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Bedford grad's play features
Cuba
By Mike Rosenberg. Bedford
Minuteman, MA, Wednesday, November 10,
2004.
Melinda Lopez's critically acclaimed play,
"Sonia Flew," is the story of
an American wife and mother, once a child
refugee from Castro's Cuba, coming to terms
with her past - and her future. It's not
autobiographical, the writer says, though
her parents, Manuel and Frances Lopez of
Old Stagecoach Road, departed their island
homeland back in 1959.
The world premiere, continuing this month
at the Huntington Theatre Co.'s new Stanford
Calderwood Pavilion in Boston's South End,
is "a fictional story about a real
event," says the playwright, a 1982
Bedford High School graduate. Her play was
"very influenced by stories about my
family, my own experience meeting Cuban-American
success stories, how they've built their
lives..."
Sonia's parents, fearful of the new Cuban
revolutionary government, sent their teenage
daughter to the United States in 1961. More
than 14,000 Cuban children made that journey
between 1960 and 1962, in an exodus known
as Operation Pedro Pan. Some never were
reunited with their families.
The creator of "Sonia Flew," born
in 1964 in Colombia, says she had "a
really stable childhood" in Bedford.
Her father rode his bicycle to work at Mitre
Corp., where he continued until retirement.
Melinda began her education at the former
Page School. "I was very inspired by
my fourth-grade teacher, Marsha Marlow,"
Lopez recounts. "At the time, we thought
it was a great. arts-based curriculum. She
read great children's classics aloud to
us every day. We had lots of art projects.
We did plays in class, we did concerts...
I think I just bloomed under her, and it
was something I wanted to hang onto, consciously
or unconsciously."
At Bedford High School, she sang in the
choir and was part of the chorus for four
of the high school's renowned musical productions.
Keith Phinney, legendary director, had a
profound influence.
"Mr. Phinney was monumental -- I remember
he would talk to us about what the life
of a performer was like. He told us to take
a nap before the show; everybody I know
does that. The next day, even when you're
tired, you have to come to school, because
that's when your friends and peers will
tell you they loved the show. Two days later,
they will have forgotten. What a wonderful
man."
Lopez was part of a troupe of actors and
actresses who staged a production of the
musical, "Godspell," as a high
school Drama Club production in the spring
and summer of 1981. She notes that the club
advisor, Peter George, "actually sent
me flowers on the opening of 'Sonia Flew.'"
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Lopez holds
a master's degree in creative writing from
Boston University. She has performed in
almost 20 plays, ranging from various works
of Shakespeare and "The Rose Tattoo"
to her own shows. She has worked in improv
comedy and has acted in several independent
films.
Lopez has had remarkable success over the
past few years. In 1999 she received the
Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy
Center to a "promising new voice in
American theatre." Her 1999 production
"God Smells like a Roast Pig"
received an Elliot Norton Award for outstanding
solo performance. In 2003 she won a grant
for playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural
Council. She wrote "Sonia Flew"
while in residence as one of four commissioned
Huntington Playwriting Fellows.
Unlike her protagonist in "Sonia Flew,"
Melinda Lopez says "I can go back to
my home whenever I want to. It's there for
me... . So many people have to leave their
homes and can never go back. That's a loss
I can never imagine."
A recurring theme in her writing is that
"it's a privilege to grow old where
you were born," she continues.
"Of course, no place that our parents
lived exists now. Bedford is nothing like
I remember growing up. Part of that feeling
of loss is really a function of time that
everyone experiences." She would like
to visit Cuba with her parents, but acknowledges
that they really do feel that there's nothing
for them to see there... . They don't want
to go."
Lopez, who lives in central Massachusetts
and teaches at Wellesley College and Suffolk
University, is working on a new play about
teenagers in the suburbs (not Bedford, she
says).
"The nature of theatre is collaborative,"
she observes. "You can write plays
until the cows come home, but if they're
not performed they don't exist. You have
to hand them over to directors, to actors
- like putting a kid on a school bus and
saying, 'Okay, off into the world now. Let's
see what you become.'"
"You get feedback from people at some
point saying your 'child' is misbehaving.
So, at some point, it becomes a good effort."
Lopez watches her production once or twice
a week. "It's very nice that it has
gotten a good critical reception,"
she asserted. I love going ... I'd be there
every day if I could."
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