Theatre on the Border in Cherrie Moraga’s The Hungry Woman A Mexican Medea

The essay considers the work of the playwright Cherríe Moraga. It traces similarities and differences between The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea, Moraga's 2001 play, and the Euripidean work. It also considers a 2005 production by the Drama Department at Stanford University which was part of the ‘Rite to Remember: Performance and Xicana/Indigena Thought’ or R2R Project. This was a yearlong programme that focused on indigenous thought and non-European approaches to performance hosted by the Drama Department during 2005. The essay explores how Moraga combines indigenous performance practices with elements of European theatrical traditions in order to rewrite the ancient Greek myth for present-day audiences. I argue that this is achieved through the creation of a uniquely ‘borderland’ performance space within which she can restage and symbolically invert dominant, patriarchal and heterosexist dramatic traditions.