Mariana Herrera remembers a brunch when she met up with her girlfriends and noticed they were all fanning themselves. As menopausal symptoms began to appear in their lives, Herrera envisioned how this part of womanhood would look on stage. Inspired by this encounter, she wrote a comedy script she knew an audience could relate to. She named it “The Fan Club.”
“People want to see themselves and their experiences on stage,” said Herrera, whose work is one of four one-act plays featured in Casa 0101 Theater’s latest production, “Mujeres on the Verge,” now through March 23.
The show, featuring the works of four Chicana playwrights, Lindsey Haley, Maria G. Martinez, Raquel Salinas and Herrera, is the first production of a landmark season as the community theater celebrates its 25th anniversary and Women’s “HER”story Month.
Herrera’s “The Fan Club” centers on Sonia, the youngest of four best friends, as she navigates tough choices in life, love, and business, all the while experiencing perimenopausal symptoms.
Herrera was one of the original playwrights for “Chicanas, Cholas, y Chisme,” a theater workshop and festival that started in 2012 to foster and highlight the works of Latina creatives. Since then, she has written and presented numerous plays and films over the last decade, including a two-year stint acting with Teatro Mestizo in San Diego and plays at California State University, Los Angeles.
Boyle Heights Beat spoke with the Chicana playwright about her writing, using real-life experiences as inspiration and finding a supportive creative community at Casa 0101. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This is a production by women Chicanas. How powerful is it to be a part of and be represented in this production?
Mariana Herrera: I love it…I think it’s important to support women, inspire and encourage. I had that feeling all my life, and so for me to find someone like Josefina Lopez (Casa 0101’s founding director), who is very inspirational, she’s very generous with her time and her words and encouragement, I jumped on that right away.
She’s quite a woman of vision and words and action, and I love that about her. She has inspired us to write, direct and produce plays. Four of us, Lindsay Haley, Sylvia Chavez, and Maria Martinez and myself started doing “Chicanas Cholas y Chisme,” and we did that every year and had a show. We had a lot of other women coming on board writing the most amazing stories. It allows us to speak to our experience as Latina women and the very different way that we encounter our lives within our community and in the broader context.
What was the writing process like? How much do you bring your personal life into work?
Mariana Herrera: More than anything, it’s observational. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, and my subconscious mind speaks to me, and I can envision a scene. Little words or little snippets or conversations that I have with individuals that may be my friends or people that I’ve met, and it gives me ideas. That’s sort of the way my mind works and how my plays are brought to the stage.
What do you look to when deciding what stories should take the stage?
Mariana Herrera: I love comedy, and I think often that in our everyday life, we encounter so many tragedies and a lot of sadness that I sort of like to give a reprieve to my audience and give them something fun to deal with, something enlightening, something absurd.
I see the absurdities in life and I sort of look at it like ‘Let me turn this absurdity into something funny’ so that people can laugh. It’s a coping mechanism, and then I find that my audience really relates to it. I have also written a lot of serious plays and they’re okay to do but my forte is writing in Spanish and writing comedies.
How important is community theater for you and telling the stories of people like you in a community like Boyle Heights?
Mariana Herrera: Well, I think it’s it’s inspirational to be able to see your own brothers and sisters and talk about our experience. We see ourselves on stage, women, Latina women and men see themselves in our experiences, and they relate to it and they enjoy it and go away, I think, with a sense of satisfaction and happiness. It’s profound for them. I can say this to you because I hear it after the plays. People always come up to us and thank us and relay to us what they got out of the plays. I think it’s a very impactful way to interact with our community.
What do you want audiences to walk away with after watching this series of plays?
Raquel Salinas stars in her own play, La Mano De Dios (The Hand of God), as part of Casa 0101’s production of Mujeres on the Verge. Photo by Rudy Torres. 
Scene from Pleito (Rumble), a one-act play written by Lindsey Haley part of Casa 0101’s production of Mujeres on the Verge. Photo by Rudy Torres. 
Scene from La Noche de Anoche (Last Night), a one-act play written by Maria G. Martinez for Casa 0101’s production of Mujeres on the Verge. Photo by Rudy Torres. 
Raquel Salinas stars in her own play, La Mano De Dios (The Hand of God), as part of Casa 0101’s production of Mujeres on the Verge. Photo by Rudy Torres.
Mariana Herrera: When we first started doing these plays, and I went to the reading, what I noticed is that there’s something for everybody here.
Every woman, every man can relate to it…The quality of work is very good and most of our shows, when we were doing “Chicanas, Cholas y Chisme” were sold out because word got around and people wanted to see themselves and their experiences on stage.
“Mujeres on the Verge” is playing at Casa 0101 (2102 E. 1st Street) and has shows at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and at 3 p.m. Sundays through March 23, 2025. Tickets are $25.00 for general admission, $22.00 for students and seniors and $20 for Boyle Heights residents.
To purchase tickets, call the CASA 0101 Theater box office at 323-263-7684, e-mail tickets@casa0101.org, or buy them online. This show has a PG-13 recommendation.
