On Saturday, I attended La Lloronathon, a collaborative arts festival that celebrates the Mexican legend of La Llorona ("weeping woman") during a four-day multicultural celebration. Thinking it would be a nice way to spend the afternoon with my mother, she and I decided to make an afternoon out of it. However, looking back, I realize the theme might not have enforced our mother-daughter bonding.
The afternoon gathering at South Mountain Community College shared all things La Llorona: stories, painting, drawing performance, dance, and chismes.
For those unfamiliar, “La Llorona” is a widespread Latin American legend that tells the story of a beautiful woman named Maria who drowns her children in order to punish her husband’s betrayal for marrying a wealthier woman. When the man rejects Maria again after she’s done this (surprise, surprise), she kills herself, but she is unable to enter heaven until she finds her children. According to legend, Maria wanders near bodies of water, searching in vain for her children and crying, "Ay, mis hijos! Ay, mis hijos!"
I was surprised then that instead of performance about the La Llorona, the play put on for the festival was “Medea,” a Greek tragedy.
Before the play started, I briefly met the director, Julie Holston, to ask her why she chose to present “Medea” for a Hispanic arts festival. Being only vaguely familiar with both stories, I wasn’t quite sure how they related. She explained that she decided to mix it up with the Euripides’ classic because it resembled the story of La Llorona pretty closely, and she wanted to tie the Mediterranean myth and Latin legend.
Similar to La Llorona, “Medea” is about the Argonaut Jason who abandons his wife, Medea, when the king Creon offers him his daughter.The play tells of how Medea gets her revenge on her husband for this betrayal by sending the princess a gold dress and diadem covered in poison, killing both the princess and the king. Medea continues to punish Jason by murdering her two children he fathered.
Holston decided to use playwright Charles Ludlam’s version of “Medea” because it adheres closely to Euripides’ storyline, but also humorously displays the absurdities of many ancient tragedies and Greek mythology (I should mention no children were harmed in the production of this play. The two children were played by large smiley-face balloons). Also, the Greek tragedy was given a twist as the chorus of five girls would switch off between speaking and chanting in Spanish and English.
Maria and Medea are both women who were betrayed by their husbands, who exacted their sorrows on their children, and who are known for their blood-curdling screams and cries. Though thousands of miles away from each other, the Greeks and Latin Americans created strikingly similar stories. Is the hysterical woman a cross-cultural concept?
After the play ended I realized how appropriately I had planned the mother-daughter outing. Leaving the theater, my mom commented, “Medea was really scary. She reminded me of the women on The Real Housewives.” Making astute cultural observations runs in the family I suppose.
