Kikiricaja Unlocks Your Imaginación: Guest Post by David López

I remember long summers and days after school as a kid when I would run outside to play. For me, playing was an exploration outside of my backyard walls through my own imagination. It was an adventure into the bushes only to enter into the selva, the gripping of a broom that suddenly transformed into a sword, or a hammock that was really a pirate ship on which I escaped countless attempts to throw me overboard and be eaten by vicious tiburones. I was invincible and there was no limit to what I could do…because I believed. The older I get, I realize that that creativity and imagination I had has essentially gone dormant and I have become more practical and my inner child locked up. But when you experience a moment so special that your imagination unlocks and you shrink down to that child-size you one more time, don’t let it get away. Grab it y déjate llevar.



Kikiricaja logo

Such is the epiphany one gets with the play Kikiricaja: Una historia de payasos, written by Miguel Ángel Garrido Ramón and produced by Tijuana’s alternative company Inmigrantes Teatro. Recently, Kikiricaja completed its run as part of South Coast Repertory’s Studio SCR Series in Orange County, being the first all-Spanish production to be presented at the award-winning theater. Here is where I was fortunate enough to fall in love with this story, its characters and had a beautiful return to my niñez.

Directed by Raymundo Garduño, Kikiricaja is the story of friendship between two clowns, Bartolomeus y Comino, who live in boxes, but do not subject themselves to the restrictions or the definition of a box. As you are introduced to Bartolomeus, played by the talented Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, and Comino, portrayed by Ariadnalí de la Peña, you are immediately reminded of the comedic legends that have shaped the world through their disguises and payasadas. Greats like Cantinflas, Roberto Gómez Bolaños “Chespirito”, Lucille Ball, Cepillín, Charlie Chaplin, María Elena Velasco “La India María” have all paved the way, but herein is a cast of modern-day clowns that are classic in archetype but contemporary in how they touch your heart.

 

Foto courtesy of Inmigrantes Teatro, credit Alejandro Montalvo

 

The two payasos share a love-hate relationship, always in direct competition with one another, trying to outdo and undo what the other has accomplished. Their boxes are their homes where they keep their most prized possessions, the objects that are part of them. To the common eye these cajas are just rundown crates, but with the help of their imagination, these boxes become larger-than-life interpretations of identity and how Bartolomeus and Comino truly see themselves as more.

Kikiricaja takes you into the world of a circus and through the ebb and flow of a ship imagined by the play’s characters. Humor mixes with pathos through the masterful interpretations that Rodríguez and de la Peña leave on the stage. Their physicality and ease in transforming themselves is what makes Kikiricaja a play that astounds even in the subtleties. It is reminiscent of childhood yet surpasses any expectation of clowning because the language resonates with Spanish speakers and the sounds of the accordion and drum are characters of their own in this production.

 

Foto courtesy of Inmigrantes Teatro, credit Alejandro Montalvo

 

Loyalty and friendship is challenged when in enters El Músico. Played by Andrés Franco, El Músico is the symbol of the tests of greed and envy that too commonly come between us as a society. He represents the decisions we make to lower others in the effort to get ahead. Franco delivers another hilarious role as El Músico making Kikiricaja a trifecta for storytelling with corazón and imagination.

This historia de payasos takes turns that tug at the heartstrings, but ultimately teach that no matter who you are, you must always think outside the cockadoodle-box and never be afraid to believe.

On July 31^st, Kikiricaja will celebrate its 150^th performance at Cecut, Tijuana, Baja California. Inmigrantes Teatro and Kikiricaja will continue traveling with the production in the next few months to locations like Portland, Mexico City and Argentina, mentioned Garduño, but they would love to continue presenting the play wherever there is an audience and ultimately would love to present the work in Europe.

 

Performing arts manifested in works like Kikiricaja are vital in the continued dialogue about cross-border, cross-cultural, cross-generational storytelling. So the next time you’ve forgotten what it was like to laugh honestly, close your eyes, open your mind and let your imagination soar. You’ll experience something truly fantastomático!

 

Foto courtesy of Inmigrantes Teatro, credit Alejandro Montalvo

 

For more information on Kikiricaja, visit: facebook.com/kikiricaja

Or if you’d like to bring Kikiricaja to your theater space, contact inmigrantesteatro@hotmail.com

David López is a writer and award-winning librarian from Santa Ana, CA. His work has appeared in the Orange County Register, Connotation Press, Brooklyn & Boyle, and his poetry will appear in a forthcoming anthology by Kórima Press.

Review: Homicide Survivors Picnic. Cano Reads At AMVETS Post.

Lorraine M. López. Homicide Survivors Picnic and other stories. Kansas City MO, BkMk Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-886157-72-9.

Michael Sedano


“That’s what I like about the South,” goes the refrain of an old toe-tapping song that I’m pretty sure readers of Lorraine M. López’ darkly intense stories will not be humming to oneself after completing the ten stories in Homicide Survivors Picnic. But then, given the irony of linking “homicide” with “picnic”, a reader does not pick up Homicide Survivors Picnic expecting sweetness and light to emanate from the pages. And it doesn’t.

