Meet Lauren McConnell, who wrote and supervised the production of a play called Maytags. She works for Central Michigan University teaching Theater. She grew up in Washington State and currently lives in Mount Pleasant, Michican with her husband, daughter, dog, and cat.
VV: Thank you so much, Lauren, for doing this!
VV: What is the storyline behind the play?
LM: Maytags tells the story of a young Mexican-American mother who is befriended by a lonely older Anglo-American woman as they are doing their laundry in a public laundromat. They don’t really have much in common, but the older woman, Lucillle, has a tremendous need to connect with people and the younger woman, Silvia, is a struggling single mother, so the play ends suggesting that Lucille will become a sort of surrogate grandmother to Silvia’s children. Lucille has a strong personality, though, so the relationship will undoubtedly be bumpy. Hopefully the relationship will be beneficial to both of them in the long run. Or at least that’s what I hoped for the characters at the end of the play.
VV: What inspired you to write Maytags?
LM: When growing up, my mother worked with migrant farm workers from Mexico on an educational project that followed the children as they moved around. This allowed the kids to continue in school and make progress, because they didn’t have to start over in school every time they moved. So my experiences growing up and traveling to different migrant farmworker sites with my mother inspired the encounter that occurs in Maytags.
VV: What made you decide to perform the play, Maytags, in Spanish?
LM: I wrote the play in English originally, but because it has a Spanish speaking character, I thought it would be interesting to see how it worked as a play in Spanish. I have a friend from Mexico, so he and I worked on the translation together. It was a fun project.
VV: Have you previously done a play in Spanish?
LM: No, this is its premiere. I submitted Maytags to the Repertorio Espanol in New York City, and the dramaturge was encouraging about the play being put on somewhere even though it wasn’t right for their company. So I have been looking for a chance to have it produced for a while.
VV: Are your actors and actresses native Spanish speakers? If not, how did they come to learn Spanish?
LM: None of our actors are native Spanish speakers. They all have studied Spanish in high school and at Central Michigan University, however. Our director, Colin Russell, is going to study in Chile this summer. Damon Timm, who plays the “amiable man,” has travelled extensively in Latin America. Chelsea Sigler, who plays the role of Lucille, is a Spanish minor and Molly Epstein is studying Spanish as part of her requirements to get a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre at Central Michigan University.