The Mathematics of Love

TheatreUSF presents The Mathematics of Love.

By Cherrie L. Moraga
(with Ricardo Bracho)
Directed by Dora Arreola

Thurs, Sept. 29 – Sat, Oct. 1 @ 7:30 p.m.
Sun, Oct. 2 @ 3 p.m.
Theatre 2, USF Tampa Campus

Director: Dora Arreola
Costume Design: Sarah York
Light Design: Anthony Vito
Sound Design: Matthew Cowley
Projection Design: Samir Bernardez Cabrera
Set Design: Tyler Stentiford

A woman takes her sunglasses off while an older woman looks away in the background.

A woman reads from a scroll in front of a servant.

An older woman smiles while dancing with her crying daughter.

A young woman puts on a native head dress.

An elderly couple sit at a bar and talk to a bartender.

Calculating the gains and losses of love, present and past -- the sum of what we can remember.

The first show of the TheatreUSF 2016-17 Season -- The Mathematics of Love opens in the lobby of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel at the turn of the 21st century. At the top of the play Peaches, an aging (and mid-staged Alzheimer’s) Mexican woman and her husband sit in the lobby of the hotel, awaiting the arrival of their son who is to throw them an anniversary party. Enter MalinXe, a 16th century indigenous woman, dolled up and trailing designer suitcases, who turns Peaches into her slave girl. Through Peaches’ mind, the play spans five centuries of indigenous memory and geography from Pre-Columbian Mexico City to Mission-era California to contemporary Los Angeles.

This show contains mature themes and dialogue.

Don’t miss the special events surrounding this show with playwright Cherríe Moraga, including a free public lecture and book signing on Sept. 28, noon-2 p.m. in the Grace Allen Room of the USF Library; and a post-show discussion with the audience following the Sept. 29 performance.

Art2Action’s Artistic Director, Andrea Assaf, states, “The title of our groundbreaking series, ‘THIS Bridge: Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim Artists,’ created in partnership with USF, was inspired by Cherríe Moraga’s seminal work on women of color feminism. We are honored to have the opportunity to bring Ms. Moraga to Tampa, in celebration of the re-release of This Bridge Called My Back—a book which has inspired and empowered an entire generation of women writers, activists and scholars. We are pleased to collaborate with the USF School of Theatre & Dance on the production of this important new play, The Mathematics of Love, particularly under the direction of Dora Arreola, an internationally accomplished artist from Mexico who has directed several of Moraga’s plays, professionally and academically. We’re very excited to share this provocative, timely, and moving work with our Tampa community.”

Playwright Cherrie Moraga’s residency, September 27-30, is co-sponsored by Art2Action, Inc.

The Mathematics of Love is co-produced by Art2Action and the USF School of Theatre & Dance, also in partnership with the USF Humanities Institute, USF ResearchOne, the USF Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Arnold and Louise Kotler Memorial Endowment Fund.

Cherríe Moraga

Cherríe Moraga is a co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, republished in a new edition by SUNY Press in 2015. As a political and literary essayist, she has published several collections of writings, including A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness -- Writings 2000-2010. Moraga is the recipient of the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship for Literature, the American Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Lambda Foundation’s “Pioneer” award, among many other honors.

Her most recently premiered play, New Fire: To Put Things Right Again, which she also directed, opened at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco in 2012. A collaboration with visual artist, Celia Herrera Rodríguez, over three thousand people witnessed the work. In 2017, Moraga will premiere a new work, the award-winning The Mathematics of Love, a theatrical conversation with her forthcoming literary memoir, The Native Country of a Heart – A Geography of Desire.

For nearly twenty years she has served as an Artist in Residence in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She has mentored a full generation of published writers and professional playwrights who credit Moraga as one of their most influential teachers. Cherríe Moraga is an activist writer, who sustains an engaged schedule of appearances on college campuses, at activist and academic conferences and in community settings both nationally and internationally. She is also a founding member of La Red Xicana Indígena, an advocacy network of Xicanas working in education, the arts, spiritual practice, and indigenous women’s rights.