Out Playwright Ricardo Pérez González Blends his Identities in 'Don't Eat the Mangoes'

"The events of this play — the inciting incident, if you will — actually happened to my bis abuela, my great-great-grandmother," González tells EDGE. "This is a family story that I heard starting at six years old, and I've always wanted to examine it.

"This play is a way of examining it."

But this isn't depressing stuff. "Don't Eat the Mangoes" is light with comedy. Anyone with siblings — especially sisters — will hear authenticity in the dialogue between eldest sister Ismelda, middle child Yinoelle, and youngest sister Wicha, which veers from sharp critiques and resentful complaints to moments of tender affection, sometimes in the same breath. The play is also infused with Spanish, the rhythms of the language as insistent as the demanding bell rung by the women's incapacitated father but also as warmly familiar as the love of their mother.

González calls the play's moments of Spanish language "an invitation to listen, because what happens — and I've witnessed it so many times now — is the play starts off and non-Spanish speakers are just a little on edge, but they listen, they lean in, and it quickly switches to English. And there's this sense of like, 'Oh, okay, I can go on this ride.'" It's an invitation, too, to listen and learn the language of a family that's not so different — in good ways and bad — from many others.

And there are bad things indeed haunting this family. The play's "heavy material" has been an impediment to getting it produced in some cases, González notes, but while there are shocking passages in the play it also casts a glow of redemption. There's a taint in the roots of this Puerto Rican family, but will they learn to separate and set aside cycles of violence and abuse while retaining the nourishing bonds of blood and love?

EDGE caught up with Ricardo Pérez González to hear his thoughts on family, cultural biases, and why his identity as a "wannabe woodland creature" is inextricable from his queer, authentic voice as an artist.

EDGE: Let me ask about the way you describe yourself on your Instagram page: "Puerto Rican writer, activist, wannabe woodland creature, and sex positive queer girl of color." Can you say a bit about what all that means?

Ricardo Pérez González: That's a blending of all of my identities. Puerto Rico is an island of artists, an island of musicians, an island of great writers, and that the artistic part of me is bound up with my identity. So, this connection with the idea of the woodland creature, the radical faerie, is also something that is bound up with my culture and the way in which I identify. And then, you know, the queer girl of color... my femme side was vilified, demonized. They tried to beat it out of me, quite literally in my mother's case. And it wasn't just boys who would say, "Oh, you're such a girl," it was also little girls. And then my activism — that's just part of who I am and what I do. I say my art is separate from activism, but I will always be an activist.

EDGE: You just now mentioned an abusive parent. How did that inform this play?

Ricardo Pérez González: What I came to realize is that the abuse that my bis abuela suffered was passed down through the ages. This play is about breaking those cycles, and it also points to different ways of healing. I don't think healing is tidy. I think it's ongoing, it's messy. It was important for me to examine how we heal in an honest way, not in a pat and trite way.

EDGE: I did not feel at all that your treatment of the three sisters was simply to write three gay brothers and give them female names. You understand that there's a difference between how male siblings and female siblings act with each other.

Ricardo Pérez González: I was raised with my older sister and my little sister, and I very much felt like one of three sisters. The ways in which we interacted, and my little femme self, were very much related. They were my models for relationships in terms of how we relate to one another. That was part of my upbringing.

The most significant change from the first draft to what it is now came around the male character, Papi. He wasn't in the play at all in the first writing of it, he just came in [very briefly]. Tony Plana was playing Papi and he was like, "I think maybe there needs to be more Papi." And I'm like, "Well, you're Tony Plana." All of the women in the room were like, "We actually need this. We need more of this man in order to make sense of our relationship." So, that absolutely is owed to the wonderful actors I've worked with.

EDGE: It's interesting that you've got two gay male characters, an uncle and one of the sisters' sons. Neither appears on stage, but they still make an impression.

Ricardo Pérez González: There is an inherent queerness to this play that's not necessarily about sexuality. It was important for me to provide alternatives to the maleness of Papi, but I didn't want to introduce more characters on stage. So, it became important for me to have his brother be this lovely person who supports the family — even if we don't get to see it, we get to see the impacts of it in Mami, right? [It's Tío Erik who] ultimately allows her to confront what she confronts at the end of play.

We have always been seen as sexual perverts; we have been accused of molesting children and grooming children — all of these accusations, when the reality is the folks who are abusing children, statistically, are straight men. It became important for me to have to Erik, Papi's brother, be this important foil.

EDGE: There's a fair amount of Spanish in the play. Did that cause issues?

Ricardo Pérez González: This play has had some difficulty getting produced because it deals with heavy issues, and also because artistic directors and readers of new work assume their audiences will just balk at Spanish. They really underestimate their audiences. It's really kind of insulting, I think, and audiences should demand better. But then you have an amazing artistic director like [The Huntington's] Loretta Greco, who understands that audiences want to see new perspectives and interesting relationships and things that connect to them in various ways. I haven't had a single audience member say, "Oh, I didn't understand the Spanish." Audience members come up to me and say, "That's my story, that's my family story, that's my sister's story, that was my mother's story. How did you how did you tell my story?"

EDGE: What are you anticipating or getting ready to do next?

Ricardo Pérez González: I have another play that I've been working on that the red has been an early champion of as well, that the Latinx new play festival championed recently in San Diego at La Jolla. It's called "Mother of God," and it's about what happens when Mary, Mother of God, decides to divorce the big G because she's just tired of him sacrificing their son for the sins of the world again and again. In this version she is Maria, Mother of God, and she is raising her son Jesus, who is just a teenage queer brown boy figuring out his sexuality. And she invites over her fellow goddesses, Yemaya and Lilith, for an evening of book club. They're reading "50 Shades of Gray," and she lets them know that she's about to divorce God, and all hell breaks loose. There's angel murder, there's magic, there is water and fire and brimstone falling from the heavens — all set in a living room on the side of what could be "Who's the Boss" or "Moesha."

I think in this day and age, when there are so many lies being spread and spoon fed us to us daily, when there's so many illegal things being done by our government, it is so important to keep questioning, because that's what's going to keep us sane — to be like, "Hold on a second," and checking back in with what's the truth. So yeah, I'm really excited about "Mother of God," and I'm excited also for "Don't Eat the Mangoes."


"Don't Eat the Mangoes," produced by The Huntington and directed by David Mendizábal, runs March 26 — April 27 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. follow this link for tickets and more information.