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Josefina Lopez (Co-Scenarist)
Real-life experience as an undocumented worker in an East L.A. sewing factory provided Josefina Lopez with plenty of ammo for her stage play, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES. Since its 1990 premiere at Teatro de la Esperanza in San Francisco the work has continued to arouse audiences to tears and laughter at numerous venues, including Seattle Group Theatre, Sarasota's Asolo Theatre, Dallas Theatre Center, Victory Gardens in Chicago and many colleges and universities.
"It was an immediate hit," says Lopez. "I think audiences were disarmed because it talks about many different issues under the guise of being a comedy about a girl coming of age."
Born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Lopez and her family came to the U.S. when she was five. Josefina lived undocumented in Boyle Heights for almost 13 years, until she received her legal residence through the Simpson-Rodino Amnesty Law in 1987.
"My mother was a seamstress and my older sister sewed for Catalina. Another sister used her settlement from an automobile accident to buy a small factory, and that is where I worked."
The play was immediately optioned by producer George LaVoo after seeing it in December of 1998 at Glaxa Studio in Silver Lake. He and Lopez subsequently crafted a screenplay which, among other things, changed the focus from the character of Estela to her younger sister, Ana. "My play was about five women and a radio in a sewing factory, fearful every second of an INS raid. The characters and situations are composites of women I worked with and the stories we exchanged," she explains. The character of the Mother also underwent a transformation because "we needed more of a true antagonist for the film."
Though the film is less broadly comic than the play, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES retains lots of humor and emotion, and in 2002 the screenplay received the coveted Humanitas Award, jointly shared by Lopez and LaVoo. The film was honored twice at the 2002 Sundance Films Festival - with the Dramatic Audience Award as well as a Special Acting Award for its two stars, Lupe Ontiveros and America Ferrera. It opened the New Directors/New Films series at New York's Museum of Modern Art and was screened at the Toronto and San Sebastian film festivals in September.
Lopez started writing for her junior high school newspaper in Boyle Heights. She is also a poet, filmmaker and performer, currently working on a documentary about her 96 year old grandfather who was alive during the Mexican Revolution, and who shared his many stories with her. "There's an oral tradition in my family. My mother is a good story-teller and I have a great memory for details and dialogue."
Josefina was 17 and a member of the Young Playwrights Lab at the Los Angeles
Theatre Center when she wrote her first play, "Simply Maria or the American Dream." It went on to win an Emmy®. Other plays include "Confessions of Women from East L.A.", "Food for the Dead," "La Pinta," "Unconquered Spirits" and "Boyle Heights."
Lopez completed her undergraduate degree in 1993 at Columbia College in Chicago, after attending both NYU and UC-San Diego. She obtained her MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA Film & Television School where she began writing 'Real Women.' Next spring, she will make her directorial debut with her own original screenplay, "Add Me To The Party," a fast-paced comedy about three Latinas with A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder). Lopez recently received a "Women Making History" citation from Senator Barbara Boxer and has a Screenwriting Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She founded CASA 0101, an art space in Boyle Heights where she teaches writing and digital filmmaking to Latino youth.
"My mission is to bring live theatre, digital filmmaking, dance and art to the future storytellers of L.A., and to be a catalyst in the artistic renaissance of Boyle Heights."
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