Camino Real Productions' 26 MILES Begins Tonight

26 Miles, by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, is an unpredictable and irresistible exploration of family relations examines what it means to be of mixed ethnicity and identity. The play will run this weekend, December 5-7 and 12-14 at Teatro Paraguas with performances at 7:30 pm Fridays and Saturdays and 2 pm on Sundays. Tickets are $18,and $15 for students and seniors.

26 Miles is a warm-hearted family story that puts an estranged mother and daughter in a car and sends them on a drive from Philadelphia to Wyoming, a distance of 1,835 miles. Their road trip is an emotional marathon, a quest for the missing pieces in their lives. Hudes says that her story is "a metaphor for endurance in terms of family and relationship," based upon her own relationships with her parents. The adolescent Olivia, an imaginative, philosophical writer, and her mother, the effervescent, voluble Beatriz, are "very much sculpted after the real life me and Mom," says Hudes. Olivia's conflict-whether to live with her father, who has custody but whose new wife hates her, or to move in with Beatriz and her current partner-mirrors the custody battle that Henry Hudes and Virginia Pérez waged for their daughter. Olivia's father is white and her mother is Latina, as are Hudes' parents. Hudes says, "I wanted to write a play about what it means to be of mixed identity, mixed ethnicity, and how somebody figures that out.... I just feel like humor is how human beings deal best with the stuff that's the hardest. Not dark humor, just honest-to-goodness humor."

This production marks the return to New Mexico stages of Mónica Sánchez, well-known here for her work with La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque before she left New Mexico in the 1990s to work with Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino and to establish a professional theatre career in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now she brings the outspoken character of Beatriz vividly to life in 26 Miles.

Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Water by the Spoonful; a previous play, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, was a Pulitzer finalist. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book for a Musical for In the Heights in 2008.