References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot is a play by Puerto Rican playwright and screenwriter José Rivera.
The character of Benito was somewhat inspired by his younger brother Tony, who was a soldier in the Persian Gulf war stationed in Barstow, California where the play takes place.
[1] In addition to this, Rivera had been heavily influenced by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who brought magical realism into the mainstream.
The works of Marquez and the paintings of the eponymous artist Salvador Dalí, specifically the piece Two Pieces of Bread Expressing Sentimental Love, were inspirations for the play, along with Pedro Calderon de la Barca's play La Vida Es Sueño ("Life Is a Dream"), which Rivera had recently translated and updated in his 1998 play Sueño.
Ana Ortiz played the role of Gabriela and Robert Montano took on both Benito and the Moon.
Victor Mack, Svetlana Efremova and Wells Rosales filled out the cast as the Coyote, the Cat and Martin respectively.
Michael Lombard, Kevin Jackson, Kristine Nielson, Carlo Alban made up the rest of the cast.
Other productions have included Bailiwick Arts Center in Chicago (2005) and Cara Mia in North Texas (2015).
The play opens in Gabriela's backyard in Barstow, California, shortly after first Persian Gulf War.
The Coyote argues that he is wild and free living the hunter's life as opposed to the Cat's domesticated lifestyle.
She questions him about the deaths of local cats, including a friend named Pinkie Garcia.
The dejected Moon returns to the sky, remarking on how he should just refrain from interfering with human life.
Gabriela lies beside the dazed Martín and agrees to sleep with him- albeit in a non-sexual way.
Benito is upset that they lack food in the house and that Gabriela won't have sex with him.
In addition to this, Benito resents his sedentary desk job and the fact that Gabriela won't sympathize with him.
He gives in and tells the story of how he was involved in an air strike, killing innocents, in revenge for a corporal's hand injury.
She describes a dream in which she pulled rocks and shrapnel out of Benito's paralyzed body through his throat.
Martín demands that Gabriela either come away with him and make a life together or give him his virginity back.
Gabriela confronts Benito and demands to know if he saw the Moon last night to see if he is still the man she fell in love with.
Coyote is a hunter and wild where Benito is a soldier who has been involved in grisly acts of war, and Cat is a homebody, loved and taken care of with no knowledge of the stimulating and dangerous desert world in which Coyote lives where Gabriela is a housewife who is trapped in Barstow and fears the war.
At the end, Coyote's ghost and Cat wonder how long they would last until their relationship too was tested, as their love was so sudden and unexplainable as was Gabriela's and Benito's.
The play also touches on themes of manhood and puberty, as shown through the pubescent teenager Martín.
Gabriela spurns him, as she believes that a relationship is more than that, leading to her questioning of Benito at the end of the play.
Some of the art referenced in the play includes Salvador Dalí's Two Pieces of Bread Expressing the Sentiment of Love and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
The second and the third acts, which are mainly dialogue between Benito and Gabriela, are in a more realistic style and printed in normal text.
[3] The New York Times found Rivera's diction awkward: “The occasionally fanciful language that Mr. Rivera occasionally puts in their mouths doesn't feel mystical, as intended; it feels out of place.