The production, which is expected to open on Broadway in 2024 after regional tests next year, will follow Kahlo’s life from Mexico City to Paris and New York, and back to the famous “Casa Azul” where she was born and died in 1954. Entitled “Frida, The Musical,” the show will include music by Jaime Lozano and lyrics by playwright Neena Beber, and will be produced by Valentina Berger.
Much has already been said about Kahlo, but the creators of the musical hope the show offers a fresh look at her life, shedding light on previously untold details and personal stories about the beloved artist. It will be partially based on the book “intimate frida”, by her niece Isolda P. Kahlo, and informed by conversations with Kahlo’s family in Mexico. Although there have been other attempts to turn Kahlo’s life into a musical, this is the only one that his family has officially signed on to.
“In all the stories I heard when I was little, our family remembered Aunt Frida as a very happy woman,” Mara Romeo Kahlo, universal heiress to Frida Kahlo’s legacy, told The Washington Post. She “she was passionate about music, arts and Mexican culture. ‘Frida, The Musical’ honors everything she was: a real woman who fought for her dreams, she loved like no one else and was always ahead of her time.”
Though Kahlo merchandise sometimes portrays the artist as a bubbly feminist icon, and art historians tend to focus on her physicality and emotionality. suffering, depicted so vividly in their work, the musical’s creators say they want to capture something more three-dimensional. “We really want to see Frida through a broader perspective,” Lozano said in a phone interview.
Berger agrees. “Everyone knows a colder Frida, a suffering Frida, but she loved life,” said Berger. “She was very, very funny. That is what we want to portray. She used to have a sad vision of Frida, like, ‘Oh, the poor woman.’ Now knowing that she was so smart and intelligent, I look up to her.”
Beber, the playwright, is excited to capture the playful side of Kahlo that she thinks is often overlooked. “I really connected with the humor of him,” she said. “I think he didn’t know how funny she was, that she had this wry, dry sense of humor. She really was from the village.”
The musical is just the latest of many forays into Frida’s life. The 2002 biopic “Frida” (starring Salma Hayek as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as her husband, painter Diego Rivera) received mixed reviews. More recently, the artist has been fodder for immersive experiences, including “Mexican Geniuses.” His estate also recently announced that he is developing a television series. based on his life and work.
For Beber, the seemingly endless content does not mean that Kahlo’s life is already over. “Why do people keep doing Shakespeare?” she said. “Why do people keep finding ways to make ‘Hamlet’ exciting? How many self-portraits did Frida make? Quite. I think there is room for multiple Fridas. We want to bring our own passions, love, interests, pain to your story. May there be many Fridas”.
His personal story certainly has a dramatic quality. The artist had an affair with Russian-Ukrainian revolutionary Leon Trotsky during his volatile marriage to Rivera. A streetcar accident at age 18 damaged her spine and pelvis, leaving her with chronic, debilitating pain. Throughout her life, she often painted from bed and described her own body as fragmented, bleeding, split in two, as if she were trying to make sense of her decomposition. She died at 47.
But there is also a lighter side to Kahlo, according to Berger, who visited the Kahlo family in Mexico last week and compares Kahlo and her three sisters to the “Kardashians of Mexico.” Berger says that he found out that before Kahlo left on her trip, she told her sisters to give her husband a bath. “I mean, how close do you have to be to your sisters to suggest something like that?” Berger said.
Throughout Berger’s journey, he also gained other insights into Kahlo’s life, which he hopes will serve as the basis for the musical. He visited the basement of Kahlo’s mother’s house, where Kahlo hid when Rivera became violent. He listened to Kahlo’s family play the songs that Frida used to sing. He heard first-hand accounts from Frida: how she was always laughing and telling crazy stories.
Lozano also visited the Kahlo family, who asked him to write the music for the production. The composer, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 2007, has spent much of his career telling Latino stories and says he relates to Kahlo, who, like him, was a Mexican immigrant in New York at some point in her life. the life of him.
“She is a great inspiration, not only as an artist but also as a warrior,” he said. “With everything she went through, she kept fighting, making her own art, telling her own story. As a Mexican, to tell this story and bring this authenticity to the show, I feel really honored.”
Ten songs have been written for the musical so far, two of which Lozano premiered at the “american songbook” series at Lincoln Center in April. A song, “At”, captures Kahlo’s persistence, and even joy, in the midst of suffering. It is based on a famous Kahlo quote, related to her chronic pain, which often kept her bedridden: “Feet,” she said, “what do I need them for when I have wings to fly?”