In present day Los Angeles, Esmeralda, feisty with a capital "F" and frustrated, desperately wants out of her secretarial job. The escape act begins when Sam, a shy, literary accountant, asks her out. Amidst the poetry of Latin American and Spanish romantics and, well, mathematical equations, a comedic "marriage of the minds" ensues catapulting them out of their work-a-day lives and into an unforgettable lesson in how to love. "Garcia-Romero's witty, fast-paced play does give the (mismatched lovers) situation a new twist, focusing on two very individual and well-drawn characters in a...

A key way to view Latina plays today is through the foundational frame of playwright and teacher Maria Irene Fornes, who has trained a generation of theatre artists and transformed the field of American theatre. Fornes, author of Fefu and Her Friends and Sarita and a nine-time Obie Award winner, is known for her plays that traverse cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic borders.

In The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes, Anne Garcia-Romero considers the work of five award-winning Latina playwrights in the early twenty-first...

In a Spanglish-speaking land, Juanita disguises herself as a man to escape the wrath of her lover Ignacio's father. Masquerading as a "new" Don Juan, she careens through the city and seduces Alejandra, a wealthy art collector, Tomas, a leather bar patron and Beatriz, an innocent, society bride, who all fall instantly in love with him/her. Juanita's romp soon lands her squarely at the feet of Don Juan himself as she struggles to find true love. "The power of language creates worlds, realms and most importantly, relationships ... that power is evident as Juanita, a young woman living in a...