Some months ago, Paula and Brian Powers, stalwarts of Globe philanthropy whose commitment to new writing is already acknowledged in their namesake Powers New Voices Festival, made a transformational gift to this theatre that adds rocket fuel to our efforts in developing new work for the stage. The Powers Fund for New Work allows us to grow our support of new writing and new forms across many platforms, from an expanded New Voices Festival, to more commissions and developmental workshops, and to more staff resources to support this work. We are deeply grateful to Paula and Brian, who are moving the Globe’s already robust approach to making new work into a thrilling new phase.

If any evidence is needed of the impact of the Paula and Brian’s generosity on our programming, tonight’s play is it. We first met playwright Tony Meneses when we read El Borracho in our 2019 Powers New Voices Festival. We recognized in this play a vibrancy and emotional pull that suggest that there’s something not only compelling but also necessary about this writer. As the entire American theatre awakens to the long-neglected imperative that stories hitherto confined to the margins of our national stages be brought front and center, Meneses’s dramatic focus on his Mexican heritage resounds powerfully. Born in Guadalajara and raised in Albuquerque and then Dallas, Meneses is uniquely placed to understand the cultural and political fault lines that rive our relationship with our important neighbor to the south. He recognizes that there’s a Mexico in a fevered corner of the American imagination, and he sees that in this fantasized country, the mythos and the contested reality of what immigration means in America collide, dramatically.

Meneses’s plays can be read as chronicles of all that reverberates outward from the hyphen in the term “Mexican-American.” Mexico for him carries all the symbolic and affective allure of home, but he has another home, too, with its own mythologies and harsh truths: America. How these two cultures intertwine within individuals, and how those individuals then collectively constitute a new community with its own distinct identity, is his subject.

El Borracho refracts this writer’s themes through an intimate lens. It’s a family story about fathers, sons, marriage, and long-held secrets that must be revealed. The immense love that David, the young writer in the play, feels for his father Raul is mirrored by the intensity of Raul’s self-loathing, which has manifested all his life in his chronic drunkenness. Raul is a remarkable creation: one of the most vital life forces I’ve encountered in a new play in a long, long time. His irrationality and his enormous capacity for love make the play utterly compelling, and overwhelmingly moving. It’s never heavy, though: Meneses leavens the scenes with humor and even music, which manage, of course, only to heighten the impact. The writing has a fascinatingly light touch, a sense of deftness, and, most impressive of all, an ear for the way that poetry surprises its way into the lexicon of the everyday. Also, in the play Meneses delves into another theme of personal interest, the LGBTQIA+ experience in Mexican-American culture. We’ve not seen that story onstage very frequently, and in writing it, Meneses breaks new ground. This is a really wonderful play.

We are fortunate that the excellence of El Borracho drew an equally excellent talent into its director’s chair. Eddie Torres has become a Globe regular, to our delight and the delight of our audiences. Exceptionally imaginative and fiercely committed to the truth, Eddie is a key figure in the Globe’s artistic life. With characteristic generosity he has brought to San Diego a group of collaborators who are at the highest level, and in casting as Raul our own Jesse Perez, who directs The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program, he brings a jolt of hometown pride to this production. I thank him, even as I commend to you a wonderful new play by an important American writer who honors the Globe by being part of our newly energized efforts in making new work for the stage.

Thanks for coming. Enjoy the show.