A Quick One, While He’s Away: Rebecca Jimenez and Trey Santiago-Hudson Portray the Tragic Hero’s Children in THE OTHER AMERICANS
By Zoe Marín
After a successful run in D.C. in 2024, John Leguizamo’s New York-based family drama, THE OTHER AMERICANS, makes its homecoming at The Public Theater. The play centers around a struggling Colombian-American laundromat chain owner and his family in the aftermath of a traumatic incident. While a victim of racism and classism himself, the play also explores how his survival methods negatively impact everyone around him, particularly his children. In a conversation with actors Rebecca Jimenez (Toni) and Trey Santiago-Hudson (Nick), they discussed playing siblings, how they’ve grown with the piece, and what it’s like bringing a Latinx story into the American family-drama canon.
From the audience’s perspective, Toni and Nick are held offstage for the first twenty minutes of the play. All we know is that Nick is coming back from a mental wellness facility, Toni is the one picking him up, and the rest of the family anxiously awaits their arrival. Backstage, the actors prepare:
Rebecca Jimenez: We usually watch some of the show, and that's helpful, too. To pick up on that kind of energy from the actors. And then Trey and I are really big fans of character improv, so we’ll improvise-
Trey Santiago-Hudson: The car ride leading up to the house.
RJ: What do we talk about? Even before Act 2, if I see Trey backstage, I always try to just be talking in character because it just helps me drop into the circumstances.
Having lived with their characters for over a year, the actors have relished the discoveries this extended journey has allowed as actors:
RJ: I feel so lucky that we get to step into these roles again because, a lot of the time, you finish a show and you feel like you had so much more to do. So now it feels like instead of starting from the beginning, we’re picking up where we left off. From there, of course, we're gonna go deeper. We're also older. We've had another year of life experience, so I'm approaching my role with more maturity and more awareness.
TSH: It's also allowed us to get even closer. You've known each other for longer as you know, playing siblings. We just know each other even better. We continue to grow together.
As the play grows, as our characters grow, we grow.
RJ: Every day we find something new. I feel like Trey and I are lucky to have a relationship where we can go and talk to each other about our work honestly and are just very transparent with one another. Especially with the sibling dynamic, we've been finding more and more moments where we clock in. If we're on stage at the same time, there is a lot more unspoken language happening behind the eyes.
THE OTHER AMERICANS draws on themes familiar to classic American family dramas—Nelson’s financial struggles and familial tensions particularly evoke Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. Despite the high Latinx population in the U.S., this genre has historically centered white families, leaving stories like this largely absent from the canon.
RJ: It's a blessing because you don't see it often.
It's so rare. I remember growing up reading these plays and thinking, “I want to play this role, but that’ll never happen unless the director decides to go a different route with this play.” And it's nice to be a part of something that I love so much. And that mirrors a classic. I just feel like it's revolutionary right now. When do you get to see a Latino family drama on a stage like this?
TSH: And to be part of it feels tremendous. Focusing on Latin people and a Latin family, which people just don't see enough of. I mean, you could name on two hands, maybe even one hand, how many Latino family-plays there are. It’s about time this happened.
These classic American plays are also rich with strong, complex women—Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, or Nora in A Doll’s House. THE OTHER AMERICANS joins that lineage, portraying women who are just as resilient and layered, navigating the same racist and classist systems as the men around them while also carrying the weight of those men’s trauma.
Jimenez brings this to life in her portrayal of Toni:
RJ: I hope audiences are watching and thinking “Damn, I hope she gets her shot. God, why does her dad talk to her like that? Why is she looked over?” I always imagined what it was like when Nick was gone. How was my dynamic with the family?
What was it?
Was it very different?
Did I get to spend more time with everybody now that he’s gone? And then within the week that he's home, that just goes away?
In THE OTHER AMERICANS, Nelson’s children inherit the need to “hustle” to survive. In real life, actors Rebecca Jimenez and Trey Santiago-Hudson inherited a different kind of legacy: a love for the arts. Jimenez grew up in Miami surrounded by theater through her actress mother, a path that eventually led her to a career as an actor and writer. Similarly, Santiago-Hudson was immersed in the arts from a young age, performing in his first school play at 15. For Santiago-Hudson, working on this play with his father, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who also directs THE OTHER AMERICANS, adds another layer of personal resonance.
TSH: It's been wonderful for many, many reasons. We work in the same field.
And everyone who works with him talks about how incredible it is. So after years and years of hearing that. I'm like, “Whoa, then why haven't I?” Down the line, decades from now, when my father retires, I don’t want anyone else to have a better idea of what he was like as an artist than me…. In a play you look to your director to help you best tell the story. And in life, you look to your father to help you best live your life.
As Nelson’s children wrestle with the weight of their father’s choices, Jimenez and Santiago-Hudson bring their own inheritance of artistry, passion, and resilience into these roles every night. With THE OTHER AMERICANS, they’re not just stepping into a classic family drama, they’re helping expand what “the American family” even looks like onstage.
THE OTHER AMERICANS runs through Sunday, November 9. Click here for more information on the show and how to get tickets.
Zoe Marín (she/her) is an Argentine-American theatre artist and comedian, who is currently based in Toronto. She is the Artistic Producer for First Born Theatre Company [a toronto-based, queer, Latine-led company dedicated to new work] and the co-creator of sketch-comedy troupe Small Friend Tall Friend [for which she mostly enjoys writing music]. Zoe loves: horror, comedy, music, politics, and pop culture, and hopes you see that in her work. ig: zmar_
This piece was developed with the BIPOC Critics Lab, a new program founded by Jose Solís training the next generation of BIPOC journalists. Follow on X: @BIPOCCriticsLab.