Cloud Tectonics

by José Rivera

During a record-breaking Los Angeles deluge, a man gives shelter to a beautiful, pregnant hitch-hiker who is searching for the father of her child.

"… CLOUD TECTONICS, José Rivera's often enchanting new play … Rivera has successfully mixed two styles in which he previously dabbled, realism and magic realism, to produce a naturalistic play interlaced with symbols and magical occurrences. In doing so, he has found a voice to probe the mystery of the kind of love that stops your heart as surely as it does your sense of time and space. And he does it without goo." —Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Times

"The operative phrase for José Rivera's work is 'magic realism,' which doesn't mean much until you've been put under the spell of his brief and lovely play, CLOUD TECTONICS. It's a love story, an old boy-meets-girl story, but … it's also a story of theatrical enchantment, in which the ordinary is suddenly transformed into the miraculous. On a fantastically rainy night in Los Angeles, the city of Angels, a plain Joe named Anibal de la Luna picks up and brings home with him a poor, bedraggled woman hitchhiker who calls herself Celestina del Sol. She is fifty-four years old, she says, and she has been pregnant two years. She is indeed a rare and heavenly creature, a mystic wanderer with no sense of time and an infinite capacity to love. Alone in his little house, sealed off from the wails of the decaying city outside, De la Luna and Del Sol come together, joining their bodies and their dreams." —Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Magical Realism, School, Drama

62 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

José Rivera is a recipient of two Obie Awards for playwriting for Marisol and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, which were both produced by The Public Theater in New York. His plays, Cloud Tectonics (Playwrights Horizons and Goodman Theatre), Boleros for the Disenchanted (Yale Repertory Theatre and Goodman Theatre), Sueño (Manhattan Class Company), Sonnets for an Old Century (The Barrow Group), School of the Americas (The Public Theater), Massacre (Sing to Your Children) (Rattlestick and Goodman Theatre), Brainpeople (ACT, San Francisco), Adoration of the Old Woman (INTAR) and The House of Ramon Iglesia (Ensemble Studio Theatre), have been produced across the country and around the world. He is currently working on The Last Book of Homer, Scream for the Lost Romantics, and The Gamma Forest. Mr. Rivera’s screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 2005. His screenplay based on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was distributed nationally in the winter of 2013. His film Trade was the first film to premiere at the United Nations. Television projects in the works include an untitled HBO pilot, co-written and produced by Tom Hanks, as well as a 10-hour series for HBO tentatively known as Latino Roots. Celestina, based on his play Cloud Tectonics, will mark his debut as a feature film director. He is the writer/director of the short film Lizzy and has recently completed his first novel, Love Makes the City Crumble. His next film project will be a biography of famed baseball player Roberto Clemente for Legendary Films.

Reviews

[Iulia Kyçyku · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and poetic and somehow... full of love. I really, really enjoyed it.

[Liam "Da Man" · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jose Rivera is one of the most imaginative playwrights working today, not to mention one of the bravest and most beautiful. He can make the ugliest characters seem more beautiful than anything you have seen or read before, and his craftsmanship is such that you will not mind you have no idea what is going on in even his most bizarre plays. A spectacular voice in the Latino community and the theatre community as a whole.

[Lincoln Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play really is good, it has amazing ideas and characters but the biggest concern for me is that it feels like the ending is incomplete not in a creative way but in a unfulfilling way.

I just wish they expanded on the ideas and science fiction element because it’s super interesting and plays extremely well with the characters it established (such as the scene with the brother with the time jump.)

Another big element that I really just didn’t get was the relices on sexy as a description of intimacy, sexy is very intimate and of course should be discussed in all forms of art I just feel like there were points in this where it was less about the actual intimacy and more about shock value.

[Alyssa Eve]

So I actually read this book back in like 2015, but one of the books I read this year isn't on goodreads so I'm adding this as having read this year so my reading goal count is actually correct.

But yeah I really enjoyed this at the time I read it but I can barely remember it now.

[H H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful rumination on our perception and experience of time and power of love

[Katelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the most profound and beautiful love stories i’ve ever read…this was too good

[Tilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my style of play but definitely interesting

[Maureen (Marina) Melita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago. Still one of the best plays I’ve had the pleasure of reading, designing, and seeing!

[csenge · Rating 5 out of 5]

yeah yeah yeah

[Ronan!¡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Catherine Otero · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my most favorite plays that I’ve read so far. I think about it at least once a day.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous writing beautiful words devastating story josé is my hero

[Isa Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most beautiful play i’ve ever read in my entire life. speechless tbh

[kaitlyn]

bring back plays like this jfc!!!

[Kacey]

(Reread)

[Athena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cycles through enchanting, thrilling, and annoying. But mostly the first two.

[sofia ines · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sometimes there's no 'time'--only an endless now that needs to be filled with life. To be rescued from habit and death"

[Donovan Foote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I was given this to read for work. I went into it with no prior knowledge or hint of what it might be. It's an amazing story (play). Rivera created an amazing surrealistic world where possibly anything could happen. Or nothing at all. I'll have to read mroe of his writing now.

[Shawna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible play, written from the heart of Jose Rivera. I highly recommend reading this to anyone who has ever kept love alive inside a corner of their soul where it is able to remain timeless, pure, and unsullied by the outside world.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic realism...how else can one explain a two year pregnancy?

[Jeremy Peoples · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining play. A great example of magical realism. Jose Rivera is making a movie based off of his play: I'm curious as to how it will turn out.