Acclaimed poet and performer Lorena Duarte gives the lowdown on this year's provocative performances, all offering surprising insight on the tricky topic of immigration.
Animating Democracy Through Theater
Profile by Lorena Duarte
NEVER ARGUE WITH AN IRISH PERSON ABOUT BEER. It may lead to very curious and unexpected things.
Alas, Al Justiniano had not heard this sage advice in 1998 when he volunteered to teach drama and conflict resolution for schools in Northern Ireland. And sure enough, one night, Justiniano became entangled in a controversial discussion: Harp or Guinness?
The debate in the pub moved to someone’s house and turned into an all night discussion which meandered from hops to politics. That night’s far-reaching conversation left Justiniano impressed with how much his Irish hosts knew about politics in general and about American politics, specifically.
Upon his return to Minnesota, that conversation stayed with him and he began to wonder how he could use his work in the theater to inspire political curiosity among people here at home.
Thus was born Teatro del Pueblo’s Political Theatre Festival.
Founded in 1992 as a non-profit theater company, Teatro del Pueblo (which means “Theater of the People”) has always had a mission to educate the community at large about Latino culture and to promote cultural diversity in the arts. However, upon his return from Ireland, Justiniano—who is a co-founder and now serves as the company’s Artistic Director—says he wanted to take it one step further.
“I wanted to create a portal to Latin American politics,” he says, “I wanted to broaden Minnesotans’ perspectives on Latin America.”
The first political theatre festival was set to start in November of 2001, but after the attacks of 9/11 it was postponed until March of 2002. “It was a weird time,” observes Justiniano, “but it also encouraged me and reenergized me even more to do the Political Theatre Festival.”
Now in its sixth year, the festival takes on different socio-cultural topics affecting both Latin America and Latino communities within the United States. This year, performances will highlight the issue the Latino community is perhaps best known for in mainstream conversations: immigration.
“It’s a hot topic, and we really wanted to look at it from different perspectives and create a forum so people can really talk and understand,” explains Justiniano. “Fear is the worst enemy of change. So by bringing these topics [to the fore] and by talking about them in a safe environment, we feel that we’re actually contributing to people’s knowledge base and that they can then make a decision that comes from a place of strength and knowledge.”
The Festival will feature six different one-act plays: Contents Under Pressure by Dana Yeaton, Dead Bolivians On A Raft by Guillermo Reyes, Road Scholar by J. B. Pravda, Did You Hear the One About the Mexican Laundress? by Daniel Damiano, and two works by Dominic Orlando, Embassy of The Americas and American Immigrant.
The plays are all primarily in English with occasional phrases in Spanish, they range from 10 to 30 minutes, and each one looks at the topic of immigration from a different perspective. Among the characters to be found in this year’s festival performances is a Latino immigrant that gets found in a Slovenian packing box, a Bolivian playwright who refuses to hire Latino actors for his play, and a Latin American national trying to apply for a visa in a US embassy. That play, Embassy of the Americas, along with Orlando’s other piece, American Immigrant, was commissioned by Teatro del Pueblo for this year’s festival and will be directed by Justiniano himself.
According to Justiniano, American Immigrant, this year’s signature play, will feature an interactive component where the audience gets to decide how the play will end. Even more intriguing, it’s also a musical, spoofing American Idol with songs on immigration.
“We do this every year,” says Justiniano, “We develop a play that starts as a play and then encompasses the audience in a conversation. We use the Political Theatre Festival as a living lab, as a method to engage audiences in the discussion.”
Justiniano calls this “animating democracy” and is enthusiastic when describing its impact in previous Teatro plays; he says it is about posing questions, “so audiences can really discuss. It works well to create a dialogue among audiences.”
Indeed, when talking with two of the festival’s other directors, fostering dialogue and surprising audiences by upending expectations is precisely what they zero in on, too.
Delta Giordano, who is directing Road Scholar, and Christina Akers, director of Did You Hear the One about the Mexican Laundress?, stress that while their plays may be short time-wise, both raise provocative issues that offer a lot of food for thought.
In Road Scholar, a Latino man stops to help a Caucasian woman with a flat tire. The conversation that follows is one which Giordano says is both true to life and a bit disturbing. She continues, “At first it doesn’t seem overtly political. It’s more subtle, but that’s the point. It’s about people’s preconceptions.”
