What Telenovelas Mean to Me

Growing up in Mexico in the 1970s, I can still remember the theme song and the opening credits of my first telenovela as if it were yesterday: Viviana, a young, beautiful woman with disheveled red curls, in a tattered white dress, runs barefoot near the ocean in slow motion toward a bare-chested man wearing a pendant necklace. Then she sees another bare-chested gentleman on . . . a white horse. Viviana turns and runs into the waves, distraught by indecision and love, and splashes about dramatically. (Think From Here to Eternity with more angst and a white horse.) The telenovela was called Viviana, and it starred Lucia Mendez and Hector Bonilla. It was on every night, past our bedtime, and my sister and I could only catch parts of an episode on the Friday nights my parents were out and the Viviana-addicted babysitter came over. But even a little telenovela was enough to color our imagination.

The theme song went like this: “Viviana, enamorada, illusionada . . . y nada mas,” which translates to “Viviana, enamored and illusioned . . . and that is all.” That summer, my sister, my primos (cousins) and I spent hours on the beach singing the theme song and running in slow motion and horsing around in the waves. At one point, 20 random kids were all doing the “Viviana Run” and tumbling breathless with drama and laughter into the water. Viviana had swept the country with her wet white dress and torment. She was on the cover of every magazine. Hector Bonilla starred in a musical play that sold out immediately. Suddenly every other woman on the street had permed red hair. The men all wore a certain pendant necklace.

Telenovelas, whether you watch them or not, seep into the daily life of most Latin Americans. When my sister and I played house with our dolls, our story lines definitely had some telenovela influences, because fake slaps, unlocked doors that led to shocking revelations and indignant speeches were normal. The people who delivered the gas, the cooks in kitchens, people sitting on the bus, would discuss the conflicts and characters with vigor. When I became a little older, I was enchanted by the wild romantic nature, the torment, the delicious storytelling scandal of it all.

I grew up in an intellectual household, and I soon learned that telenovelas were a populist form of entertainment, and bohemian wannabe writers like myself—who prided ourselves on staying clear of bourgeois habits like watching TV and breathing fresh air—were better off reading real novels by greats like Elena Poniatowska, Gabriel García Márquez and Octavio Paz. (I heartily recommend these writers!) 

And when my family emigrated from Mexico to the United States, telenovelas seemed destined to become a thing of our past. Except that Americans were just as obsessed with their soap operas as my countrymen and -women were with their telenovelas.

Soap operas General Hospital and One Life to Live dominated the ratings by day. While telenovelas and soaps are similar in that they are melodramas that air on a daily basis, soaps were different than what I was used to in Mexico. Soaps tend to focus on the trajectory of a family, whereas telenovelas focus more on the story of a woman. Soaps air during the day and are aimed at homemakers, whereas telenovelas are primetime entertainment (with the later time slots having more adult content). 

The pacing is different, too. In Mexico, a telenovela lasts about six months. The stories have an arc, with a beginning, middle and end. Each episode is an explosive storytelling event. American daytime soap operas inched along for years, with people crying while drinking coffee. You could not watch a soap for weeks and catch up in a matter of minutes. No, telenovelas have higher stakes more in line with the soaps that were dominating the airwaves at night: Dallas, Knots Landing, Dynasty.  

The obsessed way the U.S. public reacted to “Who shot J. R.?” was much more in line with the reactions of the folks back home to the palpable power of telenovelas.

Many years later, I became a playwright, and as a playwright who grew up in Mexico, I wanted to introduce U.S. audiences to stories that humanized and universalized my people. I’ve written serious dramas, musicals and crazy comedies. My plays were well received by audiences, but I sometimes noticed critics would incorrectly use the word “telenovela” to describe my work. In fact, this was a phenomenon that almost all my Latinx colleagues (writers, directors and actors) noticed when others commented on all our work: the incorrect use of the word telenovela to dismiss quality dramatic work by Latinx writers and actors and pigeon-hole emotion or scenes or poetic language onstage.

So I decided to purposely write the best stage telenovela I could, to show what a telenovela really is and to help clarify the confusion surrounding the melodrama of a telenovela. I wanted to examine my own ambivalent feelings about this popular and populist art form and to both honor and test the genre. I wanted to give a large cast of Latinx actors, musicians, designers and directors an opportunity to display their virtuosic chops to a mainstage audience. I wanted the play to be aesthetically beautiful. Writing Destiny of Desire became for me a subversive political and artistic act—and I’ve never had more fun in my life.

The process involved revisiting telenovelas, which are now shown in the United States: Univision and Netflix show dozens of telenovelas in Spanish from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Spain. Many of these shows are also exported to Asia and Eastern Europe. These stories have been re-adapted as well: Yo soy Betty, la fea became the hit comedy Ugly Betty; Jane the Virgin is based on the Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen. I marveled at the muscular storytelling, the heightened and stylized form, the surprisingly progressive undertones hidden in traditional archetypes, the brilliant use of music. And mostly, I was fascinated by the effect telenovelas have on the audience. How we start out rolling our eyes at the bigger-than-life lives, and yet, by the end, we cannot leave the couch because we are so invested. In a world where so much art is infused by irony, the sheer heart of these stories give millions of people around the world hope and solace and entertainment.

But just putting a telenovela on the stage didn’t give us enough context, so we decided to create a Brechtian Epic Theatre frame around the melodrama, to give the play additional substance and sharpness. The actors create the story and the actors are also an audience for the story. (You will see them watching from the sides of the stage.) No matter how crazy the antics get onstage, funny or sobering facts that the actors announce from the sidelines ground the plot and connect it to life in the United States. The actors introduce the scenes with placards, and they can break out in song at any time, although the play is not a musical. In the conventions of Brecht’s Poor Theatre, the actors move all the scenery, a reminder that theatre is powered by human muscle and can be done anywhere with any type of budget. And imagination is our biggest theatrical element: A piece of cloth becomes a desert, a door becomes a church, a red bicycle is our white horse. I was surprised at how the story started to have allusions to elements of Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, which were the popular art forms of their day. 

Destiny of Desire has been produced at three theatres before OSF—Arena Stage, South Coast Repertory, the Goodman Theatre—and I am lucky enough to have worked with master director José Luis Valenzuela since the beginning. We were all blessed by the faith of these theatres and now the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in having a playground in which to develop and grow this work. We built this play together with our acting ensemble (a number of the same actors have appeared in all the productions), composer and designers to both pay homage and test the power of the telenovela with a live audience. We wanted the play to make the audience feel alive and vested, because anything is possible in Destiny of Desire—and in the theatre.

Destiny of Desire plays in the Angus Bowmer Theatre through July 12. Tickets and information available at www.osfashland.org