Arturo Luíz Soria began writing what would become Ni Mi Madre back in 2008 in Chicago, and 18 years later the one-person show is opening in previews at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights. The play, which runs about an hour and is performed in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, casts Soria as both narrator and his own mother, Bete, a Brazilian immigrant whose life he set out to portray with unflinching honesty.
Soria opened previews at Diversionary on Thursday, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, with the show officially opening on August 22 and running through September 6. He said the goal was never to flatten his mother into a saint or a punchline but to show her as she is: “his mother was human and had a life before him,” as he put it, describing the piece as an honest and compassionate look at the woman who raised him.
The show's roots trace back further than its 2008 start in Chicago, where Soria studied at The Theatre School at DePaul University. He later met his longtime collaborator, director Danilo Gambini, at Yale's Graduate School of Drama in 2016, and the two spent years shaping the piece together. Gambini, a São Paulo native and Yale School of Drama graduate, made his U.S. professional directorial debut with Ni Mi Madre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, according to Diversionary Theatre, and he directs the University Heights engagement as well.
A Decade-Plus Journey From Chicago to Off-Broadway
Ni Mi Madre had its New York engagement at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2021, and the run proved to be a turning point. The production earned Soria a 2022 Obie Award for Best Performance, alongside nominations that year for a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Drama League Award, per the theater's own account of the production's history. The 2021 premiere was also named a New York Times Critic's Pick, with reviewers praising the show for holding onto filial affection even while confronting parental flaws head-on.
Three years after its off-Broadway debut, the show crossed the Atlantic, making its European premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Pleasance Dome in August 2024, where it went on to win an OFFIE Award for Best Performance, as reported by Broadway World. That Edinburgh run was co-presented by VagaMundo Productions and Paul Morrissey Ltd. Soria has also brought his stage presence to Broadway, making his debut in the Tony Award-winning production of Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2019, and he's appeared on television in The Blacklist, Insatiable, and East New York.
Umbanda Rituals Meet Cher and Gloria Estefan
Onstage, the show blends deeply personal memory with a distinctive sonic and spiritual palette. Ni Mi Madre weaves Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religious rituals together with 1990s pop staples from Maria Bethânia, Cher, and Gloria Estefan, and it draws a pointed contrast between American parenting habits like time-outs and the Latin American tradition of chancletazos — flip-flop swats — according to Diversionary Theatre's production notes. Soria has said audiences laugh and cry throughout the performance, and that people from wildly different backgrounds find themselves recognizing pieces of their own family in it.
The play's frank treatment of its subject has an unusual real-world coda: Soria's mother, who lives in Miami, has seen Ni Mi Madre many times and has told her son she would not interfere with his art. That endorsement matters given how much of the show is drawn directly from her life, rendered with a mix of tenderness and scrutiny that critics have singled out since the New York run.
A Milestone Season for San Diego's Third-Oldest LGBTQIA+ Theater
The West Coast premiere lands squarely inside Diversionary Theatre's 40th anniversary season, themed “Love as Revolution.” Founded in 1986 at the height of the AIDS crisis, Diversionary is the nation's third-oldest LGBTQIA+ theater company, according to The Word SD, and is currently led by Eden Barber, the company's first female artistic director. Ni Mi Madre is billed as the first show in this Diversionary season performed for an exclusively queer theater community.
The theater has built a slate of community nights around the run, including a First Friday for the Military event Thursday, a Trans & GNC Community Night on August 20, and a Latine Community Night on August 28 featuring local drag performers Amore Envy and Lady Blanca, per the theater's programming. On August 30, Diversionary will host “Matinê Brasileira,” an event pairing the performance with caipirinhas and a post-show discussion on Brazilian culture led by Dr. Kristal Bivona, Associate Director of San Diego State University's Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies.
Those gatherings take place in the Austin & Joann Clark Cabaret, a space that opened in fall 2021 as part of a $2.5 million renovation of Diversionary's University Heights complex. The cabaret includes a permanent LGBTQ+ historical archive display created in partnership with Lambda Archives of San Diego, according to Broadway World.
Tickets and Showtimes
Performances run Thursdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., with previews continuing through August 21 ahead of the official August 22 opening. Tickets range from $32 to $72, and the show runs through September 6 at Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd. in University Heights. More information and tickets are available at diversionary.org/madre or by calling the box office at 619-220-0097.
