Photo: Nicole Acosta
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre - Mala
It is an all-too-common experience that many adults deal with generation to generation: how to care for aging parents? And how to manage the unpredictable challenges (read: demands) given this “role reversal”?
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre explores this timeless topic in Mala by playwright Melinda Lopez, featuring Milwaukee native Rána Roman in the one-actor role of an adult daughter caring for her aging mother. Lopez explains that “mala” is a Spanish word that means “bad.” But in this work, it has a greater meaning.
“It’s not just that you have done something bad, but that you are, in your core, bad. It was a word that comes up in the play, in reference to a mother-daughter moment. And a lot of the play hinges on the daughter seeing herself as ‘the good daughter,’” she points out. “Questions of ‘good behavior’ and ‘bad behavior’ are all through the play. But fundamentally, I think the show is about what happens when you are called to be your best self, for the people who gave you everything … and you fall short. Because you were never taught how to do that.”
When Lopez finished writing Mala, she came to the realization that the title is also the speaker’s name. And, like much of art itself, the play draws from “lived experience,” as she puts it, written at a time in her life when she felt very isolated and alone.
“I knew that all over the world, there were people living this same experience. We just couldn’t see each other. So I wrote it in part to reflect back to al the people who have cared for loved ones, and who have walked that hard road,” Lopez emphasizes. “I wanted to tell them, ‘I see you.’”
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The character, Mala, is a first-generation daughter, which for Lopez “means many particular experiences. But people from every possible background, family dynamic, cultural and economic history, they have told me how much the play touched them. We share humanity. At our essence, we all know we are mortal.”
While the struggles and challenges of carting for aging parents is a serious subject, what’s surprised Lopez most about the play is how audiences find the humor in the story. “You can’t talk about serious things seriously. You have to laugh,” she says. “And families are funny. So, hearing audiences roar with laughter when they recognize themselves or their children or parents, and then, go so quiet.”
But as Lopez points out, it’s the silence, the words not spoken or said, that speaks of what lies beneath the surface, waiting to be discovered, to be revealed, and to be dealt with … eventually.
“As a society, we are not very good at talking about end-of-life. It has surprised me how hungry people are for honest, first-person experiences, related without sentimentality,” Lopez explains. “I think of Mala (the character) as someone who is inviting us to go with her to a place most of us haven’t been before. And that most of us fear. But she can take us there and show us that world. And then walk us back into our world. And we are safe.”
Mala runs through Feb. 13 in the Studio Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, Milwaukee. For more information, call the Box Office at: 414-291-7800, or visit: milwaukeechambertheatre.org
