By Jenny Patiño –

A group of women veiled in black congregate onstage. They chant in chorus to a woman sitting high up in a lunar enclosure, a gauzy globe. She strums a guitar while the women sing alternately “luna” or “Ixchel, Coatlicue…Tonantzin,” the names of goddesses. Chicago’s all Latina theatre ensemble Teatro Luna has arrived and they’ve brought their revamped show “Lunatic(a)s” with them.

Like Ixchel, the multitalented Mayan goddess of weaving, the moon, and fertility, Teatro Luna has somehow managed to intertwine heartbreak, humor, and healing through a series of monologues and hysterical song and dance numbers.

This show has everything.

No lie.

Though we may be removed from nature, the show implies, we are still affected by its cycles. The show straddles the boundaries between chaos and control, nature and city life, ancient Mayan culture and modern pop references. Ixchel watches the insanity of the various characters that cross the stage, women who are each trying to find a way to survive the powerful tides of emotion. Each woman in the audience can identify with these everyday bouts of crazy and therein lies the catharsis of watching this show.

These monologues and routines are based on real life experiences, which accounts for the variety and depth of characters. About her interactions with men during PMS, one character quips that she should quarantine herself for a week like a werewolf. There’s a song and dance number about how the modern woman se hace pendeja, and another ironically cheery number about being a proper Latin girl. Another piece explores issues of domestic abuse from the point of view of a 6 year old girl watching Star Trek and idolizing Spock for his rationality.

“‘We are obviously highlighting the idea of urban lunacy and how we are all a little bit crazy according to modern standards,” says Alexandra Meda, managing director for Teatro Luna. “All of our work comes from the perspective that our stories matter and our histories matter, and I think that’s very much true with this production.”

For Meda, one of the most aesthetically moving pieces of the show “is during one of the Ixchel threads, when they’re talking about stories being passed on mother to daughter, mother to daughter.”

About the importance of Teatro Luna, Meda says that it “is one of the only place sin the country where Latinas can come together and create and I think that it’s really something amazing for the audience to see that on stage, to hear their stories, and see their bodies onstage.”

Maria Enriquez, performs in Lunatic(a)s and is credited in the playbill with having led the choreography for the hysterical “Proper Latin Girl” number. She says her favorite part of the play is the ending monologue. She feels this is what best sums up what the show has come to mean to her.

“As a single woman living in Chicago, the ending resonates because we’re all just trying to get by as best as we can, single married, young, old,” she said.

The audience also responded to the show.
“Lunatic(a)s” filled the crowd with energy, almost as if all of a sudden everyone that had been in the audience was in a rush to use their voice. It was awesome, absolutely wonderful,” gushed Maria Camarena an audience member. “I’d seen one of their performances before and it just blew me away.”

“We’ll show you crazy!” is the tagline for the “Lunatic(a)s” show and you better believe they mean it. “Lunatic(a)s” will run at the Chicago Dramatists until December 20.

Like good gossip, it’s something you won’t want to miss.

Jenny Patiño is a student at Columbia College Chicago.