Joy Huerta initially approached the idea of musical theater with hesitation.
When director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo invited Huerta in 2019 to help adapt Josefina López’s play, 'Real Women Have Curves,' into a musical, she was uncertain about the project.
Known primarily as one half of the pop duo Jesse & Joy, Huerta was unfamiliar with the 1990 play and had never seen the popular 2002 film adaptation starring America Ferrera. However, after reading the script, she quickly understood why this story could resonate powerfully through song.
“I was really excited because I thought, ‘Anyone can connect with this,’” said Huerta, 38, who composed the music and co-wrote the lyrics with 37-year-old Benjamin Velez. Their work has culminated in a Broadway musical set to open this Sunday.
Set in 1987 in Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, 'Real Women Have Curves' delves into the immigrant experience through the lives of Latina women working in a garment factory. The story centers on an 18-year-old torn between staying home to support her undocumented family members and pursuing a scholarship at Columbia University in New York. The production was previously staged in 2023 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Shortly after the Broadway run began this month, Huerta, Velez, and Lisa Loomer—who wrote the book alongside Nell Benjamin—shared insights about their creative approach and inspirations for adapting this story for the stage. Additionally, Tatianna Córdoba, 25, who plays the young protagonist Ana García, discussed her Broadway debut and deep connection to the role. Here are five key things to know about this production.
More than a decade before the 2002 film captured audiences, 'Real Women Have Curves' began as journal entries by López, a teenage undocumented Chicana documenting her experiences working in a Boyle Heights sewing factory.
At just 18 years old, López expanded those notes into a play. Premiering in San Francisco in 1990, the show has been widely performed since. López, along with George LaVoo, also wrote the screenplay for the film, which marked America Ferrera’s cinematic debut.
Loomer, who also lived near Boyle Heights in the 1980s, drew from the original play while introducing new characters. “The film is quite different from the play, and the musical differs from both,” she explained. “But they all share the same DNA.”
With body positivity a relatively recent cultural focus, Loomer adapted the story’s celebrated embrace of fuller-figured bodies to resonate with today’s audiences. One prominent character, Ana’s outspoken mother Carmen—who prioritizes family—frequently criticizes Ana’s weight in the film.
“Regarding Carmen, I felt she would be better understood if we set her in 1987,” Loomer said.
For the musical, the character’s harsher edges were softened. On Broadway, Justina Machado plays Carmen, a role originally portrayed by Lupe Ontiveros in the film. The revision offers less body shaming and more context to explain Carmen’s generational and cultural motivations, though some subtle criticisms remain, like suggesting Ana skip a meal.
“You want to dislike what she says, but at the same time, she isn’t trying to demean Ana,” Huerta noted. “She’s processing her feelings as she speaks, and that’s where it comes from.”
Striking the right balance was delicate, Loomer added: the team wanted non-Spanish speaking audiences to follow the story while preserving its authenticity.
“At home, they wouldn’t speak English, especially not in the factory,” she said. “So it was important to convey the sense of Spanish—the rhythms—while ensuring English-speaking audiences could understand.”
Sixteen of the 19 cast members are of Latinx or Hispanic heritage, most making their Broadway debuts. “I love seeing that when the curtain rises each night, people think, ‘Wow, that could be me on stage,’ or maybe my aunt, cousin, or family member,” Huerta said about the diverse cast.
During the Cambridge performances, the creative team experimented with how much Spanish to include in the songs. “We never wanted the Spanish to pull people out of the story,” Velez said. “It was a dance to find the right balance.”
The musical takes place in the summer of 1987, during a Reagan-era amnesty program for long-term undocumented immigrants. (In a departure from the play and film, Ana is the only U.S. citizen among her family and coworkers. The rest, including her older sister Estela—factory owner—and mother Carmen, are undocumented and work in the factory.)
“I made this change because it heightens her family’s need for Ana to stay,” Loomer explained. “It also increases Ana’s sense of responsibility and guilt as she contemplates leaving to pursue her dreams.”
Loomer also expanded the undocumented characters, adding Guatemalan and Salvadoran women, including Itzel, a gentle and vulnerable 17-year-old indigenous Guatemalan refugee who sings about overcoming life’s challenges in “If I Were a Bird.”
“One of the beautiful things about setting a play in the past is that it shows you what hasn’t changed,” said Loomer, who has spent much of her four-decade career writing plays about Latinx and immigrant experiences. “Sometimes it allows you to see the present more painfully.”
For Tatianna Córdoba, making her Broadway debut as Ana, the family dynamics hit close to home.
“Many of the mother-daughter exchanges Justina and I share remind me a lot of my grandmother,” said Córdoba, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area with Costa Rican and Filipino heritage. “There’s that maternal judgment, but also love.”
Discussions about body image also rang true for Córdoba, who studied ballet in her youth before feeling pressured to quit. “I realized early on, during puberty, that my body was changing differently from many of my ballet friends,” she said.
One thing she wished she had as a teenager was the self-confidence her character embodies.
“Ana is who I wanted to be at 18,” Córdoba said. “She has faith in herself and confidence in her body that I wish I’d had then. She’s far more focused on everything else going on—her mind, hopes, and desires.”
She especially enjoys a scene in Act II where the fuller-figured women in the factory joyfully strip down to their underwear, celebrating their bodies. The moment often draws mid-performance applause.
“There’s something contagious about seeing others happy and brave,” Córdoba said. “I think that’s why audiences stand and applaud—they feel truly empowered and loved at that moment.”
