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Sonia flies
Melinda Lopez inaugurates the Wimberly
BY SALLY CRAGIN

When playwright August Wilson spoke to her class at Boston University, Cuban-American writer/actor Melinda Lopez heard just what she needed to hear. "I asked him, ‘Do you write every day?’ He said ‘No, I let images come to me and then I write them down.’ But when he sits down to write, he lets his mind go and lets his characters talk to him. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s what I do.’ I was so excited! When you’re starting out, everyone writes differently, and I was so reassured by this."

Encouragement also came from the Huntington Theatre Company and John Kuntz, Sinan Unel, and Ronan Noone, Lopez’s three colleagues in the pilot Huntington Playwriting Fellows Program, a two-year residency for local playwrights funded by the Huntington’s Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays and the LEF Foundation. Under the auspices of the program, Lopez gradually developed a full-length work, Sonia Flew. Directed by Huntington artistic director Nicholas Martin, this two-act drama about two generations of a Cuban family will inaugurate the Huntington’s new Virginia Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts next Friday.

Playwriting Fellows Program director Ilana Brownstein recalls that Lopez envisioned the play’s two acts as "separate stories that put next to each other would illuminate the other scenes." As Lopez brought in her writing, John Kuntz explains, her fellow Fellows "watched it go from little scraps and tiny scenes and blossom into this wonderful play." Early on, Lopez knew she wouldn’t use a conventional time line. "I wanted to tell two stories. One woman’s story before she left Cuba when she was about 15. And the story of her now, set in December 2001, dealing with her son’s decision to join the [American] military."

The central character in Sonia Flew is a Cuban woman who as a child was part of the "Pedro Pan" movement. Between Fidel Castro’s early years in power and the Bay of Pigs, more than 14,000 children were sent from Cuba by their parents, who thought they’d have a better life outside the country. Some grew up with foster families, others in orphanages; many were never reunited with their families. "That’s part of the suspense of the play," says Martin. "We see the forces that made Sonia what she is, and we wonder if she can face real life in the present."

Lopez also has a successful career as an actor. She won an Elliot Norton Award for her solo autobiographical piece God Smells like a Roast Pig (later titled Midnight Sandwich/Medianoche). And she’s currently shooting a Farrelly Brothers movie in which she plays "one of Jimmy Fallon’s crazy Red Sox friends." Still, she continues to revise Sonia Flew and attend rehearsals. "This play is a living, breathing thing," says Brownstein. "It’s not like doing Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare, where you’ve got the text and it’s set. It’s a blessing that the writer lives here."

"She comes from a background that does not take freedom or democracy for granted," Martin adds. "That gives the play even more depth as far as I’m concerned." But despite sweeping political themes that percolate through the text, Lopez sees the work as a family drama first. "It’s about forgiving your family and figuring out what you owe your country and your family. The longer answer is that it’s about the Pedro Pan movement and the war on terror and a lot about how families cope in times of stress." Then she laughs. "But it’s a comedy."

Sonia Flew is presented October 8 through November 28 by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in the South End. Tickets are $14 to $50; call (617) 266-0800, or visit www.huntingtontheatre.org


Issue Date: October 1 - 7, 2004
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