Associate Professor Luis Alfaro’s new play Mama Of The Row or Who Raised The Rent? premiered Sept. 18 to 20 as part of a play series commissioned by Center Theatre Group in which English and Spanish plays written by local artists are performed at various libraries each month.

Described as a “displacement of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children,” the play follows Mama of the Row and her children as they sing songs about their displacement and survival. The play was read at the Benjamin Franklin, Malabar and Robert Louis Stevenson libraries.

Alfaro is a Joyce Foundation Fellow and a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s genius grant. He is a playwright in residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica. His play Oedipus el Rey was a part of the 50^th season of The Public Theatre. Other works include Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, Electricidad, Straight as a Line, and Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl, Pinata Woman and Other Super Hero Girls, Like Me.