Carmela Full of Wishes

Feliz Cumpleaños! It’s Carmela’s birthday, and she’s finally old enough to tag along with her big brother as he runs the family errands. Passing by the bodega and the lavanderia, Carmela picks a dandelion and makes a very important wish… Carmela Full of Wishes illuminates the beauty of working class neighborhoods and the power of community and family. Told through the lens of a heartfelt sibling story, this endearing play explores what hope looks like in a migrant community steeped in Mexican culture.

Recommended for Pre-Kindergarten and older.

The performance is performed in English and Spanish with translation.

A Note from the Director

Carmela Full of Wishes is such a special piece of art. It explores a very modern subject of immigration and a family separated. It also explores the importance of finding joy and hope through everyday struggles and loss. 

Our path as a collaborative team was to honor these characters through exploring personal experience, knowledge, and culture. We used this same approach with the bilingual translation of the script. With the understanding that Spanish has nuances based on region and familiarity, we worked as a group to determine the level and comfortability of Spanish with each character: Mami is comfortable in her own skin and uses spanish fluidly, Papi weaves between the two languages as a way of survival and practice, Big Brother distances himself from Spanish because he’s seen what has happened to Papi, and Carmela honors the person she speaks with by speaking in their language of choice. We rooted the translations in both Central American (Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadorian) and Tejano Spanish because that’s where the cast is from and what we know. 

We hope you enjoy this offering,
Laura Moreno