“Brown Medeas:” Reconfiguring Mestizaje for the 21st Century

Abstract

Whereas due attention has been granted to the “black Medeas” of the post-seventies U.S. stage, the “brown Medeas” of post-eighties/post- movimiento Chicana/o theatre have drawn much less scholarly interest. In response to this perceived lacuna in critical analysis, the present paper examines three revisions of Medea’s myth by Chicana/o theatre practitioners. “La Malinche,” by Carlos Morton (1996-97), “The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea,” by Cherrie Moraga (2000), and “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles,” by Luis Alfaro (2015), are taken up here as characteristic instances of contemporary Chicana/o reception of Greek tragic myth. The paper will argue that this new addition to Medea’s afterlife signals a crucial new development in Chicana/o theatre toward opening up to transcultural flows, syncrisis and negotiation, and, by extension, a shift in Chicana/o cultural and identity politics within the U.S. More specifically, we will discuss why and how revis(ion)ing Medea, correlating her with figures originating in indigenous mythico-cultural material (namely, La Malinche and La Llorona), remotivating her (and their) actions and even reimagining the outcomes of her (and their) stories in the mythoplays under consideration can be interpreted as a gesture toward alternative forms of affiliation, shifting political coalitions, and an emergent—decolonization-oriented but twenty-first-century-specific— mestizaje ethos and consciousness.