But her new play, “The Bees and the Honey,” set to begin performances May 4 at the MCC TheatreShe offers her mother a consolation prize. The film’s heroine, Johira, looks a lot like Del Carmen: a sharp, funny, driven Dominican-American living in Washington Heights, in upper Manhattan. However, Johaira is also a lawyer – passionate about her job and stressful about it.
The sitcom “Bees and Honey” focuses on the relationship between Johira, a feminist suing a sexual assault case, and her husband Manuel, a good guy who is also, as del Carmen puts it, “a sweet misogynist.” Talk of sexism was in the air when I began writing the play in 2017, the year of the Women’s Marches and the rise of the #MeToo movement.
She said she’s from Louisville, Kentucky, where she’s been in actor status, rehearsing “La Egoista,“ Play by Erlena Ortiz. “And also, you know, I really wanted to see a romance between two people who look like me and who look like me.”
In 2012, seeing Dominican characters in In the Heights gave Del Carmen a life-altering shock. Still living in Chicago, and already an actress, she realized that playwriting was also a possible medium. Her first play ‘Blowout’ premiered in 2013.
As a black Hispanic woman, she said she never felt truly accepted in Chicago; People there would routinely ask why you spoke Spanish, the language you learned at home. To them, she didn’t look Latin.
“Typical beer trailblazer. Hipster-friendly web buff. Certified alcohol fanatic. Internetaholic. Infuriatingly humble zombie lover.”
