Gloria Estefan Joins Joy Huerta to Discuss Representation, Latin Music, and Broadway

Latina women took over Broadway on Tuesday night at the James Earl Jones Theatre to celebrate the new musical Real Women Have Curves, which officially opens on April 27. Post-performance, audiences were treated to a special talkback about theater and representation, featuring the show’s co-composer Joy Huerta and Latin pop icon Gloria Estefan, moderated by MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez.

Several other prominent Latina women were also present to show their support, including Sofía Vergara, Ana Navarro, Gina Torres, Jeanine Mason, Roselyn Sánchez, and Eva Longoria, who told the audience, “Thank you for being here and supporting not only the arts and Broadway, but for supporting us and our community.”

Based on the 2002 film and the Josefina López play of the same name, Real Women Have Curves follows the story of Ana, a young girl living in 1980s Los Angeles and making dresses with her mom and sister, all while dreaming of becoming a journalist in New York City. But with the family business on the line, Ana must decide between pursuing her own career and staying true to the community that raised her.

The musical stars Tatianna Córdoba, Florencia Cuenca, Justina Machado, and Aline Mayagoitia (a majority of the 19-person cast is making their Broadway debut), and the show features music from Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a book by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin. It’s a story that will make you laugh, cry, and feel for the characters on stage in front of you. As Estefan poignantly put it, “The most beautiful thing we can do is to put positive, beautiful, joyous things into the universe to counteract whatever negative things are out there already.” More from the evening’s discussion, below.

Alicia Menendez, Joy Huerta, and Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan: Well, there’s the mother-daughter dynamic that I experienced with my mother and experienced with my own daughter. The universality of the story that we all want and we need the same things: We want love, we want acceptance, we want freedom, we want success. We want to be able to enjoy our lives with our families and do what we’re passionate about. And that’s what’s beautiful about theater and what’s beautiful about these stories—that no matter where you’re from, you’re going to find something that you see of yourself on that stage.

Joy Huerta: I’m new to theater. I’ve been working in music for the past 20 years, and I’ve been going on tour with my brother with my band called Jesse & Joy. Theater was never even in my dreams, and when I was approached and the whole idea came to be, I was fascinated by the fact that I could have such big of a challenge at a certain time in my career. And then I realized it was a dream I never even thought I had. And this just became something now I’m addicted to—the fact that you can have a different type of storytelling and you get to shape it till it’s perfect.

Joy Huerta: When you have the source material, and it’s so good, where do you take it from there? You ask yourself, “How can I make this better if it’s already great at what it is?” And we just felt like if we would approach it in a different way, we could maybe find different angles in which the story hadn’t been told. And finding our cast, because that’s when we realized how much representation matters. We really had to go into the weeds and find our talent. It was very special to find them.

Joy Huerta, Benjamin Velez, Gloria Estefan

Joy Huerta: We really wanted for people to understand how different their stories were. [In the show,] we have Carmen, who was born and raised in Mexico; then we have Estela, the oldest daughter who was born in Mexico but brought over at a young age; and then we have Ana, who was born and raised in the U.S. That was so fun to approach through the sound, and I think that was key for us in terms of the storytelling of our show. The mom gets to show a different flair than what Estela can show with her mix of sound. Then you have Ana, with [more of a] pop-contemporary sound. In terms of telling the story, we got to play with so many different elements.

Gloria Estefan: The hardest thing to do is be this close to your audience. You don’t have the ability to look over their heads. When you’re in the theater, even in the dark, you can see the faces. I can tell you, as a performer, every time I’m going to get on stage, I try to open all my chakras and try to allow the energy to connect with the energy that is out there, because I want it to be an exchange. I don’t want them to be sitting there watching something; I want to feel them and have them feel me. The hardest things are intimate rooms because you can’t fool yourself about anything.