Espejos: Clean

by Christine Quintana, Paula Zelaya-Cervantes (Translator)

Overview

A fascinating investigation of class, trauma, wealth, poverty, and the agonizing need to confront one's past. —BroadwayWorld

The lives of two women from very different worlds collide in the illusionary paradise of a Mexican resort. Sarah, a Canadian wedding guest, is a shot glass half empty. Adriana, a fastidious and vivacious hotel floor manager, finds solace in establishing order. At first glance, they’re simply animated, but looking closer reveals the anxieties they’re trying to hide. When their worlds collide, everything they’ve kept hidden comes into sharp focus.

A bilingual play in English and Spanish, each woman speaks in her own language and shares her unique experiences directly with the audience. Their vastly different realities are reflected in parallel, coming together to mirror and magnify a mutual pain. Through nuanced and surprisingly funny monologues, Quintana and Zelaya-Cervantes focus an attentive microscope on female strength and solidarity to stunning effect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780369104588
Publisher:	Theatre Communications Group
Publication date:	11/11/2025
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Born in Los Angeles to a Mexican American father and a Dutch British Canadian mother, Christine Quintana is now a grateful visitor to the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Christine is an actor, playwright, producer, and dramaturg. Nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and winner of an LA Drama Critics Circle Award, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award, the Tom Hendry Award, and the Siminovitch Protégée Prize, Christine’s works have been translated and performed in Spanish, French, German, and ASL in over ten cities worldwide. As a performer, she’s acted on stages big and small, in a camper van, in neighbourhoods across East Vancouver, and on a farm. Christine is a graduate of UBC’s BFA Acting Program.

Mexican playwright, screenwriter, director, and translator Paula Zelaya-Cervantes graduated from UBC in Vancouver, Canada, with a double major in Theatre and Honours English Literature thanks to the support of the International Leader of Tomorrow Scholarship granted to only thirteen students worldwide each year. Paula has written and directed several plays including The Orbweaver/El Hilador (Teatro Helénico 2018, Mexico City; Vancouver Fringe Festival International Mainstage Selection, 2016) and 245 Acts of Unspeakable Evil, which she co-wrote with Ana González Bello and which won the Latino National Playwright Award granted by the Arizona Theatre Company and the Sharon Enkin Play for Young People Award granted by the Playwright’s Guild of Canada. Paula has adapted and translated close to thirty plays, several of which she has also directed.

Editorial Reviews

A riveting drama showcasing a pair of vulnerable women who each come from very diverse backgrounds, economic levels, and, most significantly, native languages. While their individual experiences couldn't be any more different, they do both share the rather arduous common goal of trying to get past their respective prior traumas that have shaped who they are and have continued to haunt them as adults.
—Michael Quintos, BroadwayWorld

Christine Quintana's beautifully written Espejos/Clean is a lush, layered, complex story with the depth, poetry, and drama of a great novel.
—Createastir.ca

A lush, layered, complex story with the depth, poetry, and drama of a great novel. Just like when you’re standing barefoot on a beach as the tide comes in and your feet slowly sink down into cool, wet sand—then sink a little more—this bilingual two-hander takes you deeper and deeper and deeper into the characters’ lives, hearts, and minds in the most thoughtful, impactful of ways as it goes.
—Gail Johnson, Stir

An impressively mature work of art.
—Colin Thomas, ColinThomas.ca

I loved Espejos/Clean because it didn’t feel like a play with a Latinx or Spanglish aesthetic. Instead, it felt truly and fundamentally bilingual and both Adriana and Sarah were culturally specific entities, from language to how they dream, from their fears to what their biggest flaws are
—Dora Prieto, Vancouver Arts Review

From the Publisher