FIFTY FUN FACTS SOBRE OLIVIA [MI MADRE] to Open at IATI Theater

IATI Theater will present Nora Coss's Fifty fun facts sobre Olivia [mi madre], a moving bilingual memory play exploring caregiving, language, cultural identity, and the complicated ways we come to understand the people we love.

About the Play

Fourteen-year-old Emilio is more comfortable speaking English than Spanish, while his mother, Olivia, wants him to remain connected to his Mexican roots through language. When Olivia becomes seriously ill and Emilio must help care for her in Mexico, that difference takes on new urgency. Suddenly, he must navigate doctors, paperwork, and caregiving in a language he does not fully command. In the process, mother and son begin finding new ways to understand one another, slowly learning to speak the same language, both literally and emotionally.

Fifty Fun Facts sobre Olivia [mi madre] is as much a celebration of Olivia's life as it is a story of loss. During her hospitalization, mother and son begin asking each other the questions they had never thought to ask, discovering one another almost as if for the first time. At its heart, the play asks how we preserve the people we love, how language and identity pass between generations, and whether words, in any language, can ever fully contain the people who shaped us.

Moving between English and Spanish, past and present, humor and grief, the play reconstructs Olivia's life through memory, family stories, hospital notes, arguments, jokes, and the ordinary details that make a person unforgettable.

The play grew out of Coss's own experience with a serious health crisis in 2019, when she was hospitalized in critical condition and cared for by her mother and boyfriend. Rather than recreating those events literally, Coss uses autofiction to transform lived experience into a fictional story, altering the circumstances while holding on to their emotional truth.

Fifty Fun Facts sobre Olivia [mi madre] is part of Coss's Nefro trilogy, named for nephrology, the medical specialty that treated her during her illness. Across the trilogy, Coss explores the body, caregiving, identity, and recovery through different autofictional perspectives. The works were written with support from Mexico's Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.

Developed through IATI Theater's Cimientos program, Fifty Fun Facts sobre Olivia [mi madre] was also selected for publication by Ediciones Los Textos de la Capilla and included in its fifth anthology of plays for young audiences.

Meet the Team

Nora Coss (Playwright)

Nora Coss is a Mexican playwright, stage director, screenwriter, and novelist. She has written for the stage since 2005, building a sustained career in contemporary Mexican theatre as a playwright and as the director and producer of her own work. She has written approximately fifteen plays, many of which have been produced in Mexico and published in contemporary Mexican theatre anthologies, including De jueves a martes, Aperturas, Sol de invierno, Desarrollo teórico-matemático de un desamor, Ali. Falso documental de una falsa lesbiana, and Fifty fun facts sobre Olivia [mi madre]. She has received competitive grants and fellowships for artistic creation from leading Mexican arts institutions, including FONCA, FONECA, and PECDA. She received the Juan Rulfo Fine Arts Prize for her debut novel, Nubecita (2018). Coss has also written for television, including a scripted series and a historical fiction series, and has taught playwriting and creative writing for more than a decade. She is a member of Mexico's National System of Art Creators.

Manuel Ortiz Ossandon (Director)

Manuel Ortiz Ossandon is a Queer Chilean theatre director, playwright, educator, and producer based in Brooklyn. He has worked as a director and playwright at the Chilean National Theater and has collaborated with theatre companies throughout Chile and the United States. Ortiz has directed seventeen productions, ten of which he authored, including Pichanga. His work has been presented in Spain, Italy, Germany, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, both Off-Broadway and regionally. He has also served as a speaker and adjudicator at international festivals in the United States, Spain, Monaco, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. As an educator, he has taught undergraduate and graduate drama courses at universities in Latin America and led workshops in the Americas and Europe. In 2025, Ortiz received HOLA Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Directing and Outstanding Production for Manifest Destiny, the second installment of his American Mythology Trilogy, which also includes American Dream and Founding Fathers. He currently serves as Co-Artistic Director of Split/Decision and as Associate Producer and Co-Lead of Director Training at Mercury Store.

Cast

The cast comprises Carmen Alvarez, Francisco Arcila, Gilberto Gabriel, Jassiel Santillán and Andrea Velasco.