It's already a beloved play and a hit film. Now Real Women Have Curve is a Broadway musical. Based on the play by Josefina López, this funny, joyous, and empowering new show features music and lyrics by Grammy winner Joy Huerta of the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy and composer/lyricist Benjamin Velez, with a book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin.
The musical features direction & choreography by Tony and Olivier Award winner Sergio Trujillo. With Real Women Have Curves, Joy Huerta will become only the second female composer of Mexican descent to have a show on Broadway.
Summer 1987, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. After eighteen years under the roof of her immigrant parents, Ana is ready to spread her wings. Her dreams of college and a career in New York City are bursting at the seams, but her family’s expectations would keep her home, working at their garment factory (and being driven crazy by her mother). Is it worth sacrificing the dreams of her family by Ana fulfilling her own?
Before broadway, Real Women Have Curves had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T) at Harvard University in 2023. The play premiered at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco in 1990. It was adapted into a film in 2002, starring America Ferrera (in her feature film debut) as protagonist Ana García.
The new musical Real Women Have Curves is, on the whole, a vibrant, exuberant affair, soaked in the pink and gold of L.A. sunsets, with painterly projections of tropical blossoms regularly unfurling across its proscenium in such verdant profusion you can practically smell their perfume. Yet surrounded by all this lushness, the show’s darkest, grayest moments are some of its most striking.
Great novels and great movies rarely translate into great musicals, much less very good ones. When it comes to suitable source material, a second-rate book or film often makes a more successful transition to the stage. If a novel or a movie is classic, it fits the chosen medium to perfection. Adapting them to the stage automatically destroys what’s great. In scene after scene, Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin’s book for the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is a vast improvement on George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez’s screenplay, which is based on Lopez’s play. Where the 2002 film dawdles, the musical defines and drives with great narrative precision its timely tale of Latina immigrants who make dresses in a Los Angeles shop.
| 2025 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Choreography | Sergio Trujillo |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical | Tatianna Córdoba |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Music | Joy Huerta |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Music | Benjamin Velez |
| 2025 | Drama League Awards | DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE | Tatianna Córdoba |
| 2025 | Drama League Awards | DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE | Justina Machado |
| 2025 | Drama League Awards | OUTSTANDING DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL | Sergio Trujillo |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Costume Design | Wilberth Gonzalez |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Costume Design | Paloma Young |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Musical | Real Women Have Curves |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Score (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Joy Huerta |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Score (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Benjamin Velez |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) | Joy Huerta |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) | Benjamin Velez |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical | Justina Machado |
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