From left: Yolanda (Guadalís Del Carmen), Rosa (Maricelis Galanes), Maria (Ashley Marie Ortiz, top) and Chavela (Nicole Betancourt) play borinqueñas (Puerto Rican women) in the 1950s in Nelson Diaz-Marcano’s Las Borinqueñas.
Nelson Diaz-Marcano wrote Las Borinqueñas to honor Puerto Rican women, like his mother and grandmothers, who work hard, raise children and serve their communities. But his bilingual play’s awkwardly presented fact-based component—concerning the clinical trials for the first birth control pill, which were conducted in Puerto Rico in the 1950s—seems to get in the way of his affectionate personal portrait.
Fernanda (Maribel Martinez, left) and Maria (Ortiz) are in love with each other but married to men.
“In Puerto Rico, you don’t have to follow the same set of rules,” says a doctor about testing the contraceptive outside the continental United States. Hundreds of women were recruited, though often not informed they would be testing an experimental drug—rather, it was offered as medication to ease menstrual discomfort that could also prevent pregnancy—and not warned about potential side effects.
Three of the five fictional borinqueñas (Puerto Rican women) in the play are those unwitting test subjects. Yet that experience is only part of their story. Diaz-Marcano opens a window on their lives: their friendships, their differing personalities, the recent sociopolitical turmoil in their homeland, the constraints on women of their economic means at that time and place.
Yolanda, Fernanda, Maria, Chavela and Rosa have been close since childhood, when they “lived in shacks and mud.” Now they reside in San Juan public housing (after Puerto Rico became a U.S. commonwealth in the early ’50s, the government relocated people from rural slums to newly built housing projects). Levelheaded yet feisty Chavela (Nicole Betancourt) and her dreamy, naive sister Rosa (Maricelis Galanes) had briefly moved to New York City, but—homesick and optimistic about societal change in Puerto Rico—came back and got married. They’re friends with another pair of sisters: Fernanda (Maribel Martinez), unhappily married to a boor, and Yolanda (Guadalís Del Carmen), who considers herself married to the father of her children, though he lives elsewhere with his actual wife.
“Discovering these details of the women’s lives is the pleasure of Las Borinqueñas.”
Yolanda is both judgmental and protective of the others, especially now that Maria (Ashley Marie Ortiz), another childhood friend and Fernanda’s secret love, has returned to town. “I’m the reason you are both alive today,” Yolanda tells Fernanda, who was quickly married off after her relationship with Maria was found out. Maria left to attend university and married a fellow Nationalist protester, but she lost her scholarship because of her political activism, and he has been imprisoned.
Discovering these details of the women’s lives is the pleasure of Las Borinqueñas, and the scenes with all five—gossiping as they fold laundry together or gathering to watch Yolanda’s wondrous acquisition, a TV—definitely are high points of the production. There are tender, revealing one-on-one scenes as well. The appealing actresses create memorable characters and moments, particularly those when Maria and Fernanda are fighting their attraction and lamenting their unfulfilled dreams.
Fernanda (Martinez, left), herself overwhelmed by marriage and motherhood, comforts her sister Yolanda (Del Carmen). Photographs by Valerie Terranova
The women talk about deciding to take the contraceptive, hear about fatalities among women on the medication, and learn that this was a drug trial—so the history could have been relayed through just the fictionalized story line, perhaps supplemented by a few narrative projections. Instead, the cast of characters extends to the real-life doctors who ran the trial, Gregory Pincus (Paul Niebanck) and Edris Rice-Wray (Hanna Cheek), in scenes that seem highly expository and dramatically forced, with the inclusion of Pincus’ wife, Lizzie (Helen Coxe), of dubious necessity.
In the second act Rice-Wray and Pincus clash: She’s concerned about the pill’s harmful side effects and wants to discontinue testing; he dismisses the women’s health complaints as “gossip that makes things seem bigger than they actually are” and fudges statistics to move the project forward. This changes the subject as far as what the play is villainizing, from the exploitation of Puerto Rican women to the clueless arrogance of male doctors. While the latter certainly deserves condemnation, the play is at its best when it keeps the focus on its title characters.
Throughout the show, historical information is also provided via hokey bits from the radio and television (Mike Smith Rivera portrays a broadcaster) that sound more like a present-day perspective on the ’50s than how people spoke of the era then:
Move your feet to the unique sounds of Tito Puente and his mambo, which I bet could be the new sound of the blooming ’50s. In an age of stability and scientific discoveries, mambo may just be what you need!
It's 1955, and the world is about to change.
The period is accurately captured by Tina McCartney’s costumes. Overall, Las Borinqueñas thrives as a depiction of a specific group of people at a specific time in history. It is not as successful, however, at gracefully folding in its science-themed lesson.
Las Borinqueñas runs through April 28 at Ensemble Studio Theatre (545 W. 52nd St.). Performances are 7 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday; ensemblestudiotheatre.org.
Playwright: Nelson Diaz-Marcano
Director: Rebecca Aparicio
Sets: Gerardo Díaz Sánchez
Costumes: Tina McCartney
Lighting: María-Cristina Fusté
Sound: UptownWorks (Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, Noel Nichols)
Projections: Milton M. Cordero
