Food has always played a big role in Joe Ortiz’s career. In 1978, he opened Gayle’s Bakery & Rosticceria in Capitola with his wife, Gayle. In 2025, he published his memoir, Pastina: My Father’s Misfortune, My Mother’s Good Soup. He’s penned cookbooks and articles for Bon Appetit, Sunset and Food & Wine magazines. He even created a musical inspired by bread. “I lived in a thick ragout of food, argument, and activity,” he writes in his autobiography.
That book describes much of what happens in Ortiz’s musical, Escaping Queens – Over the Roof, which runs at the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre July 3 through August 2. Co-directed by Greg Fritsch and Cathy D. Warner, with music and lyrics by Ortiz, the two-act show recounts Ortiz’s chaotic youth in New York and his family’s move to California, and how food figured into that journey.
“We wanted to show that music, food and humor were the things that sustained us during this difficult time,” says Ortiz. “The humor is important to get across in a show this heavy.”
Ortiz was born in 1946 in Manhattan and raised in Queens. His mother, Antonietta, was an Italian homemaker and his father, Herman, was a Puerto Rican shoe repairman, who drank and gambled too much. He was also physically abusive.
“My mother was my protector,” says Ortiz. “She protected me from everything. She knew early on that she had a tough husband, who was full of personality, joy and humor. But he had his ways of stepping over the balance and there was always an issue in our house with money and drinking. There was always conflict. Typical children-of-immigrants situation. My mother tried to make it all work. She eventually stood up to him. My father was often gone and always coming up with schemes to make money, which never materialized. He was supposed to take care of me, but he was often gone.”
In an attempt to dodge a bookie and avoid paying his debts, Ortiz’s father fled to Wilmington, Ca., where he bought a house and started a new life. Six-year-old Ortiz, his mother and older sister, Laura, would later join him, escaping over the roof of their apartment building that overlooked the Queensboro Bridge. His mother eventually left his father and opened her own restaurant in California.
“The bridge hung over us,” says Ortiz. “It’s a real symbol of our frustration and anxiety.”
In Ortiz’s home, his mother’s cooking didn’t just provide sustenance. It symbolized “hope and salvation” and “curative blessings.” His memoir even includes recipes for some two-dozen dishes like arroz con pollo, braciole, chicken cacciatore and pastina, a soup with star-shaped pasta, chicken and vegetables that “symbolized my mother’s nurturing.”
“Most of it is comfort food that we were attracted to to assuage the tough lifestyle,” says Ortiz.
After graduating from San Jose State University, Ortiz settled in Santa Cruz. He worked as a house painter by day and a musician by night, playing in rock, folk and country bands in clubs and bars. Ortiz actually started piecing together his memoir as far back as 1989, but wouldn’t publish it until decades later. During that time, Ortiz developed skits in restaurants and set them to music.
“I got the bug in terms of the theater experience,” says Ortiz.
He wrote his first food-based production, Bread!: The Musical, and a one-woman cabaret show, Smoke. The latter has been running for the last 25 years and returns in September to the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park. Both have starred local jazz singer and long-time collaborator Lori Rivera.
Like Ortiz, Rivera also had a Puerto Rican father. Inspired by their shared backgrounds, Ortiz decided to interpret his own family dynamics for the stage. Escaping Queens debuted in 2012 at the Cabrillo Stage. Later, Ortiz and Fritsch held concert readings in New York and San Francisco, and over the years have revised and refined the story and some of the songs.
“The story is about child abuse, but it’s also about somebody standing up and saying ‘This is not gonna happen anymore,’” says Ortiz. “The idea is about breaking the cycle. Some people get lucky and they don’t become abusers, but that’s not always the case. So it really had to be Mama’s story. Mama had to really see and understand the child abuse, and react to it and take a stand. Once we got to that we realized we had the climax of our story.”
The musical’s latest revival features Rivera and Adam Saucedo as Ortiz’s parents, and Ryan Stallings as Ortiz, though the actor in the show is a few years older. Other characters include Ortiz’s aunt, Rose, the neighborhood bookie, Freddie, and a group of doo-wop singers. The music reflects Ortiz’s childhood in the 1950s, and songs like “Mama’s Kitchen” and “She Feeds Me Macaroni (But I Need My Rice and Beans)” – which Ortiz calls “argument songs” – reflect his parents’ sometimes playful, sometimes combative bickering.
“It’s a potpourri of all the music that influenced us at the time,” says Ortiz. “My mother was into musical theater. Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rodgers and Hart. So there’s that element. My sister was into Big Band singers. Julie London, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. My dad liked going to the Copacabana. So there’s a couple of Latin tunes. It’s a mixture of all the songs that not only influenced our lives, but told the story.”
Though the musical chronicles the struggles of his early life, Ortiz says the larger story of a child of immigrant parents can be relatable to anyone.
“Peasants are always looking for a better life and we reflect that in the play,” says Ortiz.” It’s a universal story and people can relate to it in terms of leaving their homeland and searching out a better life.”
Escaping Queens – Over the Roof runs July 3-Aug. 2 at Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. Hours: 7 p.m. & 2 p.m.; admission $32-$35.
PULL QUOTE
Though the musical chronicles the struggles of his early life, Ortiz says the larger story of a child of immigrant parents can be relatable to anyone.
“Peasants are always looking for a better life and we reflect that in the play,” says Ortiz.” It’s a universal story and people can relate to it in terms of leaving their homeland and searching out a better life.”
