Leguizamo reached fame in 1991 with his show of a single “Mambo Mouth” man. He has starred in films from “Carlito’s Way” to “Moulin Rouge!” to the “ice age” franchise. He won an Emmy award in 1999 for his solo show “Freak”, and a special Tony award in 2018 for “Latin History for Modes”.
More recently, the MSNBC documentary series “LEGUIZAMO DOES AMERICA” has produced and organized, where the culture and Latin roots of US cities stand out, and “American history” of PBS, where Leguizamo draws the history of Latinos, from civilizations thousands of years to Modern America.
While Leguizamo is recognized by his solo shows, he said he is “so good” and a “relief” to be on stage with a complete cast.
“People do not understand how difficult a single -man show is,” said Leguizamo, explaining that after the initial emotion disappears, acting can only become exhausting. “But now, being with all the incredible cast … It is incredible to share the stage with so much talent.”
Latin stories have found success in Broadway, in musicals like “The Buena Vista Social Club”, “On your feet!” and “in the heights.” But there have been much fewer works that examine the Latin experience of the United States that have reached a broad audience, being the “Anna in the Tropics” of Nile Cruz as a remarkable exception.
Arredondo, who plays Norma in “the other Americans,” said the title of the work refers to the duality that informs the life of Latinos. “We live in a world where people always say: ‘Where are you from?’ Or, ‘What nationality are you?’ If you tell people that you are American, they still ask, but, “where are you really from?”
For her, the title plays about the reality that even Latinos born in the United States often still look as part of a separate group.
But Arredondo describes the work as “a fundamentally American story.”
“I love this work because it can happen in any background. It could be an Irish family, it could be an Italian family,” he said. “It could be a family in the west. It is being carried out in a Latin home in Queens, but it could be the story of anyone.”
She said it is rare to see Latinos represented in films or on television programs that do not focus on the “Latin” of a character, or in an immigration story.
In contrast, Arredondo said: “This work is a family, how the family is taken. It is family love, it is family support, it is family loss.”
