Frida Kahlo’s Life Story Is Being Made Into a Broadway Musical Kelsey Ables - The Washington Post
go to original July 31, 2022

The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has been the subject of so much attention — movies, immersive experiences, T-shirts and tote bags — that it’s surprising there’s any Kahlo content left to make. But the Fridamania knows no end: Recently, it was announced that Kahlo’s life story will be made into a musical.

The production, which is expected to open on Broadway in 2024 after regional tryouts next year, will follow Kahlo’s life from Mexico City to Paris to New York, and back to the famous “Blue House” where she was born and died in 1954. Titled “Frida, The Musical,” the show will include music by Jaime Lozano and lyrics by playwright Neena Beber, and it will be produced by Valentina Berger.

Much has already been said about Kahlo, but the musical’s creators hope the show will offer a new look at her life, illuminating previously untold details and personal stories about the beloved artist. It will be based partially on the book “Intimate Frida,” by her niece Isolda P. Kahlo, and informed by conversations with Kahlo’s family in Mexico. Although there have been other attempts to make Kahlo’s life story a musical, this is the only one her family has officially signed off on.

“In all the stories I heard when I was a little child, our family remembered Aunt Frida as a very joyful woman,” said Mara Romeo Kahlo, universal heiress to the Frida Kahlo legacy, in a statement to The Washington Post. “She was passionate about music, arts and Mexican culture. ‘Frida, The Musical’ honors everything she was: a real woman who fought for her dreams, loved like anybody else and always lived ahead of her time.”

Although Kahlo merchandise sometimes packages the artist as a bubbly feminist icon, and art historians tend to focus on her physical and emotional suffering — depicted so vividly in her work — the creators of the musical say they want to capture something more three-dimensional. “We really want to see Frida through a wider perspective,” said Lozano in a phone interview.

Read the rest at The Washington Post

Related: A Frida Kahlo Drawing Was Destroyed to Make NFTs (VICE)

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