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Essay / Cherrie's play "The Hungry Woman": Summary, Story and Analysis
Table of ContentsGeneral InformationPerformerScene (Duration)AudienceGeneral InformationCherrie Moraga is a Chicanx writer, feminist activist, poseur, essayist, and playwright. She has also written about the struggles of lesbian and Chicanx experiences in the United States. As a woman of color, she challenged systematic interpretations of genius through her plays and created characters with powerful personalities in an effort to bring visibility to real-life Chicanx experiences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Hungry Woman was written by Cherrie in 1951. The play is written in a Chicano style in which the two languages English and Spanish (Spanglish) are incorporated. The play was commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theater where it was performed on stage on April 10, 1995. It was directed by Tony Kelly. Since the play became so popular, it has gone on to be performed in many different places, such as; On December 2, 1995, the play was produced in Los Angeles, California as part of the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, and it was directed by Lisa Wolpe. On May 21, 1999, the play was staged by Richard ET White as part of the A Contemporary Theatre/Hedgebrook Writers' Retreat Women's Playwright Festival in Seattle. Their play was the most popular in America (Mexican theater) for Spanish and Spanish speaking people. PerformerThe Hungry Woman is made up of a total of eight characters in which the writer specified that all his characters should be played by a woman except Medea's son. . The play itself is made up of 4 main characters who tell the whole story to the audience. The main characters are: Medea, midwife and curandera in her forties, Luna, Medea's lover of seven years; stonemason and clay sculptor, late thirties. Chac-Mool, Medea's thirteen-year-old son, and Mama Sal, Medea's aging grandmother, late seventies. There are also four other characters who also played other roles in the play. Luna's girlfriend Savannah, the nurse, Medea's aging guard at the mental hospital, Jason, Medea's husband and Chac-Mool's father, and the border guard also play the role of the prison guard and the tattoo artist. All of these figures are also part of the chorus of four warrior women who, according to Aztec myth, died in childbirth. Scene (Time) The play is divided into two main acts and each act contains its own scenes. The first act contains a total of ten scenes. The places depicted where the act occurs are: a hospital (patient room), an interrogation room, a games room, a building in town, a small urban garden, a laundry room in their building, and a local bar. In this act there were also special places in which the story took place. For example; the altar of Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of creation and destruction, and Luna and ChaC-Mool appear in Medea's memory seated on a stone slab. the second act includes a total of nine scenes and an epilogue. The locations in the second act are similar to those in the previous act, except that there were a few additional locations that did not appear in the first act. The locations in act two were: the hospital, the apartment building, the border, the interrogation room, a kitchen, a living room, the recovery room and the small cornfield. There are special occasions in which Medea has a flashback to her roots and suddenly the scene shifts to the years of the Aztecs. his desire tobecome a man. The play also reminds the audience of the world of betrayal, jealousy, love and desire in which the main character tries to explain to the audience all the struggles and conflicts that a single mother goes through every day to keep his son. All the performances in the play were so powerful that the audience developed an emotional attachment to the characters. The play also appropriately elicited gasps, screams and laughter from the audience, reflecting Medea's emotional turmoil. because the show is too long, the audience will be seated during the show, but will have an intermission for the other half of the show. The audience will have the opportunity to stretch out and get some fresh air before the start of the second part of the show. In the Starving Woman there are many disturbances in which she allows the audience to experience the transition from one place to another. The stasis of the play begins with the story of the Aztecs where the Aztecs offer sacrifices and rituals to their god. the play begins this way because it gives the audience a little history of Chicano culture, so the audience has an idea of what the play is going to be about. Throughout the story, instead of the audience reading the direction of each transition, a particular character always disrupts a scene to let the audience know what is happening and what will happen next. The character gives the audience the sign of the end and beginning of each signal. Throughout the play there are also scenarios of the Aztecs recreating everything that happens in Medea's life in their own performance. Describe the characters in terms of their actions! What do they do, their actions define them in the drama. The main character Medea is bisexual and feminine. She is Jason's ex-wife and Luna's lover. She is also a former revolutionary who was forced into exile and also the mother of his only son Cha-Mool. Jason is Medea's ex-husband, a biracial man who lives in Aztlan and abandoned Medea and her son for an important position he was offered in Aztlan. He wants Medea to sign the divorce papers, so he can marry a virgin Apache woman. Chac-Mool is Medea's son, although she preferred a girl over a boy. In the play he is very rebellious and confident. He wanted to go live with his father in Aztlan and become a real man like his father. Later in the play, he becomes a ghost and appears to his mother when she decides to commit suicide. The boy's real name is Adolfo, but his mother named him Chac-Mool after a Toltec messenger. Luna is a lesbian woman who, in the play, is Medea's girlfriend and has also become the man of her best friend, Savanna. She taught Cha-Mool many things about life, but also about history and heritage, and she also taught him how to plant corn. Mama Sal is a lesbian grandmother. In the play, she is portrayed as the cynical king who, despite his love for his grandson Cha-Mool and Medea. she helps Luna break up with Medea. Chihuateo are the four warriors who died in childbirth. These characters also played other important roles in the play. These four warriors also constitute the chorus of the play. What is going on that makes something else happen? What is the domino summary of events in the play? In the play, Medea received a letter from her ex-husband Jason. In the letter, Jason said he would return to Medea to claim custody of his son. The letter alternated between her emotions that pushed her to come up with a crazy plan. Since the letter appeared, everything has changed in Medea's life: her son betrayed his mother for his father, his girlfriend Luna ran away from his life with another woman and everything she fought for was destroyed. What seems to be the.”