How Tina D'Elia and Mary Guzman Help Us See Overlooked Latinas
Overlooked Latinas, written and performed by Tina D'Elia and directed by Mary Guzman, has been described as the "queer telenovela farce of our century." Playing at the Marsh in San Francisco, the story follows queer Latina best friends Carla and Angel as they try to get their TV show about yesteryear Latinx icons produced for a major network —and the headaches, high jinks, and highlights that follow.The Advocate: So, the most important question is, what inspired the story?Tina D'Elia: Yes, a couple of things inspired the story.
I mean, one was the research I was doing about the impact of the McCarthy era on Latinx artists … directly impacting Dolores del Rio and Rosaura Revueltas more in an obvious way because they were blacklisted and they were deported.But then also during the McCarthy era and the Red Scare, there was a blacklist that really blacklisted many artists of color that we never really hear about.
We hear more about the Hollywood 10. We hear more about white artists. If you go to a lot of the history, you may see Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, Richard Wright, and some other folks.But I want I wanted to really bring our history out because the past and the present are always connected.
History always repeats itself. We always find our way back to, you know, how are we being censored or ignored, how our stories being taken from us, how we're not telling our own stories, and also whether we're being whitewashed as characters or work that we're doing as Latinx folks from our past or present, but also queer people as well, and so Dolores del Rio being bisexual and Ramon Navarro being gay, I really wanted to, you know, really bring that history out.
