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 evening’s high-wattage highlight is the title tune, an ode to body positivity prompted when Ana sheds her blouse in the overheated, fan-less factory as the team rushes to finish the big order. Soon she encourages the others to strip down to their skivvies as well, and we see these women work up hte nerve to peel off their layers of shame and self-consciousness to embrace their lived-in bodies just as they are. It’s a genuinely catchy tune, artfully staged with a mirror-tiled dress form overhead like a disco ball, and it carries a powerful message that rightly generated a standing ovation at the performance I attended. Real Women Have Curves tells a simple story with musicality, with humor, with authenticity, and with an embrace of its female characters as fully rounded, three-dimensional individuals. You know, with curves.
Unfortunately, there are too few other moments in Real Woman Have Curves that soar like that, that deliver the joy and delight of shaking off the many worries and fears that burden these eight women 24/7. Based on the same-named play and subsequent HBO movie, the musical set in 1987 focuses on the eight friends and coworkers who sew dresses in a small, hidden warehouse space, with all but one of the women – young Ana – undocumented. The Reagan era amnesty program, with its length-of-time requirements and insistence on records clean of even a driving ticket, seems to offer scant promise.
| 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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