Torera Reviews
Stage Raw- Recommended
"...Playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza's Torera spans 18 years and is set in Yucatan in our own times, bridging the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. Directed by Jude Lucas, the play is about a young woman who yearns to be a bullfighter, and it's billed as the tale of one determined gal's challenge to patriarchy and tradition. While this Davida-Goliath theme is certainly predominant, Torera is also very much a love story, with something of the aura of another-time-and-place romance, one involving two people whose love is viewed as verboten because of rigid class distinctions. At its most ambitious, the play strives for a macrocosmic perspective, signaled by its inclusion of ill-crossed lovers and its reflection on the responsibility of human beings for their choices."
Nerds Of Color- Recommended
"...The strength of this production lies in its main actor, Melissa Carvajal, who is simply magnetic and radiant as Elena María Ramírez. She does a remarkable job believably starting the play as a child and transitioning into her 20s but more so than that, she carries immense gravitas and commitment into her emotions and her physical form as a matador in (secret) training. It also helps that Carvajal is a professional dancer in real life so her movement being so precise and graceful is not a surprise."