Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Las Borinqueñas is a new play set in the 1950s in Puerto Rico. Mambo-filled radio airwaves and TVs were the hot new gadget. Five women were lifelong friends, Maria, Fernanda, Yolanda, Rosa, and Chavela. In the play, they fight for agency over their lives. A part of that effort is taking a new so-called miracle drug that doctors said could prevent pregnancy. Here's the catch.

The women taking this drug weren't fully informed that they were actually participating in a trial of an unproven drug that had proven dangerous side effects. The doctor leading this research saw these women in Puerto Rico, women who had no other real contraceptive options as a group that could fulfill the large-scale trials required to get this new drug to market.

The play introduces us to the researchers behind the pink pill, doctors Gregory Pincus and Edris Rice-Wray, how they withheld the trial's true nature, and how they justified their decision. The show is titled Las Borinqueñas, and it's at the Ensemble Studio Theater, and it was just extended through Sunday, May 5th. Joining us to discuss is playwright Nelson Diaz-Marcano. Nelson, welcome to All Of It.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Thank you so much for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: It's a pleasure.

Kousha Navidar: Also joining us is the play's director Rebecca Aparicio. Welcome so much. Thank you so much for joining us.

Rebecca Aparicio: Thank you so much for having us.

Kousha Navidar: Nelson, the play is centered around this large-scale trial for the pill in Puerto Rico. Let's start with some context. Why did women in Puerto Rico choose to participate in this trial, and how much did they know about the pill they were taking?

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Well, they chose to participate in the trial because ultimately, they thought that it was safe. Most of the women thought it was safe to do so. There was an overpopulation problem in Puerto Rico, and the only thing they were offering really was a standardization most of the time without them knowing. After having three kids, they would just do it. It was a thing that they just pushed to be able to hold on to kids. There is the fact that there were families with over 10 kids happening all the time.

There is an example that I put about a woman being 30 and 10 kids. That's a real woman called [unintelligible 00:02:38] that had kids when she was 16, and there's plenty of that. When this came out at the same time that Puerto Rico had just become a Commonwealth and Americanism was being pushed hard and the nuclear family specifically was being pushed as the solution, this was presented as that miracle, that special bandaid that will just be put and everything will be fixed.

Little did they know that they were being experimented on, they were Guinea pigs for these doctors that couldn't do these trials in the United States because they were not only frowned upon, they were illegal to do so.

Kousha Navidar: Illegal. Tell me more about that, what made them illegal.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Well, first birth control was just not a subject that most of the church or the government wanted to deal with. They were in Massachusetts specifically. Specifically, Dr. Pincus had already been chastised shown from the community for doing experiments about it with rabbits in the 1930s. The research was used to do in-vitro fertilization and other ones, other medications, but he was thrown away into a basement in Harvard for years because it was such a shame.

In the 50s, they started creating more of the idea that overpopulation is going to take the resources, that there's going to be problems if we don't curl this malice that was happening. It was easier for them to do the birth control as a subject, but there was still the problem that the church would not agree to it and that ultimately the government was not trying to get that in. They didn't try to fight the church.

They didn't want to create this immoral pill because the whole idea was that women wanted this to not have more babies, but in men's minds, the government's mind, they wanted to have sex, to be free sex, to be free, which is great, be free, but at the times, obviously the freedom of women was very scary for men.

Kousha Navidar: This leads us to the real-life events that happened in Puerto Rico. Rebecca, when did you first learn of the story and what was it about Nelson's script that drew you to directing this piece?

Rebecca Aparicio: Well, I first learned about it when I read the first draft about four years ago when Nelson started working on this commission. I was shocked as I usually am. Nelson and I have been frequent collaborators for over 15 years now. I learned so much about the history of Puerto Rico and America's part in the pushing down of the Puerto Rican people. Reading about this was shocking to know that this happened to fellow women in the Caribbean and being Cuban-American without their informed consent.

That is something that I was really passionate about helping bring to life on the stage. I love the way that Nelson always is able to infuse humor despite the pain, despite the chaos. That spirit of women being able to be survivors despite of the fact that they were being experimented on without their consent was something that really, really drew me to the script.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you are just joining us, we're talking about a new play Las Borinqueñas, which was just extended through Sunday, May 5th. We're talking with Rebecca Aparicio, who's the director, and Nelson Diaz-Marcano, who is the playwright. Nelson, I want to touch on something that you said in one of your earlier responses about part of the story being based on the experiences of a real-life woman in Puerto Rico.

You wrote this story around five female characters who are lifelong friends, and the dynamics between them are so varied and palpable. Are they based on anyone in particular, either historically or personally? How did you find those characters?

