’s death and forced separation from the COVID-19 pandemic, began even earlier. Lopez, artist-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston when the shutdown began. In 2020 and, like theatre creators around the world, they are looking for a way to keep artists on board and unleash their creativity.
“A colleague of mine said, ‘Why don’t you create something we can do on Zoom?’Lopez recalls, “I said, ‘I don’t need to be alone. ‘”
Instead, she turned to Perez, with whom she had a stable relationship. After first doing a communication show with theater people and then talking about a cooking show, “Joel thought, ‘Let’s write something fictional,'” Lopez said.
“It was born out of that,” Perez said. A brother and sister (Henry and Mariana) piled up on Zoom to cook a recipe for black beans. From this action of cooking food, secrets are revealed.
According to Lopez, “The Zoom piece turned out to be a success, and then we started experimenting with how we could make it compatible in a live functional space. We added a character, the father-in-law. Then there was the question of how to honour the joy we had in lockdown in a lighthearted, slightly outrageous and silly way, but also to communicate the things we lost and the things we learned.
“This (the piece) is a meditation on that time, but this time informs about what those brothers are going through,” Perez said.
What they are experiencing are the cases of COVID isolation and how it prevented the family from coming together to mourn the loss of a mother who died, not from the virus itself, but from the early months of the pandemic.
“It’s not a broken family,” said Lopez, who starred in her own one-woman play “Mala” at the Globe in 2022. “It’s a separate family. We wanted to stay away from certain tropes and communicate about a circle of family members in crisis because they’re separated, not because they’re together.
Old Globe’s artistic director, Barry Edelstein, identified the future of López y Pérez’s work and the story, for many applicable, that it seeks to tell.
“The Globe asked us to do a three-dimensional edit of our two-dimensional paintings (on Zoom),” Lopez said. “We’re here at the request of your art department. “
With Lopez and Perez playing the roles of Mariana and Henry and Al Rodrigo as Papi, “Stir” is directed by Marcela Lorca. Set designer Diggle has created a set that superimposes two kitchens on top of each other. and cooking on stage.
As Mariana and Henry rediscover unity and come to terms with their loss, the audience can reflect on their own memories of their post-pandemic circle of family, Lopez said. “It’s helpful to pay attention to the importance of the ritual,” she said, “and also just because we’re left telling each other that everything is okay. It’s also helpful to honor what we’ve shared this time.
When: Previews begin May 4. Opening on May 9 and will continue until May 26. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 8 p. m. on Thursdays and Fridays; 2 p. m. and 8 p. m. Saturdays; 2 p. m. and 7 p. m. Sundays
Where: Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park
Tickets: $33 or more
Phone: (619) 234-5623
Online: theoldglobe. org
Coddon is a freelance writer.
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