Valiente

by Melíza Gutierrez

After losing a memento from her late mother, Valentina recalls a difficult time in her life where she struggled to find her purpose and embrace her Latinidad. She delves into her memory and relives her time at an elite private high school during her father’s deportation and her subsequent estrangement from her mother and her own identity.
With college applications, lawyer fees, social and familial obligations...

After losing a memento from her late mother, Valentina recalls a difficult time in her life where she struggled to find her purpose and embrace her Latinidad. She delves into her memory and relives her time at an elite private high school during her father’s deportation and her subsequent estrangement from her mother and her own identity.
With college applications, lawyer fees, social and familial obligations, Valentina watches as her younger self, Val, struggles to cope under the looming threat of her imminent future and uses poetry as a means of escape from her own mind. By immersing herself into her memories, Valentina rediscovers everything and everyone that made her the woman she is today.

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Valiente

Recommended by

  • Liana Irvine: Valiente

    Jan 2022 please see TWT review

    Jan 2022 please see TWT review

  • The Workshop Theater: Valiente

    The Workshop Theater is pleased to recognize Melíza Gutierrez as a playwright selected out of a competitive pool of applicants for our Fall 2021 Writer’s Intensive. The Writer’s Intensive is an eight-week long, playwright-driven process geared towards revising an existing play. Poetic form and melancholic language drives this play into a realm beyond voyeurism – witnessing. VAL/VALENTINA take us through memories of adolescence, home, and family. Spanning loss by ICE, terminal illness, and internalized racism, this play is someone growing up, and us understanding why. Our congratulations and...

    The Workshop Theater is pleased to recognize Melíza Gutierrez as a playwright selected out of a competitive pool of applicants for our Fall 2021 Writer’s Intensive. The Writer’s Intensive is an eight-week long, playwright-driven process geared towards revising an existing play. Poetic form and melancholic language drives this play into a realm beyond voyeurism – witnessing. VAL/VALENTINA take us through memories of adolescence, home, and family. Spanning loss by ICE, terminal illness, and internalized racism, this play is someone growing up, and us understanding why. Our congratulations and thanks to Melíza.

Development History

  • Type Reading, Organization Brown Bag Theater Company, Year 2020

Production History

  • Type University, Organization University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Year 2022