Melinda Lopez
As a playwright, actress, college instructor and parent, Melinda Lopez knows how to juggle multiple hats. In fact, the idea for her play, Sonia Flew came to her about five years ago when she was performing in Miami.
She met a cousin in Florida, whom she learned had been part of Cuba’s Operation Pedro Pan. Lopez, whose parents emigrated from Cuba to South America and then the United States, had never heard of the story of the Pedro Pans and did not know that her cousin had been part of it. “That incredible saga has always stayed with me,” she said Lopez, who researched Operation Pedro Pan through interviews and books, said she became fascinated with the idea of the lengths parents must go to in order to keep their children safe.
Operation Pedro Pan occurred between 1960 and 1962 when Cuban parents sent more than 14,000 children to Miami, unaccompanied, with fake American visas. With Castro’s rise to power, parents were afraid the state would revoke their parental rights, and their fears were heightened when the government closed religious schools and sent young women to teach the uneducated to read. Although Pedro Pan parents planned to reunite with their children, some were never able to, and the children were placed in foster homes around the country.
When she began to write the play, Lopez also became interested in the feelings of patriotism that were sweeping the United States immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, and the stories of young soldiers going to war. “Somehow the two stories became tied together in my mind,” she said. “Out of this whirlwind of many thoughts emerged this woman.”
The play begins in Minneapolis in December of 2001, and then travels back to Cuba in 1961. It tells the story of Sonia, who was sent by her parents to America as one of the Pedro Pans. As an adult, she lives a comfortable middle class life, married to a Jewish husband. But when her son, Zak, joins the Marines, she must come to terms with her past, her parents’ decisions and the choices of her children, especially Zak. Lopez said she did not write the two stories of Sonia’s past and the present situation with Zak separately, but developed the parallel stories together.
“Through the whole thing, I had no idea what was coming next,” she said. Lopez said she wanted Sonia’s family to feel very contemporary and the mixing of American, Jewish and Cuban traditions was important to the play. “I know so many Cuban women who are married to Jewish men,” she said. Although the historical events in the play are accurate, Lopez said the characters are completely fictional and not based on her cousin’s story or anyone she knows. She said she made the discoveries about the characters as she was writing the play.
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