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: They are based on every woman that was part of my life in Puerto Rico. I think about a lot of the times that I lived there and the dynamic of my mother with her friends, lifelong friends that they known each other, and some of them were 20 years older than her, but the way they talk about everyday news every day-- I grew up in a time in Puerto Rico when you put a pin, that it was very politically charged and there was a lot of discontent and there's still a lot of discontent but during this time, it was the moment that assimilation has taken over and people were starting to be like, "Oh, no, what's happening?"

Those things were not discussed the way that we discussed it with hindsight or history or things like that. Those things were discussed in my living room with these women just talking about it like it was just another piece of their day like there was nuclear bombs in vehicles and there's people having cancer and it sucks, but it also is, "I have to go get the kids."

Seeing that, seeing the idea of what people live during tragic moments or important moments is always been more fascinating to me than only exploring the actual event that the cataclysm that creates the other thing. These women specifically are the kind of women that I always saw always smiling. Chavela is like my friend Jenny. She's like my aunt. She always had a dirty joke to say even in the worst times. She always made us laugh. My mom was just like that too.

Then there was the other ones that was always offended by it like Yolanda, but they were always understood each other. Everything else that makes me so proud to be Puerto Rican is that spirit of these women that made me the most proud. I wanted to create something that not only taught the history of what was happening in Puerto Rico, which is American history if they going to make us a colony, please, admit that this is American history, but also just a celebration of the spirit that keeps Puerto Rican identity alive, which is these women are mothers.

Kousha Navidar: Rebecca, I'd love to hear how you see that as a director playing out through the characters we see on stage. There's five of them. That spirit, I saw the play last night, it seems like that comes out in different ways for these characters. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Rebecca Aparicio: Yes. I think the sisterhood was really important for us as a company to build because it is so baked into the play that even when they're saying really harsh things to each other, it's like the way that I interact with my little sister. We'll say really brutally honest things to each other, but it's said with love and with humor. Even when it's not said with humor, we know that at the end of the day, we have each other's backs. I think that that was really important to us to capture that Nelson already baked into the play with each other.

Building that in the rehearsal room, not only with the five of the women, but also with the other four actors in the play. It was really important for us to feel like we all have each other's back as we are encountering these really difficult subjects that we're talking about sterilization of women without consent. We're talking about the inability to have power over your own bodies. That is something that's very much in the forefront in 2024 today. I think that, building that comradery and that trust in the room was essential to capturing that on stage.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about the other four actors that you had mentioned. In the play, there are two sets of characters. There are the women who are front and center, and then there are the scientists behind the trial. I found this characterization very interesting. Nelson, a question for you.

We go behind the scenes and see the private interaction between these pretty well-known doctors who you say, like, in American history, we know who these folks are, but we see behind the scenes private ways that they interacted with each other during this chapter. When writing the dynamics between these two doctors, was that based on correspondence you found in your research or how much of that was creative conjecture?

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Both. There's a lot of research that happened that is in my head, and you try to put it as much as possible there accurately but ultimately, you're trying to tell a story to entertain so people can get engaged. Telling an engagement story, you have to read between the lines of the conversations that were happening around these subjects.

There is a lot of correspondence between them that I read that made me think about what the relationship would be and I built their backstage, the behind-the-scenes moments through those just thinking about their voices through the letters and how they spoke to each other, it gave me an idea of how as characters they needed to speak to each other too.

Kousha Navidar: Just to be clear, because I forgot that I didn't say this, it's Gregory Pincus and Edris Rice-Wray, who are the two doctors that were talking about that really spearheaded in some ways, especially Dr. Gregory Pincus, these trials. Rebecca, another character that we don't see, but we hear about is Margaret Sanger who provided funding and is the controversial founder of Planned Parenthood. How does this cause tension between the two researchers, Gregory Pincus and Edris Wray on the project? Because that was a pretty important part of the show.

Rebecca Aparicio: It's something we wanted to tackle dramatically, which is the context of the history of the fact that Margaret Sanger was a known radical eugenicist and that yes, there were so many advancements for women and planned parenthood and the pill itself was her holy grail that she searched for her whole life and found the funding to get Gregory Pincus to start this research and make this pill happen.

We really needed to wrestle at the fact that she was a eugenicist, that her views on population control were to keep folks with disabilities having children, folks that were from countries that were struggling with poverty from having more children. We wanted to wrestle with that in the play and so the concerns that come up are that Edris Rice-Wray is concerned about Gregory Pincus' partnership with Sanger.

We know that historically, it may be that she didn't actually struggle with this, but it was important for us to struggle with that in the play. That is one moment where we wanted to highlight the fact that there were some views that played into the fact that this happened in Puerto Rico.

