Mother Road by Octavio Solis is an
epic tale that brings together
descendants from The Grapes of Wrath.
William Joad resolves to keep the Joad
farm in the family. He finds that his only
surviving relative, Martín, is a young
Latino ex-migrant worker. William and
Martín drive east to Oklahoma on the
reverse journey of their forebears as they
struggle to look beyond the brutal past
and to build a new American family.
Brian Herrera: Tell me about the origin of
Mother Road.
Octavio Solis: I did an adaptation of an
early Steinbeck novel, The Pastures of
Heaven, for the California Shakespeare
Theater with the Word for Word
Performing Arts Company. We took some
research trips down to Salinas, California,
and we stopped at the National Steinbeck
Center. When the National Steinbeck
Center decided to focus on The Pastures
of Heaven as the featured book for their
next Steinbeck Festival, they invited me
down to be a guest speaker and to do
an excerpt from my play. While I was
there, I overheard the executive director,
Colleen Bailey, telling someone that The
Grapes of Wrath would be featured for
the next festival, and that the Steinbeck
Center planned to invite artists to take
a road trip along the route taken in the
novel. I got very excited. I said, “You need
a writer?” It was sort of brassy of me,
but the opportunity was just calling to
me. I told her, “You’re not taking this trip
without me.” So she made it happen.
BH: What was that road trip like?
OS: It was me, the executive staff of the
Steinbeck Center and two other artists—a
visual artist and a filmmaker—as well
as the filmmaker’s four-member crew.
Eleven people just doing the journey of
the Joad family all the way on Route 66
from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, to Bakersfield,
California. We were also joined by two
reps from Penguin Books, who brought a
bookmobile. We headed westward over 13
days, living together and cooking for each
other. Journey partners in cities along the
way set up interviews with community
members, and we took their oral histories.
Along the way, I reread the novel—which
I hadn’t read since high school—making
comparisons between things then and
things today.
It was really an interesting trip, but I
didn’t know whether I was writing a
series of poems or a one-off reader’s
theatre piece for the Steinbeck Center
until I got to the final stop at the Arvin
Migrant camp in California, just outside
of Bakersfield. There we interviewed
this young person who had worked in
those fields as a kid. Of all the people we
interviewed, about 75 total, this young
man was maybe the only one who, when
we asked, “Have you read The Grapes of
Wrath?” said yes. And he knew it very well. He was quoting passages back
to us by heart. It was intense. For him,
reading the novel was a very personal
experience. He understood that Steinbeck
was speaking to us today, and so for him,
the book was very prophetic. He said that
he was the new Tom Joad and that the
migrant workers of today are the Okies
of the ’30s. He was my way in to writing
Mother Road.
Over the next couple of months, I wrote
the play and, with the help of El Teatro
Campesino, got it ready for a reading at
the Steinbeck Center’s annual festival. It
went really, really well, but my obligation
to the Steinbeck Center ended there. I
think the play then sat around for almost
a year until I submitted it to Carnaval [the
Latina/o Theatre Commons Carnaval of
New Latina/o Work].
BH: One of the things about the play that
really struck me, hearing it at Carnaval, is
how your updating of the Joad family story
forces the audience to confront some very
contemporary questions of identity and
heritage, as well as the ominous threat of
ecological and economic emergency.
OS: I’m not a very polemical writer. I don’t
like to flash my opinion. Because if I want
to do that I can just write a tract or an
essay and pass that out. I just present a
story and let the audience draw its own
conclusion. Of course, some of what I
think is in there, but it’s balanced by the
voices of my characters. Not only that,
but I was stepping into some big shoes
with Steinbeck, some major shoes. The
novel has a very specific point of view, but
Steinbeck always stays just this side of
stepping over the line into polemic. I felt I
had to take my cues from him. He was very
much a part of what I was doing. It was as
if I was collaborating with him on this play.
BH: Even though Mother Road tells the
specific story of very particular characters,
it seems imperative that the script be
approached as an ensemble piece.
OS: This is the kind of epic theatre that you
can do on no budget at all or you can do
one big, massive budget. It would work
either way. The best thing would be, if you
have the big budget, you create something
that looks like it had no budget at all.
BH: Anything else you’d like to add before
we close this out?
OS: Yes. I know that there is another play
here. One I still need to write. But I feel like
I need to go back to Sallisaw to find out
more about the agricultural community
there, because the second play takes place
entirely on that farm. Hopefully the first
play will be about Martín arriving there
and the second play will be about the
farm itself, about running the farm. How
does Martín fare as a patrón? How does
someone who was at the bottom of the
ladder—what’s it like for him to run that
farm? A farm of that size and employees
and budgets and agricultural concerns?
What mistakes does he make? What are
his challenges? How does he fare? How
does he do?
BH: Wow. So I guess you joining that road
trip really was destiny.
SO: It was, completely. It was one of the
best things I’ve ever done in my life. It was
life-changing.
This piece, then titled “Cafecito: Octavio
Solis,” by Brian Herrera, was originally
published on Howl Round Theatre Commons on
Sept. 7, 2015. It has been cut and edited for
this space. For tickets and information, visit Mother Road.