Performance photos jacked from ShadowLight's flickr stream.
on the border tip, if you think about stories white Americans would tell of the U.S.-Mexican border, you might think of anecdotes about illegal border crossers being caught, or the signs warning cars of families on the highway near Tijuana. Tall tales from Minutemen about a good or a bad day catching wetbacks. Thoughtful snippets of shoppers who kept mum when they saw someone stuffed into the trunk of a car, that sort of thing. Stories about people trying to get in from outside, told from the point of view of inside, stories that take into consideration only the land to the immediate "front" and "back" of the border, and not the volumes of land beyond it on either side.
But if you think about the stories Mexicans and Mexican Americans would tell, it's no longer a bilateral in/out kind of a narrative, with the penetration of the border being the climax. Because the reasons for leaving Mexico--and the reasons for entering the U.S.--are legion, and the paths that lead to the border are many, even if the paths that lead away from the border are few. The border stories, then, are not all about whether one gets through it or not, or even whether or not one survives the experience.
I had the enormous privilege a few weeks ago of attending a workshop production (i.e. a presentation of a part of a performance that isn't finished yet) of a new piece by the Balinese-style shadow puppetry company ShadowLight Productions.
Ghosts of the River is a collection of stories about the U.S.-Mexico border by Chicano playwright Octavio Solis, whose last play, June in a Box, I had some problems with but really enjoyed. The company only performed two of the stories, each unrelated except that they both took place on and in the Rio Bravo/Grande.
The other important detail about this project is that it is art-directed by Favianna Rodriguez, the community organizer, artist-entrepreneur powerhouse, who is just the kind of impeccably-credentialed community activist type whose art usually suffers for it. Favianna, on the other hand--who knows really how she does it--is also a fantastic artist ... fantastic in both senses of the word.
Put the three elements together into a dream-team and you could easily have mush. In this case, though, "dream team" is apt. As I said, the workshop only performed two stories, but both were terrific and the puppetry was wonderful.
The first story was about a Mexican woman murdered by her abusive husband, who haunts the river waiting for him to try to cross so she can drown him. The second (more moving because more realistic) story dramatizes the competitive friendship that develops between an American border guard, and a child "coyote" who makes money helping Mexicans cross illegally.
I loved Rodriguez's designs for the piece. Her characteristic organic/cubist faces and figures worked perfectly with the Balinese-style puppets, and details of her landscapes are perhaps more wonderful executed in light and shadow than in ink on paper. The photos here don't do the piece justice.
The team working together on this piece numbered about twenty, and the set-up was complex. I loved the whole thing. They'll be working on a full-length piece for Brava Theater in 2009 and I can't wait to see it. Definitely recommend keeping an eye out for it. I'll review it when it comes out.
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