Arturo Hilario
El Observador
The Berkeley Repertory Theatre is opening its 2026-2027 season with acclaimed Cuban playwright Eduardo Machado’s timely play, The Cook, from now until October 11, 2026.
The story begins with an aristocratic family who flees Cuba at the start of Fidel Castro’s revolution, leaving their cook Gladys to watch over their mansion until the family returns. For forty years Gladys watches over the home, through her own struggles, sacrifice, and seeing the unraveling of a country’s dreams. As one of the family members finally returns, Gladys realizes she has sacrificed her life for a bond that no longer exists.
The Cook is both funny and sad, dealing with questions of identity, history and alienation. Although fictional, it tackles a lot of questions and experiences which the author and acclaimed playwright Eduardo Machado felt when living away, and what happened when he returned years later to confront his own beliefs and see for himself what Cuba had become and what remained of the past.
He recently talked with me about his journey from Cuba to the US, becoming a playwright and how leaving the country at just eight years old affected him and left him with a lot of questions about identity and what was happening in the country while he was away.
Machado came to the US with his brother to live with family members in the 1961 as part of Operation Pedro Pan, which brought 14,000 unaccompanied minors to the US who were sent by parents in Cuba who mistakenly feared the Castro regime would take away their children and place them in indoctrination centers. This was in part due to US propaganda and involvement in stoking fears of just how extreme the Castro regime would be.
And despite the US media and the federal government’s portrayal of his homeland, Machado would not write about contemporary Cuba until he was back there to see it for himself.
Some answers came when he finally had the opportunity to return in 1999, forty years after his departure. What he experienced and saw informed his writing of The Cook as well as another play, Havana Is Waiting.
With current political turmoil brewing with the US and Cuba once more, find out why he believes there is renewed interest in Cuban life, and why The Cook continues to be timely within political discourse today.
For more information on the play please visit http://www.berkeleyrep.org.
What inspired you to get into writing plays?
Well, you know, I think I started writing plays because I thought people had it all wrong about Cuba and because I was always playing characters that had nothing to do with being Cuban. So, you know, I did a lot of avant-garde theater in LA and I wanted to do something that was closer to me, so I started writing plays even though I was never in any of them at the beginning. And I think that’s what inspired me, and also being around new writers at the Padua Hills Writers Conference in Claremont.
That’s why I think it’s important to do The Cook at this moment, because that’s what The Cook is about, who does Cuba belong to, the people who stayed or the people who left?
-Eduardo Machado
[It] was begun by Murray Mednick and Sam Shepard, and I acted in those plays, and being around writers made me think I could also do it, so I did it.
You were taken out of Cuba when you were very young and you didn’t return for decades. Up until that time you had written about the country, but was that experience like returning and how did that affect your writing and how you saw your home country?
Well, returning was the most frightening thing in my life because I thought, “What if I got it all wrong?” You know, by returning I saw that I got it all right. And what changed is that I got to know what was going on in Cuba now. And that’s certainly what inspired The Cook because I met someone who had a restaurant just like in The Cook, who was taking care of this house, and she had been the maiden.
So that came directly from my going back to Cuba. I would have never written that play. I also was never going to write about Cuba now unless I went there, because I thought that was not fair. So I wrote Havana Is Waiting and The Cook right after I went to Cuba.
And do you see in your own a difference from before you went back and after you went back?
Just the subject matter is different, but it’s still the same writing.
Can you tell me a little bit about The Cook?
The family’s away for 40 years and Gladys takes care of it, and then the daughter of the lady that used to own it comes back. But I don’t want to give away the ending. And it sort of changes everything because the assumptions about the people that used to live there are wrong. She thought they were her friends and they weren’t.
And what’s important to you about writing about these experiences?
Well, we’re in a moment where most likely somewhere while we’re still doing The Cook, there’s stuff that’s going to happen in Cuba. And I think people need to know how hard they struggle to remain a country and how probably most likely everything’s going to change in the next couple of months.
You know what’s going on in Cuba, right? Well, the United States is going to take it over. That’s what’s going to change.
One way or another, you know, just like Venezuela. That’s why I think it’s important to do The Cook at this moment, because that’s what The Cook is about, who does Cuba belong to, the people who stayed or the people who left?
Who has the greater claim to the identity? That’s the question you have, right?
Well, you know, it’s a very complicated question, and it’s what drives the play. So come see the play and find out what I think.
Is there anything you hope people take away after experiencing The Cook?
That people are human beings and they have nothing to do with politics, and that everyone’s struggle is sort of the same in trying to survive in different kinds of worlds where survival is so rough and hard. I’m including the United States in that, not just Cuba.
What do you feel has been the most special aspect about being a playwright and being able to show people your views and your experiences?
I think the most important thing about being a playwright is not really at all about your views. It’s about creating characters that actors can express a lot of emotions through, that makes the audience have to feel something, and then they have to go home and think.
It’s an experience of feelings, and the ideas happen because of the feelings, not the other way around. It’s about conflict. And it’s about keeping the conflict going so that the audience can feel it.
And then somewhere in the play it erupts and they feel that. And then from that they can think about what they believe about the world. I think that the most exciting thing about playwriting is that actors are going to act in your plays and they’re going to bring it to life to an audience that’s also there. So that and music concerts are the top gathering places for human beings to feel emotions. And that’s what’s really exciting about it.
How do you feel that The Cook is starting off the Berkeley Rep season?
I was delighted. I had no idea that play was ever going to be done again. It was done a lot when it first was written in a lot of places, including in Venezuela and in Greece. But it hadn’t been done for like the last 10 years.
So when they called me and told me they were going to do it, it was really kind of amazing to me that it was happening. You know, it was really, really great. I think it’s fantastic that they’re taking me seriously, and I’m very grateful for it.
Is there anything you would like to leave readers with about your experience on writing this play, or what to expect when they see it?
Well, you know, it’s a play about a really incredible person who survived no matter the circumstances, which is Gladys the cook. And what I felt when I was writing the play, which I want the audience to feel, is it’s a great joy of surviving. It’s also what I want the audience to know, that it’s also a very funny play. It’s not just tragic, it’s both things at once.
