Malinalli: A Musical in Two Acts. By Robert Moreira and Josiah Esquivel

$20.00

Malinalli is an original, polyglot (Spanish, Nahuatl, and English) musical that seeks to reclaim the figure known as “La Malinche” from the shackles of popular history and mythology. Malinalli (re)members the story of the fall of the Aztec empire for contemporary audiences, while celebrating (but also complicating) some of the languages, historical figures, and traditions at the very nexus of current Caribbean, Mexican, and American identities as byproducts of the Columbian Exchange.

After several staged workshops, Dr. Marci McMahon, scholar of Latinx theater, wrote, “The pulse and beat of Malinalli definitely shares similarities with Miranda’s In the Heights. In many respects, Malinalli is at once a Mexican American/Latinx, and Latin American musical.

Overall, Malinalli stands out as a fresh, original contribution to Latinx theater, well on its way to national success.” Malinalli is the first in my trilogy of plays that examines my Mexican-Cuban-American heritage. The second play, Roses from Castile, reimagines the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 through contemporary drug cartel violence. The third play, tentatively titled Taino, will be set in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of the Spanish and explore my AfroCuban roots.

Cover art by Mario Godinez

Malinalli is an original, polyglot (Spanish, Nahuatl, and English) musical that seeks to reclaim the figure known as “La Malinche” from the shackles of popular history and mythology. Malinalli (re)members the story of the fall of the Aztec empire for contemporary audiences, while celebrating (but also complicating) some of the languages, historical figures, and traditions at the very nexus of current Caribbean, Mexican, and American identities as byproducts of the Columbian Exchange.

After several staged workshops, Dr. Marci McMahon, scholar of Latinx theater, wrote, “The pulse and beat of Malinalli definitely shares similarities with Miranda’s In the Heights. In many respects, Malinalli is at once a Mexican American/Latinx, and Latin American musical.

Overall, Malinalli stands out as a fresh, original contribution to Latinx theater, well on its way to national success.” Malinalli is the first in my trilogy of plays that examines my Mexican-Cuban-American heritage. The second play, Roses from Castile, reimagines the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 through contemporary drug cartel violence. The third play, tentatively titled Taino, will be set in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of the Spanish and explore my AfroCuban roots.

Cover art by Mario Godinez

Robert Paul Moreira teaches fiction and playwriting at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. From 2013-2019, he served as Managing Editor of riverSedge: a Journal of Art and Literature.​ He is the editor of ¡Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latina/o Baseball Fiction (2013). His award-winning short fiction, interviews, criticism, and scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in Southwest American Literature, Aethlon, Azahares, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Cobalt Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Soccer and Society, and the anthologies SOL: English Writing From Mexico (2010); Along the River 2 (2012); and New Border Writing (2013). He is the recipient of two fiction awards from the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers, a Pushcart Prize nomination, the 2011 Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, and the 2016 NACCS Tejas FOCO Fiction Award for his short story collection, Scores. Most recently, his hybrid collection, Dig, made the longlists for the 2020 PANK Big Book Contest and the 2020 Diverse Voices Prize from Dzanc Books. Dig was published by Frayed Edge Press in Fall 2022.