She explains that the stranded woman is at first annoyed and wound up, but as she begins to talk to the man fixing her tire, she relaxes and is able to truly engage with him. As the conversation progresses, it becomes clear that he’s extremely well read and even philosophical. Watching the show the audience, like the lead female character, has an opportunity to examine their own preconceptions about the man, and about how this situation might unfold.
“The play takes you off guard, it’s more sophisticated and spiritual,” she says. “It makes you pause and it makes you think about what’s going on on the inside.”
Giordano hopes audiences will be surprised at the story and that it will stimulate debate. “It is interesting to see these people who are just a contrast to each other. In the end, they are able to relate to each other, what they do, and what they don’t have in common. That’s what’s lovely about this play, we get to see these [very different] people reveal themselves.”
Akers has similar aspirations for Did You Hear the One about the Mexican Laundress? The play revolves around three characters, a Latina woman and two government agents. The woman is being interrogated by the agents, who at first accuse her of being a terrorist, then a drug smuggler, and finally, a money launderer (hence the title).
According to Akers, when she spoke with the playwright it became evident that he wrote the piece as a reaction to the Patriot Act and, in particular, the prisoners held at Guantanamo. She quips, “I agree with the playwright, this is about writing about the system.”
She describes the duo of the agents as darkly comedic, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum-type characters. As the story unfolds, the obvious paranoia of the agents becomes apparent, as does their blind allegiance to what Akers calls, “a system out of control.” She explains further, “This play flip-flops your expectations, because the person you think would be the victim is the strongest character and ends up changing the structure of the piece.
She continues, it is really about asking the difficult (sometimes impossible) questions: “What is it to be ‘foreign,’ what does it mean to be an immigrant, how does it fit into the system, and how can it, if it is ‘foreign’?”
In fact, both directors point out that the comedy in these shows helps deal with the sometimes very difficult and disturbing preconceptions raised by the topic of immigration and being a “foreigner”. They credit Teatro del Pueblo for taking these issues on. Says Akers, “Sometimes we walk a thin line, but sometimes that has to be done.”
Justiniano, himself, admits to being challenged by some of the pieces: “I don’t agree with everything in the festival … but it’s about opening minds and offering different perspectives so people can make up their own minds. We need to look at all sides and include other perspectives.”
Even as this year’s Political Theatre performances open in front of audiences, Justiniano and his staff are already preparing for next year’s shows which will center on the theme of identity. And that’s not all; after this year’s festival closes, the company plans to put on two or three more productions in 2007.
Justiniano allows that the constant pace can be difficult, as is finding funding, but he’s determined to continue: “It [the Festival] is a tradition now and we’re going to keep it going. It’s a challenge, but we try to keep moving forward. And we hope that we can grow as a company, so that in 15 years I can pass the baton to someone else, because it is important for the Latino community to feel like their voices are being heard.”
“Theater is just a tool for people. It’s important to help people understand other people. The more we know about other cultures, the more sensitive to those cultures we’ll be. We need to look at the broader picture. We should seek friendship; this is a way for Minnesotans to know about Latin America.”
As he and the other directors begin rehearsing the plays for their February 15th opening night, Justiniano says that is what keeps him motivated. That and fostering the kinds of discussions that inspired him in the first place.
He laughs, “So, really, we can thank the Irish!”
What: Teatro del Pueblo's 6th Annual Political Theatre Festival
Where:
Intermedia
Arts, Minneapolis
When: February 15 through March 4. See
the
Teatro
del Pueblo website for details and
performance schedules.
Tickets: $15 general admission. (Some additional discounts and pay-as-able performances are also available). For ticket reservations call (612) 871-4444
Lorena Duarte is a writer, poet, and performer living in Minneapolis. For three years she served as Editor of La Prensa de Minnesota, a bilingual Latino newspaper, before joining the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota as the Coordinator for the Minnesotano Media Empowerment Project. She performs regularly with a spoken-word ensemble, Las Palabristas, and is currently co-editing a Palabrista poetry collection which will be published in 2007. In 2006, she was part of Found in Translation, winners of the Minneapolis MOSAIC 2006 commission. In addition, she was the recipient of a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board and was a finalist in the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry, and served as a judge for mnartists.org’s poetry series What Light. This month, she is representing Minneapolis at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Vancouver.