Skip to main content
Stumptown Stages’ 20th season starts with a familiar yet unique production. Kiss of the Spider Woman is a piece of media adapted several times over 45 years—a book, a movie, and a musical—that still enjoys a cult classic reputation. Kiss of the Spider Woman is both a snapshot of the politics of ‘70s Argentinian politics, a narrative involving fantasy manipulation and LGBTQ+ identity.
Luis Alberto Molina (Roman Martinez), a gay window dresser, and a Marxist named Valentin Arregui Paz (co-director Illya deTorres) share a prison cell in ‘70s Argentina. As Molina describes fantasies and films he’s seen to Valentin, to shelter each other from the world’s cruelty in a way, the musical aspect takes center stage with a diverse and collaborative cast and crew bringing a lush production to these songs.
DeTorres and Francisco Garcia put Kiss of the Spider Woman’s cast to work, sometimes having actors switch roles or appear in choreographed dance numbers, playing up the story’s fantasy elements.
“Because of [Molina’s] fantasy, his mind’s also using these characters in his life to retell these stories,” de Torres says. “So I feel like that’s sort of a luxury and freedom for this specific storytelling.”
DeTorres and Garcia weren’t initially as familiar with Kiss of the Spider Woman’s plot as much as the history its story evokes.
“My father grew up in Chile and was exiled to North America in the ‘70s,” deTorres says. “The nature of the story touches true to my part as the reason he was exiled was because of his participation on the left side fighting against the coup of Pinochet, and that’s in a sense what my character’s like in the play.”
Prior to Stumptown Stages’ take on Kiss of the Spider Woman, Garcia says he was gearing up to direct a different two-actor version of the musical before Stumptown’s producing artistic director, Kirk Mouser, reached out to him. Garcia was inspired to challenge himself with a fuller production.
“When we talk about collaboration in theater, true collaboration, I feel that when you’re working on a smaller drama sometimes, you don’t always have that, and the director always has the final say,” Garcia says. “When you’re working on a musical, you’re working with a choreographer, you’re working with a musical director, and there’s so many people involved in this process that it really feels like a true sense of collaboration.”
With the actors, the process of working together in this way seems agreed upon.
“I think most theater folks and actors are already willing to be vulnerable,” Julana Torres says, playing both the titular Spider Woman and Aurora, two crucial recurring characters in Molina’s stories that seem to reflect two sides of his personality. “So when you start sharing rehearsal space and long hours, the relationships unfold. It’s not hard to quickly connect with people.”
For Torres, the theater has always been second nature with her mother being a Broadway performer and dancer, and her grandmother owning a dance studio. Torres was inspired by fellow Puerto Rican triple threat Chita Rivera—who originated Aurora on Broadway—and says her dual roles feel like a full-circle moment.
“Being the movie star and the performer, there’s this air that you carry about yourself that draws people in, which is also what Spider Woman does,” says Torres. “She’s using her charms to draw you into her web, and it’s the same exact thing Aurora does as a movie star.”
Even for Kiss of the Spider Woman’s deeply political context, it’s the story’s human element that the production’s cast and crew expect to draw in audiences.
“I think it’s nice to just be able to emote with a human,” Torres says. “To feel empathy for a human, to see the journey of a relationship between two people and their wants and desires and everything that makes them human.”
SEE IT: Kiss of the Spider Woman plays at Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 503-408-4335, portland5.com. 7:30 pm Thursday–Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 4–27. $35.50–$67.