AMERICAN THEATRE: “Titles are a really big thing for me,” said playwright Alvaro Saar Rios, who has given his newest play a really big one: Quetzali and the Comic Book Queen vs. the Alebrije of Darkness: Live in the School Cafeteria, bowing at Kentucky’s Lexington Children’s Theatre, Feb. 7-16, before touring in early May. “Even now, as an adult, if I saw a play that had such a long title, I would be like, ‘You know what? I’m curious what this thing is.’”
4 comments:
As soon as I saw the title of this article I thought wow this seems like such a cool idea—there are plenty of popular franchises in the modern day based on ancient mythology from Egypt to Greece to the Roman Empire (Rick Riordan’s multiple book series obviously, video games like Hades and its sequel, and EPIC: The Musical just to name a few), but I haven’t seen much modern media focusing on ancient Mesoamerican legends despite there being such a strong and fascinating canon. The playwright clearly had the same feelings, as he talks about being inspired by his son’s interest in Greek mythology. The play is also part of the TYA BIPOC Superhero Project, which seems really cool and beneficial both to theatremakers and to their young audience. The focus on superheros is a good choice for appealing to kids, and it’ll be awesome to see if any of these plays end up becoming common choices for children’s theatres!
Playwright Alvaro Saar Rios is right: even just hearing the title of his play makes me curious to see what it’s about! I also love the idea of using Aztec mythology in popular stories. There is so much modern media that incorporates ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology, but I have seen very little which builds on the mythology of ancient Mesoamerica. The legends and myths of ancient Mesoamerica are richly intersecting stories that create a wonderful base for modern stories. I love that this playwright is utilizing that and in a way I have never seen before. Beyond this play, the TYA BIPOC Superhero Project sounds like a really cool program. Superhero plays are a great idea to interest young audiences, and I hope that connecting young audiences with playwrights of color and characters of color will allow more young audiences to see themselves on the stage and in theatre.
This project is super cool! What an amazing way to inspire kids by giving them representation of super heroes who look like them, and also giving playwrights the opportunity to see their work produced! Long titles are in fact interesting. One of the first shows I did was “The Iliad, The Odyssey, and All of Greek Mythology in 99 Minutes or Less,” which is abbreviated as “TITOAGM99ML”. As you can probably tell this is not a great acronym, so we just called it “The Greeks”. I feel like we’re often discouraged from creating long titles, opting for single words or phrases that could mean a million different things none of which will actually call to mind your show. Long titles not only identify your piece but also throw in a little hook for the audiences, giving them a logline of sorts for the show. After all, what gets you interested in a Netflix show? The title or the one sentence is all you need to know part?
Seeing the name Quetzail worked really well to bring me to read the article in the first place, so he is definitely right about it capturing that curious positive attention. From the bit of synopsis that was in the article about the play, it reminds me about the story books I used to read when I was younger, the art style in the banner doubly so, with the colors and line art. I think it would speak well to children as I remember loving those books I read and always wanting to read more and I hope this gives that experience to many more children and gets them excited to see more live theatre. A coming of age story with discovering superpowers is such a fun concept to work with and I am excited to see ones that aren’t based on Greek mythology. With the amount of greek mythology media I have seen, this article makes me realize I should seek out a larger base of mythology that I should be just as knowledgeable with.
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