Torera by Monet Hurst-Mendoza (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Torera by Monet Hurst-Mendoza
• Weston Twardowski

TORERA. By Monet Hurst-Mendoza. Directed and choreographed by Tatiana Pandiani. Alley Theatre, Houston. May 17, 2023.

When Elena María Ramírez (Jacqueline Guillén) and Tanok Cárdenas (Jesse Castellanos) ran onto the stage at the opening of Torera, the Alley Theatre’s world premiere production of Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s new play, the gender expectations and social roles that formed the core tension of the show were immediately established. Elena, dressed in a child’s white peasant dress, rapidly climbed a knotted rope representing an orange tree. Tanok, in a boy’s private school uniform, sat in a swing across from Elena. Although a projection had informed the audience that the year was 1992, the costumes could easily have been mistaken for those of a century earlier. The interplay between the potentially period dress and the contemporary setting signaled the importance of tradition in the play: in the Yucatán, history, tradition, culture (and cultural roles) matter. The costuming and the scene’s blocking worked in tandem to define the gender roles assigned to the two principal characters throughout their ensuing journey.

Torera arrived at the Alley after COVID-19 delays. It had been in development for six years, with readings or workshops at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference, the Public Theater, Long Warf Theatre, Alley Theatre, and elsewhere. The center of the show is Elena, whom we see at ages 12, 20, and 28 as she navigates her upbringing as the daughter of a poor maid, Pastora Ramírez (Maria Elena Ramirez), who lives in the house of a wealthy retired torero (bullfighter), Don Rafael Cárdenas (Eliud Garcia Kauffman). Don Rafael trains his son, Tanok, to follow in his footsteps, but it is Elena whose greatest ambition is to enter the arena. While the driving action of the plot is Elena’s quest to become a torera, a family drama plays out as well: unbeknownst to Elena, she is the illegitimate daughter of Pastora and Don Rafael, and the sexual attraction she and her half-brother Tanok share causes tension in their “fused-at-the-heart” relationship.

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Jacqueline Guillén (Elena), José José Arrieta Cuesta (Ensemble), and Jesse Castellanos (Tanok) in Torera. (Photo: Lynn Lane.)

The script demands physicality, and Tatiana Pandiani, who was credited as both director and choreographer for the Alley production, blended movement and dance to create a visually rich production. Pandiani added short dances and movement sequences into each scene transition to help the production flow across time and space. Occasionally these sequences were led by the named characters, but most often they featured the cast’s two ensemble members (José José Arrieta Cuesta and Carolína Ornelas), who served as dancers and animals. Dance is a motif that runs throughout the script, with references to how bullfighting is a “dance with death”; performing it requires “losing yourself in the dance.” Pandiani used this invocation to further explore the gender dynamics at play. At the end of the opening scene, we saw Elena as a child practicing the highly disciplined bullfighte ’s dance, perfectly striking the positions and marching toward her imaginary target. This action was immediately juxtaposed in the following scene, in which Pastora instructed Elena on how to make [End Page 85] perfect scrambled eggs. As Pastora repeatedly told Elena to take the pan on and off the burner, Elena took exaggerated steps forward and back. She then had to flawlessly plate and serve the food. These regimented movements contrasted with her earlier bullfighting practice, quickly establishing the diffe - ence between permissible and impermissible dances for men and women.

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Eliud Garcia Kauffman (Don Rafael), Jesse Castellanos (Tanok), José José Arrieta Cuesta (Ensemble), and Carolína Ornelas (Ensemble) in Torera. (Photo: Lynn Lane.)

Staging the production in the round worked not only in creating a literal arena for the bullfighting sequences but also in highlighting the interpersonal combat that carried the story. In particular, Don Rafael (standing in for patriarchal values and a toxic masculinity that made him unable to connect with...