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Asked to adapt a classic play, this writer rethinks his life


Growing up in Puerto Rico, she learned that being weird meant she had to like men, “but I never wanted to be around them,” she said with a laugh. She began writing for the pleasure of pursuing a double major in journalism and theater at the University of Puerto Rico. “I don’t date and really don’t like sports,” she explains, so she finds solace and unexpected joy in the works of Beckett and Ionesco.

This led to an interest in modern theater, including productions such as “An Octoroon” by her Future Hunter professor Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. One of her mentors, Puerto Rican playwright and performer Sylvia Bofill, suggested that she write her own plays.

When she moved to New York City for college in 2017, Vélez Meléndez noticed that gay and transgender people were everywhere. “There are transgender girls on the subway, lesbian couples holding hands on the street, anything can happen,” she said. Soon, she added, she found a safe space between her theater colleagues and new friends, who allowed her to experiment with her gender expression in different ways. which is apparently banned in Puerto Rico. When she sat down to write, her sister had already begun to transition, and Vélez Meléndez wanted to include a transgender character as an homage.

Originally, it wasn’t Lolita who was transgender, but the front desk character. Lolita is inspired by Real-life Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón, who, in 1954, led an attack on the United States Capitol, resulting in the wounding of several members of Congress. Writing the scene where Lolita talks to the front desk clerk about decolonization makes the playwright feel horrible.

“It was the TERF-iest I ever stayed with myself,” she explains, using the acronym for “radical feminists exclude, ” A term used to describe feminists who are of a homosexual nature. “Here I told this transgender character that they have to free themselves when they did it years ago.”

Dissatisfied with the manuscript she presented at Hunter, Vélez Meléndez said she was shocked by the encouragement she received from her classmates and professors. Jacobs-Jenkins then introduced her to director David Mendizábal, executive producer Soho Rep, who helped make the play a success by asking, “what if Lolita were transgender?”



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