I’ve loved stories about fiery little girls ever since I was one. In elementary school, I was captivated by Pippi Longstocking’s relentless imagination and Junie B. Jones’s quick sass. In middle and high school, I was pulled towards Viola’s ferocious dedication to her sport in She’s the Man, and Katniss Everdeen’s hunger for the revolution in The Hunger Games. There has always been something spiritually satisfying about getting lost in a funny and fearless girl lead, whose know-it-all attitude and bark-scraped knees perform girlhood expansively, undermining patriarchal expectations. Even now, at 27 years old, I’ll ritually devour any story about a girl who crashes and clatters against convention, nourishing the younger self that lives within me.  

Newly added to my evergrowing list of beloved, fierce girl protagonists is Torera’s Elena María Ramírez. WP Theater’s delightful production of Torera, written by Monet Hurst-Mendoza and directed and choreographed by Tatiana Pandiani, tells the story of a girl in Yucatán, Mexico, who wants, more than anything else, to be a bull fighter (‘torera,’ in Spanish). Defying societal norms and her mother’s wishes, for years, Elena trains in secret with her best friend, Tanok, the son of the wealthy family for whom her mother works as a niñera (‘nanny,’ in English). Elena, played charmingly by Jacqueline Guillén, is loud, free-spirited, and unapologetic, ramming through life without regard for convention. And unlike Pippi or Katniss, Elena is Mexican, like me.

Naturally, I love her a mere instant into Torera’s first scene, as an overalls-clad Elena clunkily barrels up an orange tree against her mother’s rules. Her coming of age story is refreshingly peppered with cultural references instinctually familiar to me. Elena can’t help but pummel a glob of masa when helping her mother cook, instead of kneading it gently as instructed, like I so often wanted to after hours of wrapping tamales for Noche Buena in my Abuela’s small kitchen. Watching Torera, I found myself beaming, enchanted by a protagonist who exhibited the fierceness of my favorite childhood heroes, this time, against a cultural backdrop I recognized. It was a joyous experience.

If Elena’s lovable fierceness is the story’s heartbeat, Torera’s depth is limited only by her lack of variation and definition across time. I felt myself wishing the play more clearly and precisely tracked the transformation of Elena’s defiant, wondrous girlhood into the life she builds for herself as an adult woman. I wanted to know Elena’s vulnerabilities more intricately. I longed to know her sharp edges, fragmented shards, and the ways the light hit them differently as time went on. Torera is Elena’s story, and because I loved her so much, I couldn’t help but want better–more–for her than the play currently makes room for.

Bullfighting is the center of Elena’s world, and a central theme of Torera. A description on the theater’s webpage states that the play is not meant to “romanticize” the highly controversial sport, but to “respect the spirit around it.” But, even after watching the play, I’m not quite sure what the spirit of the sport is, or how this spirit is changed or reinforced by a woman practicing it (which, from the text, I can gather is unconventional), if at all. The play provides little context around the longheld tradition of bull fighting beyond the fact that it’s dangerous, male-dominated, and affords its champions fame and glory. What meaning does the tradition hold? Why does Elena chase the ring so desperately? What does the corrida do for her, within her, that makes it worth risking her life? Elena’s father died in the bull ring protecting Tanok’s father, Don Rafael (played by Jorge Cordova). Still, the play doesn’t locate Elena’s love for the sport within her specifically. Torera tells me over and over again that she wants to be a bull fighter, and is good at it, without manifesting how and why, leading to a certain level of flatness in the story, and a lack of development for Elena. In the absence of understanding both the broader cultural meaning of the tradition and its meaning to Elena, I found it challenging to align with her central objective, the play’s driving force, in a deep way. Still, I wanted to.

While it was easy to root for Elena, Torera doesn’t delve into gender and bull fighting enough to illustrate the significance of her relentless pursuit of it. This strikes me as a missed opportunity to fully develop and establish the feminist consciousness that the play gestures toward in Elena’s denial of traditional gender roles (she groans at the prospect of becoming a wife, and refuses to engage in the activities her mother finds fitting of a girl). Elena’s development from a girl into a woman, especially as someone with visions for her life that undermine the patriarchal order, should necessitate a meaningful confrontation with that order, and an intentional refusal of it.

A fortifying tentpole of Torera, the relationship between Elena and her single mother is rich and complicated. Elena’s mother, Pastora (played by Elena Hurst), is a niñera or domestic worker, as Pastora’s mother was before her. Like Elena and Tanok, Pastora was raised alongside Don Rafael , for whom she now works. While Pastora raises Tanok (played by Jared Machado), she and Elena are a class below him. This dynamic structures both families’ interpersonal relationships. While Elena and Tanok are best friends, Elena eats breakfast in the kitchen with Pastora, while Don Rafael, his wife, and Tanok enjoy the dining room. (A fact that Elena demands Tanok confront in an artful, graceful scene about the friends’ class differences.)

Pastora is a force of gendered discipline for Elena. Throughout Torera, she states that Elena should “know her place”, and expects Elena to become a mother and wife. She doesn’t think it’s befitting for Elena to climb trees, and she would never approve of Elena becoming a torera, so Elena hides it from her. Still, there’s a satisfying complexity to Pastora, and her relationship with Elena. Pastora is quietly fond of Elena’s fiery spirit, and at times, even stokes it,  even though that contradicts her desire to set what she feels to be safe, realistic expectations for her daughter’s life. Elena’s secrecy goes deeper than surface level self-preservation, too; hiding her training is also a way to protect her mother.

(Warning: spoilers below!)

Torera’s most jarring and memorable element, though not its most effective or impactful, is its telenovela-style plot twist, in which Don Rafael is revealed to be Elena’s biological father. (Cue the gasps!) It’s a fun nod to a genre that I, admittedly, have a soft spot for. But it verges on gimmicky — it doesn’t add much to Elena’s story except shock value. In the final minutes of the play, the audience is given information that, instead of enlightening the characters’ past actions, almost renders them nonsensical.

Still, the play’s final image, one of Elena’s power, resilience, and fighting spirit, moves me. I, a sentimental, devoted fan of defiant girl characters, cannot help but surrender to it. Commanding in her glittering gold traje de luces (suit of lights, the traditional garments worn by toreros), Elena looks fear in the face. She is the fiery girl from the play’s beginning, made rageful and resolute by life, ready to kill.  

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Torera is extended at the WP Theater through October 26.

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