Interview by Danielle Mages Amato
Tony, where did the inspiration for this play come from?
Tony Meneses: The idea has always been there. El Borracho is based on a lot of autobiographical stuff, and I always thought, “Could this be fodder for a play, or is it just too close to home, too personal, to put out there?” But while I was at Juilliard, I studied with Marsha Norman, and her adage is: at some point in your career, you have to write the play that scares you. As soon as she said that, the idea for this play immediately came to mind.
At the end of my tenure in school, I’d written five plays, and I had one last play to write. And I thought, “God, I guess I’ll finally do it now.” I spilled my guts on the page, thinking it might just be a journal entry. Thankfully it wasn’t. As artists, we deal with things in our lives, we go through things, and we make art out of them. I always knew that I’d tackle this at some point, but it took me a little over 15 years to finally write this play.
Eddie, what drew you to this play as a director?
Edward Torres: So much! The realistic quality of the piece, the exchange between the characters, the vibrant conflicts that happen in the story. I mean, it’s just amazing: the idea of a man moving in with his ex-wife and his son—and the secret that’s there, lying underneath. Plus, it’s beautifully told. Nothing is on the nose, and nothing is overly done. It’s a powerfully constructed story. It avoids stereotypes. It’s about human beings, and how they relate to each other.
The title, El Borracho, is taken from one of the cards in the Mexican game of lotería. How did that find its way into the play?
TM: That’s another one of the tidbits that are pulled from real life. My siblings and I would make that joke when we played lotería: “Oh, el borracho, that’s dad.” So when I started working on this play that I did not want to write, that felt like the best place to start. It’s one very small, microcosmic detail of our lives to put out there, but I thought it was something people would get. The imagery will be very recognizable to anyone of Mexican heritage, and perhaps even of broader Latinx heritage, so it’s an accessible entry point. And the topical subject matter of alcoholism and addiction is contained within this one little detail.
Eddie, when it came to putting the play onstage, what was most important to you?
ET: I felt that the space needed to be contained, because oftentimes smaller spaces allow conflicts to happen more naturally. It allows for more confrontation and more human connection. And I think that there’s a certain kind of truth that happens in a place that’s contained like that—and this piece, it’s pretty explosive. I thought a lot about how to capture its energy and vigor in the space.
You’ve directed in this theatre at The Old Globe before. Does it feel like an effective space for this particular story?
ET: Oh, God, I can’t wait! The fact that it’s in the round gives the audience different perspectives into the way the characters deal with each other. There’s also an intimacy that’s created in the round. The characters have to expose themselves because no matter what angle, what position they’re in, they’re being seen all the way around. You can’t hide. You can’t hold anything back.
TM: I’ve worked in the round before, and exactly to Eddie’s point, it’s so intimate. It feels like you’re really there, like the audience is the walls, watching the show. Even pre-pandemic, this was a claustrophobic show—now we all know what that’s like, to feel so trapped, with time melting away so that you don’t even know what day it is. I think now we can actually relate even more to this experience.
What were you looking for when it came to casting these roles?
TM: Working with Jesse Perez was my dream from the beginning. I would even go so far as to say I wrote this play for Jesse. We met at Juilliard, and he’s one of the most talented, amazing human beings you could ever get the opportunity to work with. And Zilah Mendoza, when I saw her on our list of actors—Eddie, I haven’t told you this—but I felt that kind of magic. I just felt it was going to be her from the beginning. Like the universe was setting it up. I’ve been wanting to work with her forever. And when we saw Matthew Martínez in auditions, it felt electric, like the hair stood up on the back of everyone’s necks.
ET: Yes, it’s funny that you say that, Tony, because as soon as Matthew walked in the room, my hair did stand up and I thought, “Oh, my God.” Because there’s a certain kind of honesty that these roles require: not to make these characters archetypes, not to make them stereotypes, but to make them human beings.
TM: Yes. I think sometimes Latinx artists are only asked to play certain kinds of colors. So we had to make sure that in addition to the big, explosive, vibrant moments, they could be small, simple, and intimate.
ET: And it’s important that there aren’t any villains. In this play they are all human, and they are all more victims than they are villains.
TM: They damage each other, for sure. And the perception of villainy is certainly there within the characters at times. That’s part of any family drama. I keep joking that Arthur Miller got to write this kind of play, Eugene O’Neill got to mine his family stuff. They weren’t burdened with the cultural implications of doing it or exposing things about their people. This is my version of a classic family drama. The history of the American family drama is, I think, very much in the DNA of this work.
What journey do you hope the audience might have seeing the show?
ET: I think it’s a realistic journey. It’s one that’s filled with empathy, with recognition that some issues are universal, they exist in all of us. Like addiction, and what it does not just to the person, but to the people around them, especially the people they care about.
TM: Yes. I mean, for me, this isn’t a topical play, but obviously issues of addiction are very much there. For those of us who have taken on the burden of someone else’s addiction, or have been addicts ourselves, I hope we can see and learn to forgive them—or ourselves—in that situation. I don’t think I wrote this play about forgiveness as an overt theme, but I think it’s there. I hope after we go through a roller coaster with these characters that we can grant them grace.
