{"id":261233,"date":"2026-05-06T22:12:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T22:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/261233\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T22:12:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T22:12:59","slug":"usf-professor-tells-queer-migration-stories-in-new-tampa-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/261233\/","title":{"rendered":"USF professor tells queer migration stories in new Tampa play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CreativeCredit: Photo by Estefany Maya Photography. Design by Jack Spatafora.<\/p>\n

Dora Arreola looks good in black. She and her dance troupe, Mujeres en Ritual<\/a>, pose proudly for headshots in black turtlenecks and cowboy hats\u2014the kind of thing they wore in front of audiences around the world.<\/p>\n

For nearly three decades, Mujeres en Ritual focused on telling migration crisis stories through a queer, feminist lens. As part of Arreola\u2019s project, Queering the Border<\/a>, the troupe performed at migrant shelters and camps at the U.S.-Mexico and Mexico-Guatemala border.<\/p>\n

But when it came time to tell the stories they learned, black didn\u2019t work anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In her new play, \u201cQue el amor nos haga (Until Love Makes Us),\u201d Arreola and her troupe\u2019s characters learn to embrace their queer identities and indigenous roots as they struggle to immigrate to the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the first scene, where the characters walk with other displaced migrants, they wear black hoodies and sunglasses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were more accustomed to that,\u201d Arreola told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But rehearsing a scene in which the characters arrive at a gay bar in Long Beach, California, Arreola realized their usual look wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\"DoraDora Arreola Credit: Israel Josafa<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very minimalist,\u201d Arreola said. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Wait a minute, we are not minimalist. We are maximalist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So she turned to fashion designers in Tijuana.<\/p>\n

The costumes in promo shots are definitely maximalist\u2014beads, ruffles, lace, leather, denim and patterns blending modern queerness and traditional Mexican fashion in the Nueva Mexicanidad (AKA Neomexicanism) style.<\/p>\n

The work tells the story of three women\u2014a queer Dreamer (DACA recipient) and two separated lovers who are forced to flee Mexico and hope to reunite in the United States. Their journeys include \u201cdanger, interrogation, and a flock of unlikely guides,\u201d per the event description.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Presented in Spanish with English supertitles, the play incorporates live music, dance, and video projections.<\/p>\n

Mujeres en Ritual members Kenia Delgadillo and Aym\u00e9 Giles play the main characters with Arreola. The cast also includes dancer\/choreographer Miroslava Wilson and musicians\/vocalists Azzul Monraz and Gabriela Bojorquez.<\/p>\n

For Arreola, it\u2019s important to show audiences that even as her characters immigrate to the U.S., their identities remain unique\u2014just as hers has. Arreola has taught dance and theater around the world, from her native Tijuana to Italy, Nicaragua, Canada, Poland, India, Massachusetts and now in Tampa at the University of South Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cQueerness is pretty different in Latin America than the United States,\u201d Arreola explained. \u201cThis American history (in the) gay movement, in queer movement\u2026That is very powerful to everybody, to the world, but it\u2019s not the same.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Growing up near the border, she continued, \u201cTo me, everything that was coming from the United States was a question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through the play, she analyzes those differences and the questions she had growing up. Indigenous LGBTQ+ people in Mexico face discrimination that drives many to immigrate to the U.S., but Mexico also has a more progressive legal history than the States. Mexico decriminalized homosexual acts in 1871, which the U.S. didn\u2019t do until 2003. Today, Mexico has stronger anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ+ people\u2014U.S. laws that largely eroded in Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

When it came time to choose music for that scene in the gay bar, Arreola considered queer music she grew up hearing from the U.S., like The Village People and Gloria Gaynor\u2019s \u201cI Will Survive.\u201d Instead, she went with \u201cVen BB<\/a>\u201d and \u201cFierro<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 from Renee Goust, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter who reframes traditional Mexican music through a queer, feminist lens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Arreola approaches all of her work, including her theater and dance classes at USF. Her students, she said, are often nervous to talk about concepts like feminism and queerness in a state where Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried to silence such conversations in state classrooms. But Arreolla isn\u2019t afraid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFeminism moved theater forward. That\u2019s why we are in theater,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t analyze these texts from the queer perspective, that is a feminist perspective, we\u2019re not reading it correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art2Action founder and director Andrea Assaf<\/a> told CL that\u2019s exactly why she wanted the arts nonprofit to put on the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is important to resist the pressure and the tendency to silence ourselves and to back down in the face of political pressures that are akin to fascism,\u201d Assaf said.<\/p>\n

Art2Action co-commissioned the play for May 15-16 at Stageworks Theatre<\/a> along with several other national arts organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s centering women\u2019s stories. It\u2019s centering queer stories, LGBT plus stories \u2026these stories are also migration stories,\u201d Assaf said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI always think we learn the most about what a community is really facing when we look at the most vulnerable or the people who are holding the most intersectional identities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tickets start at $10 for \u201cUntil Love Makes Us \/ Que el amor nos haga\u201d happening Friday-Saturday, May 15-16 in Tampa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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