Camareno as "El Diablo" for Wicked Lit 2014, Revisits Role in 2026
Joe Camareno created the role of "El Diablo" (The Devil) for prolific playwright Jonathan Josephson's original script, Las Lloronas. The play was originally produced by Unbound Production's Wicked Lit in 2014. Josephson's script draws on the Mexican legend of La Llorona (The Weeping Woman), sometimes known as La Malinche, a native Nahua woman who is said to have betrayed her people by working as an interpreter and intermediary for the Spanish Conquistadors.
La Malinche, later Doña Marina, was probably between 8 and 12 years of age when she was either kidnapped or sold into slavery. She became Hernán Cortés' mistress and bore his first-born child, Martín Cortés. The legend is often conflated with other Mexican and pre-Hispanic lore, including deities of Mesoamerican peoples: Cihuacóatl of the Nahua, Xonaxi Cueculla of the Zapotec, and Xtabay of the Lacandon Maya.
In the 1960s, La Malinche became a Chicano feminist icon in the US and was referred to as “mother,” inspired by the work of Rosario Castellanos, a Mexican poet and author. Her writings often addressed cultural and gender oppression, hence deeply influencing Mexican feminist theory and cultural studies. Her poem, La Malinche, reframed Doña Marina as a victim, not solely as a traitor to her people. In her poem, she is shown as a woman of complex identity and a symbol of duality: a woman forced to make an impossible choice to survive between her heritage and her circumstances. Despite this history, La Malinche is known as the mother of the mestizos, the mixed blood of Mexico's native peoples and the Spanish; most modern-day Mexicans.
In this take on the La Llorona legend, Josephson explores the multifarious realities of womanhood amid the patriarchy in past (Mexican) and modern-day America. A woman or women, driven by rage, revenge, fear, love, and a complex and deeply rooted sense of feminine self-discovery. Camareno, as “El Diablo”, serves as the story’s narrator and connective tissue between the various women we meet “over the years” who were visited or perhaps inspired by the spirit of La Malinche herself.
Don’t miss this epic retelling of the Legend of La Llorona along with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, also by Josephson, over five nights at the Chance Theater in Anaheim. The plays open October 29 and run through November 2, Day of the Dead.
Click here for tickets.
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