Navigating the ‘Curves’ of a Broadway musical adaptation
The co-creators of Real Women Have Curves share how their show matches and differs from the same-named play and the movie that made America Ferrera a star.
Meet Ana Garcia — on Broadway. This feisty, ambitious 18-year-old character first took the stage in 1990, when Josefina López's play Real Women Have Curves premiered in San Francisco. Many more people got to know Ana with the release of the 2002 HBO film adaptation starring America Ferrera in the role.
Now, Ana is at the heart of an uplifting Real Women Have Curves musical adaptation at the James Earl Jones Theatre, which arrives on Broadway following its 2023 premiere at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everything about Ana’s coming-of-age tale sings, said Lisa Loomer, writer of the The Waiting Room and co-screenwriter for Girl, Interrupted. She wrote the show's book with Nell Benjamin, a Tony Award nominee for the Legally Blonde and Mean Girls musicals.
“This is Latin culture,” Loomer added. “There’s a lot of emotion, there’s a lot of love, there’s a lot of joy, there’s a lot of strong opinions. All of that flows beautifully into song.”
The story follows Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), who yearns to go to college in New York City, and her mother, Carmen (Justina Machado), who wants her to stay in East Los Angeles to work at the family dress factory. López's narrative deals with evergreen themes, and Loomer and Benjamin had the curvy challenge of stitching them with fresh resonance.
A choice made early on, Loomer said, was keeping the story’s original 1987 timeline, even as they tweaked some references. In López's original script, when Ana warns about “I.C.E.,” Carmen asks, “What’s that?” Now, there’s no question that she means immigration officials.
“When the curtain comes up on Broadway, we’re going to see seven immigrant women, and we’re going to see it in a time when immigrants are being reviled,” said Loomer. She added that the timeframe lets us see the present “with more clarity, with more poignancy.”
A provocative core question spoke to her: “How do we honor our culture and how do we keep it with us and how do we realize our own dream?” Shining a spotlight on Latin characters is celebratory for Loomer, whose goal from the get-go was “to tell the truth about this community.”
“The thing that made me decide that I wanted to do this was Kamala Harris's acceptance speech to run for vice president, when she thanked her immigrant mother,” Loomer added. “I was very interested in how someone becomes a Kamala Harris or AOC [Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez].”
Exploring the tension between staying and going appealed to the creative team. “The mother-daughter relationship is a big deal for me,” said Benjamin. “Also very important is how people, women in particular, deal with situations of power — when they have it, when they don’t, and how they negotiate that.”
Echoed Loomer, “The mom is a different character in many ways than she was in the movie. We’ve changed why she was afraid to let her daughter go. I think that we have an ending now that’s earned where both characters transform.”
Real Women Have Curves also centers on themes of personal freedom and body positivity, as the characters' self-images change as they navigate each other's ambitions. An eloquent scene from the play and movie finds Ana and her older coworkers in their underwear because of the heat in the factory. That scene made the cut in the musical — in fact, it gives way to the title song.
“Part of what I love about this scene in our version is that the women reclaim the factory as a safe space,” said Benjamin. “In a way, they’re saying, ‘We are comfortable here and we accept ourselves here.’”
Loomer echoed that sentiment. “That scene remains because that’s their liberation. It’s bigger than just whether or not you have clothes on,” she said. “It's about being comfortable in your skin. It's about accepting the body and celebrating the body we’re given. It's about self-acceptance.”
The creators hope audiences “look at our characters and just see themselves in them,” said Benjamin. “That they’re like, ‘That's a mother I know.’ ‘That's a daughter I am.’ ‘That's a friend that I've been.’ ‘That's a friend I've failed to be.’”
She appreciates all of Real Women Have Curves’s timeless messages. “If there are people who haven't seen the original play or the movie, this show is still for them. I don’t think you have to catch up.”
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Photo credit: The cast of Real Women Have Curves in rehearsal. (Photos by Michaelah Reynolds)
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