Matthew Murphy
What’s John Leguizamo’s best-kept secret? “I’m a ghetto nerd. I love reading,” says Leguizamo.
It’s not much of a secret any more. Last year, the 54-year-old actor/comedian/filmmaker/playwright won a Tony Award for his one-man show Latin History for Morons, which stops at Overture Hall on June 28 as part of its first U.S. tour.
Leguizamo, who was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and raised in Queens, New York, says the idea was sparked after an incident at his son’s school. “My son was being bullied at school for his Latin heritage, and I wanted to declare a fatwa on that bully’s ass,” says Leguizamo, who claims both Colombian and Puerto Rican heritage. “Why not weaponize history and find him a Latin hero he could be proud of?”
But when Leguizamo examined his son’s history textbook, no such hero emerged. The performer’s effort to account for the absence of Latinx in conventional versions of U.S. history drives the hilarious and poignant 90-minute performance.
“We go from the Mayans in 1,000 B.C. to now,” says Leguizamo, sketching a straight line on a blackboard during the stage production to emphasize the absence of anything in between. “What is this? The age of Pitbull?”
Latin History for Morons traces Latinx contributions to U.S. history, while sketching out how the continent’s original occupants have been marginalized.
Poised as a teacher lecturing a class of students, Leguizamo trades on his manic energy and profane street persona to give the performance an earthy vibrancy and sharp tongue. But he also has tapped alternative history texts such as Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus to provide the background necessary to support his claim that Latin Americans have played a major role in shaping the nation.
This is Leguizamo’s sixth one-man show, an exercise he finds both exhausting and exhilarating, and one that allows him to make an intimate connection with the audience.
“My shows have always been poignant,” he says. “I always brought the edgiest elements I could to a production and take the comedy to a darker level, which is what Latinos generally expect.”
As for Latinx heroes, Leguizamo discovered many, including 10,000 Latinos who fought in the American Revolution. General Bernardo de Gálvez supplied arms to Washington’s army and led his own forces against the British.
There were also 20,000 Latinx who fought on both sides in the Civil War, including Loreta Janeta Velázquez, a Cuban woman who disguised herself as a man and fought for the Confederacy. She eventually became a Confederate spy and, ultimately, a double agent working for the U.S. Secret Service. It’s a rich history, too often overlooked, Leguizamo says.
“I’d like the show’s audiences to be proud of being Latinx, or if they are not, then proud for us,” Leguizamo says. “I think their minds will be opened, and in the process they will have a blast.”