Kousha Navidar: If you're just joining us, we're talking with the director and the playwright of the play Las Borinqueñas, which was just extended through May 5th at the Ensemble Studio. We're talking with Rebecca Aparicio and Nelson Diaz-Marcano, director and playwright, respectively. We've been talking a lot about people. Let's talk about place as well, because this is an important part.

Rebecca, for you, a majority of this play takes place on the island of Puerto Rico, but we're introduced to some of these characters in New York City, actually right at the top. How do you distinguish between these two geographic locations in the show, and why is it important?

Rebecca Aparicio: It was important for Nelson and for us to start the play in New York to show the fact that in 1952, 1953, there was a large migration because of Operation Bootstrap from folks in the island to go to New York. Then folks that got here thinking that they're going to be in the promised land and have a better life and realizing that that was not necessarily the case, and so we start with the two sisters, Rosa and Chavela, who have been in New York working and discovering that the American dream is not all they thought it would be.

Now that Puerto Rico is becoming a commonwealth, they decide to journey back to Puerto Rico. That was really important to show the conflict that is happening at the time within Puerto Rico and outside of Puerto Rico as people struggled with Puerto Rico becoming a commonwealth and becoming part of the United States, and how they can reconcile what the American dream is and what it becomes once it's a reality once they're here in New York.

Kousha Navidar: If you had to describe that American dream, which I think gets referenced once maybe in the show, that sense of like, "Oh, this is what we were promised." Nelson, how would you describe that vision for people back then?

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Oh, man, this is a loaded question in the best way because honestly, the way that they sent to America. Don't get confused about it, Puerto Ricans in general just want to be Puerto Rican. We love our island. We're obsessed with our island. There is the battle that statehood wants and all that, but we don't want to lose our island. The American dream was sold to us in a time of extreme poverty, extreme warfare against Puerto Ricans themselves.

There were people that were getting disappeared because of folders, FBI agents. Literally, we're the first citizenships, well, the second citizens if you consider the Tulsa massacre, but we're the first citizens that got bombed by our own government because they wanted us to become a commonwealth. When we voted for the Commonwealth, it wasn't because we wanted to, it was because we were tired of fighting. We were tired of the war, and we thought this was the best choice.

The American dream is that for us during the 50s, we have become Americans, now we get to enjoy America, which is streets of gold, jobs all the time. You are going to be rich. It's the same American dream that every immigrant have. That's why almost every immigrant family knows that there's thin cans with sewing machines and little things in it because we all can have the same immigrant story about in America.

We all were told that this country was better than the one we love just to get here and realize that the best we could do is try to bring as much as we could here with us to be happy. That American dream in the way that they saw it is the fact that you were coming here, they won the World War II, they obviously have all the power. There cannot be anything wrong with America. Racism is over, this is the place to be.

When you come here and you realize that all of a sudden the white skin and that in your island gave you a little bit of privilege, doesn't give you that privilege anymore, and you're just a person that is going to get bullied, not getting any jobs and things like that, people start realizing that. There's so many other aspects about it besides that, but I think the big problem with the American dream for these people is that just like the trials, they didn't tell them what they had to deal with. They didn't tell them what they had to deal with to be successful here.

Kousha Navidar: In the play, I saw at least so many examples of being in Puerto Rico and the milieu of the time, like the zeitgeist saying, "This is the 1950s. It is a moment of great expansion in technology and rights for people, and hey, you are going to enjoy exactly all the things you're describing." I found that time period to be such an important character in and of itself in the play.

Rebecca, I understand that there was a dialect coach for a play on the set. I'd be fascinated to hear about how you tried to make sure that the 1950s came through and the role that it played in characterizing all the things that Nelson's talking about.

Rebecca Aparicio: Our dialect Coach Rosie, was an integral part of the team because we wanted all of the women, so we have two of our cast members who are from the island, are from Puerto Rico so they naturally spoke with a specific rhythm and a specific lilt. It was kind of infectious with our other three actors and so as it was starting to form in our workshops, it became clear that that was something that we should try to capture across the board, and that it would be consistent.

Not that everyone would have a very specific Puerto Rican dialect, but that we could all match rhythm and cadence because that's so much a part of the way that Nelson writes and the way that the script is written. Rosie did a great job of bringing all of the women to having a similar rhythm, a similar cadence. Then it was also important for everyone to have the correct Spanish dialect and Puerto Rican Spanish and that included all the actors.

