Esto No Tiene Nombre: The Film

Writer/Performer: Denice Frohman

Director: Alex Torra

Production Designer: Nia Benjamin

Esto No Tiene Nombre is a one-woman show that centers the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders. Written and performed by poet Denice Frohman, the play is told through a series of vignettes that traces lineages of Latina lesbian activism, expression, and desire. Guided by first person stories from pre-Stonewall police raids in Philadelphia to first kisses, Esto No Tiene Nombre places Frohman in conversation with a myriad of elders — barbers, lovers, activists and chefs — to explore their interiority and her own. In other words: how we love, who we love, and how we survive.

The show borrows its name from the first Latina lesbian magazine founded in the 1990s by Colombian poet, editor and activist, Tatiana de la Tierra, who wrote extensively about Latina sexuality and desire.

The archival interviews featured in Esto No Tiene Nombre are a culmination of a year-long project where Frohman traveled the country conducting over 20 oral history interviews as part of the project, I See My Light Shining: Oral Histories of Our Elders. The project was curated by acclaimed author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow Jacqueline Woodson.

Esto No Tiene Nombre was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The project was also supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Charlotte Cushman Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Southwest Airlines, and the Surdna Foundation through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant Program. Additional support has been provided by Independence Public Media Foundation and Silicon Valley Bank Foundation.