On January 17, She Was Here, a play about real Latina women in Austin, premieres at Austin Playhouse's new interim theatre space off of West 22nd Street. Although the story is fictional, it was compiled through interviews, making it a truthful rendition of Austin across 70 years.
Written by Austin's renowned Raul Garza and directed by Jerry Ruiz, this poignant but lighthearted play is about how Austin, and culture more generally, have changed over the decades. It's about how women's roles are shifting—moving forward, and sometimes backward; it's about mothers and daughters, and it's about the relationship between people and the space around them.
As Garza puts it, "What imprints do places leave on our soul, and what imprints does our soul leave on [a] place?"
The play was originally written and developed during the pandemic. Garza had received a grant from the city during a time when theatre could be written, but not attended.
"It was a time when there was nothing going on," says Garza, "so we just kind of got reacquainted with what was around us."
For this play's devising team, which included Garza, director Jerry Ruiz, Katie Bender, and mother and daughter Giselle de la Rosa and Chamila Muñoz, what was around them was Austin.
"I wondered what it would be like to wake up 50 years in the past, 60 years in the past, and revisit the exact same physical space but with a new sensibility," says Garza.
A photo of Ester, one of the women whose stories inspired the play. Photo courtesy of Raul Garza
With this idea, Garza and the team began talking to multiple generations of Latina women from Austin, starting with Garza's own mother who went to UT. From there, they expanded their conversations to include multiple groups and multiple family members—activists, mothers, daughters—all via Zoom or the phone. They asked them, How did you get here? What hardships did you encounter? What was it like for you then?
The story that began weaving itself together showed that despite changing times and a changing place, the little things in life always remained the same.
The play, starring Tonie Knight, Alyssa Hurtado, Vivian Noble, and Yesenia García Herrington, is inspired by these stories; but it doesn't focus on any one of them autobiographically. Instead, it follows the lives of two imagined families in one imagined house over the span of decades.
"We see this one consistent place, a physical house, that we imagined was somewhere in the Rainey Street neighborhood," says Garza. "And we see what happens to the lives of the people who inhabit that space, from the 50s through 2020. So it's like you're a fly on the wall, if you could be a fly on the wall in your grandmother's house. The setting is definitely a character."
Joann, pictured here with her family, was one of the women interviewed for this play.Photo courtesy of Raul Garza
At first, this might sound like a play about how things are getting better over time, but of course, it's not that simple. Austin is being developed, and depending on who you ask, we're better or worse off than we were a few decades ago. The same goes for women's rights; it certainly hasn't been a linear progression.
"In the wake of our latest election, it really made us stop and think," Garza says. "Wow, they're talking about the ERA March in 1975; we're talking about the ERA March in 2025. What is going on here?!"
Though the play covers some important and at times heavy topics, Garza says it's also a lot of fun; he hopes the audience comes away with a new appreciation for Austin, for those around them, and for the stories we all hold.
She Was Here is showing at Austin Playhouse Theatre at 405 West 22nd Street, from January 17 though February 9. Tickets range between $24 and $38 and can be purchased online.