A lot of the American, we call them Americans in the show, they also took the dialect coaching lessons to be able to pronounce things properly in Spanish because Edris Rice-Wray was fluent in Spanish, which has made her a key part of the studies. Then also Mike, who plays our broadcaster and has that wonderful radio voice, he also plays Pablo a Puerto Rican man, so it was also important for him to have the correct dialect.

Kousha Navidar: It was a wonderful radio voice. I just got his--

Rebecca Aparicio: Yes, he does.

Kousha Navidar: I realize while I'm saying this now in the context in which I am in right now, so that must mean something, but when I listened to it, I thought, "Oh, that's a really nice radio voice. I'd listened to that." How else did the 1950s come through for you? I noticed television, I noticed lighting. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Rebecca Aparicio: Yes, radio is such an integral part that Nelson baked into the play. The information they're getting from the radio. Also the introduction of the TV, the first TV signal in Puerto Rico was live in 1954. The women have this TV for the first time in their homes and the way that they are interacting with an additional layer of media. Then there was all these commercials that Nelson found in his research that were also critical to showing that time period, that idea that the woman takes care of the home and she has all these new appliances to help her.

That juxtaposed with the reality of these women because the women that were participating in the trials, a lot of them were living in public housing, the Luis Lloréns Torres public housing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and that their reality was they had to work, but they're getting these images of commercials of Fab detergent of the woman staying at home with an apron preparing the meal for her man when they're having to do that and also work.

I think that media consumption that we're all also super familiar as Americans of the dishwasher and the washing machine, and the perfect life to be a perfect housewife, really played into the socioeconomic politics, I think, of the time. It was important for us to engage with that as we think about the woman's place in 1950 versus a woman's place in 2024.

Kousha Navidar: I love that. Before you had brought up the importance of not just Spanish, but Puerto Rican Spanish, the lilt specifically, a big part of this show, Nelson, is that it's a bilingual production. It goes in both Spanish and English. I was curious, what's your process for writing a bilingual script and how do you balance keeping the play accessible?

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: This, for me, it's like, I like to write how I speak. Not really. It's mostly like when we try to do these plays, these things where they take us to this lands, usually, we take a little bit of the culture by keeping not just the language, but the rhythm of how we speak. We all have different rhythms. Even in the whole ombre of the Latine community, like my wife is Mexican, her family sounds nothing like a Puerto Rican. It's not even the same Spanish.

It is a thing that when you cannot just say the same-- People like to say the same basic words, but I think, to keep it honest for me, to keep this celebration of women, to show what Puerto Ricans are and how they speak, a lot of it is about the things they say. I grew up in the country, I grew up in literally where you have to go and chase chickens to get an egg for breakfast. The way they talk is the musicality of it all. There's joy in it.

Finding how to say the words in English and mixing it with the Spanish in a way that people doesn't miss the point or miss the joke or just the intention is the challenge, but it's not that challenging when you realize that all language is the same. It's the same body language, it's the same way we react to it. Like, yes, it's not the same actual words or intonation, but ultimately, the reactions you have are going to be very similar.

In a way, this is opening the door for other people to be interested in Spanish, for other people to be interested in English, to see how they mix as we become more and more together as Spanglish become a bigger, bigger language. I think it's time for us to recognize that it is something that, moving forward, is going to become bigger.

Kousha Navidar: Not to put words in your mouth, but I'm asking a door to enter into the story and to learn about it.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Yes, exactly. It's one of those things that not only do you know the story, but you actually get to know the culture in a way that the culture is. The jokes that Chavela says, Chavela specifically has a lot of Spanish in it. It's mostly because her jokes are very Puerto Rican and they're very, very much like things that she says out loud. I have seen a lot of people that know Spanish, which in New York is plenty, react to it in a way that is like they have heard that for the first time.

For Puerto Rican, it's like nostalgia, but at the same, both people are interested and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, what are they saying?" Also shout out to Nicole, which sometimes will ad-lib the line. I put them actually in the script because it was always so funny. I just find the Puerto Rican colloquialism to be so full of joy. Even in anger, you think that there's happiness between the anger. There's a reason your anger is not just for violence. It's because your happiness is being taken away. I wanted to represent it the best way possible.

I think the language, even though it's not our language, our own language is Arawak, the Taino language, it is the language we have learned to speak to each other, the three races that made Puerto Rico into one. For me, it was just like, how do I invite these people into my house without me saying, "Spanish only"?

Kousha Navidar: Well, the play is titled Las Borinqueñas, and it is currently running at Ensemble Studio Theater through Sunday, May 5th. My guests have been playwright Nelson Diaz-Marcano and Director Rebecca Aparicio. Thank you both so much.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: Thank you.

Rebecca Aparicio: Thank you for having us.

[00:25:12] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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