Josefina López, the celebrated Mexican-American award-winning playwright and screenwriter best known for creating the play and co-authoring the film Real Women Have Curves, was an undocumented five-year-old immigrant when she migrated with her family from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to the United States in 1974 to settle in Boyle Heights.
She was undocumented for 13 years and after high school, couldn’t go to college. She had to wait a year to be eligible after she became a U.S. Resident through the Amnesty Bill of 1987. It was during that year that she worked at her sister’s small sewing factory in Boyle Heights for six months before winning a playwriting fellowship in New York City.
In an interview with me in early 2025, López shared: “My experience in the sewing factory was extraordinary because I learned how powerful women really are, especially when they work together. I learned that although you may have a hard job you can still choose to find the joy in it, and when women come together you get the juiciest chisme [gossip] and stories. I was so inspired by all the fun and joy we had in the sewing factory that I wanted to show the world that Latinos are not victims, we are the heroes and heroines of Los Angeles and we are an important contribution to the U.S. economy.” And that led to her to write the play Real Women Have Curves.
After its world premiere on May 25, 1990, López searched for a theater in Los Angeles to present her play in the city that inspired its creation. But that turned out to be a very difficult undertaking. So on April 1, 2000 at the age of 31, López signed the lease for her CASA 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights, which is now celebrating its 25th Anniversary Season and is where some of the earliest performances of her play were presented. Earlier this year, her musical version of Real Women Have Curves opened on Broadway, fulfilling one of her theatrical dreams!
On Friday, September 12, Kentwood Players opens her play Real Women Have Curves at the Westchester Playhouse, 8301 Hindry Ave., Los Angeles 90045. Directed by Marco Rivera and produced by Rhonda Yeager-Hutchinson and Michele Selin, the production is presented by special arrangement with the Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois. Featured in the cast are Karol Avila, Vanessa Cardona, Lupita Hahn, Jean Mora, and Mayra Navia.
Both touching and funny, Real Women Have Curves speaks to the journey we all travel to find our true selves. At its center is Ana, a young Latina woman who navigates culture, tradition, expectations, and her own dreams to forge an identity and inspire those around her. Set in a Boyle Heights garment factory, the play captures the struggles five women face with immigration agents, partners, and social judgment while they strive to meet impossible production deadlines to keep their jobs and provide for themselves and their families.
Performance dates are Friday, September 12 through Saturday, October 4, 2025 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. will be added on September 20 and continue through the rest of the run.
Reserved seats are $25 with a $4 discount for seniors, children, students, and military, available online at www.kentwoodplayers.org, by emailing boxoffice@kentwoodplayers.org, or by calling (310) 645-5156. Group rates for 10 or more can be arranged with the box office.
As Baby Boomers reach their late seventies, tales of dementia cases fill the news, posing the question of how joy, love, and happiness can still exist when our memory starts to fade. Such is the story reflected in Dan Lauria’s latest play Just Another Day, a joyous and deeply moving love story about the complex nature of aging, making its Los Angeles premiere at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
Best known as the Dad on the hit television series The Wonder Years, Dan Lauria starred, recurred and guest-starred in over 70 television episodic programs, as well as in more than 20 movie-of-the-week productions and a score of feature films. As well as writing Just Another Day,Dan appears in it alongside Patty McCormack, who has more than seven decades of stage, screen, and television appearances including her Oscar and Golden Globe nominated performance in the film The Bad Seed at age 11.
Helmed by New York director Eric Krebs, Just Another Day is a captivating romantic comedy that celebrates the resilience of love with hilarity, pathos and meaning as a couple in their seventies meet daily on a park bench to exchange wits and barbs, wax nostalgic about old movies – and to try to remember how they know, and love, one another from day to day.
Given how most of us have cared or will care for a family member or loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, the play’s celebration of how the creative spirit never dies, even though memories have faded or been lost, celebrates the universal power of human beings to carry on and find humor in our everyday lives. As Dan Lauria shared with me in a recent interview, “A straight line to a comic writer causes a reflective response to come back with a punch line. The one thing both characters can recall is old movies, and the snappy dialogue from old romantic comedies,” with many images of the stars projected before and during breaks.
Performances of Just Another Day take place on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through September 28. There will be two additional weeknight performances, on Wednesday, Sept. 17 and Wednesday, September 24, each at 8 p.m. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. Tickets range from $20 to $43. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (310) 477-2055 or go to https://odysseytheatre.com