Most of these are set in the South—Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama—and a couple of stories are set in sunny Southern California, whose ambience is anything but. A reader gets what the title proposes, a dank dark collection mirroring the debilitating heat and humidity of Southern weather. Unexpected will be the characters. Lopez’ central characters-many of them women-- are struggling everyday gente surrounded by, or engaged with losers.

“Survivors” aptly describes Lopez’ characters. In some stories, the survivors are characters radiating at the periphery of a central character’s behaviors, so readers need to be on their toes to catch on, or enjoy a reflective "ah hah" moment upon realizing who is the survivor.

These are not folks filled with zip-a-dee-doo-dah joie de vivre. There is Stewart, the failed male attorney developing a mediation practice. His live-in mate, Guadalupe, seems an irresponsible mother to her teenage girls. Thrice married and twice shacked up—he’s her latest “intermission”—Guadalupe takes what she can before moving on to the next jackass. When Guadalupe is arrested for writing bad checks, Stewart heeds the lovely woman’s pleading and calls on the judge who’s been keeping the mediation practice alive with referrals. The old judge trudges down to the jail, arranges for bail, and Guadalupe goes blithely on with her established pendejadas. Poor Stewart. The clerk of the court tells him to come see the Judge in the morning, and bring all his case files with him. Lopez gives Stewart a moment of triumph to close the story, but looking beyond the final paragraph the reader sees Stewart as the survivor of his own gullibility.

There’s Rita who, out of pity or misdirected charity—she works for a Roman Catholic organization-- allows her divorced husband to occupy the attached duplex apartment. Beto, her loutish loser of an ex, is one of those vapid football fanatics. Rita remembers Beto’s unperceived humiliation begging players for autographs as they file off the team bus before a game. They brush him off irritably. Beto’s prize possession is a Packers bobble-head doll. Back when they were still married, Rita had taken Beto’s doll from its shrine to amuse a child. She remembers how he’d bloodied her nose for the sacrilege. And here she is, living with her two children next door to this pig. As Rita’s story concludes she’s worked up the courage to evict Beto. In all likelihood, when Beto gets the news it literally will kill him. Rita’s seeming survivor’s moment of triumph comes from her resolve to move on whatever the consequences.

Many of Lopez’ stories don’t actually resolve the agony, the author preferring to lead the reader up to the crucial point then leaving it hanging. In “The Imam of Auburn,” Mona, a seriously mentally ill woman, attaches herself to a sympathetic acquaintance who goes the extra mile to support Mona’s debility. As the story ends, Mona dashes free of a hospital to hide in the back seat of Juana’s car. There's skulking Mona telling Juana’s husband to drive away, she’ll explain later. In the title story, a pregnant teenager ties her dead boyfriend’s do-rag across her eyes then dashes across a busy multi-lane highway (does Georgia have freeways?). Her brother, Ted—he’s the survivor, not his sister—looks toward his frantic mother, toward his sister, feeling trapped in the maze of their debilities and demands on him. But his sister needs to be saved and as the final sentence races to its period, Ted presses his eyes closed and seems about to dash blindly into the racing traffic, dreaming of California.

Kids, cats, spoiled food, thick-calves for some reason, and men with northern European names are some of the connective tissue Lopez relies upon to link the otherwise unrelated stories together. People Lopez doesn’t like—she probably dislikes most of her characters, interestingly enough—smell of dead meat or spoiled mayonnaise, or have those calves. The saps have names like Helmut or Anders. Whiny or poorly raised small children are a special torment; the four year old who likes to call people “motherf*cker”, or sad precocious Roxanne, who tells her caretaker survivor cousin she’s “doing it right”, raising the child while a speed-freak mother does time.

Characters whom the author dislikes more than others come in for Lopez’ most aggressive descriptions. When Rita explores Beto’s side of her duplex, for example, Lopez’ description of the horrid pigsty is arrestingly stomach-turning and makes a reader grateful that synaesthesia is not one of Lopez’ stronger techniques. Her visual images are strong enough, however, as in her description of a “prodigious turd” floating in Beto’s unflushed commode. And there’s thick-calved Helmut, who remarks to a visitor he’s meeting for the first time, how blonde the visitor is, for a Jew.

Short fiction must build quickly with an economy of description and suggestive plotting. When effectively concluded, such reading brings a short burst of pleasure, then the regret of that punto final. Given so compact a space, fact-checking becomes a major virtue for readers in the know. With the South generally a mystery to me--my street-level travel having been confined in multiple visits to metro Atlanta—I completely accept Lopez’ geography and local color. But not her Southern California. How surprising that Leo got his beef dipped sandwich from “Felipe’s.” If Lopez comes calling in SoCal one of these days, I’ll invite her to Philippe’s for the “original” beef dip sandwich, if she’s not gluten-adverse. One thing she gets right about El Lay traffic is the popularity of nonverbal communication—muck up a right of way, wey, and you’re sure to get a blaring horn and the finger.

I’m raising my index finger in Lorraine López’ direction--not the bird nor a Packer's foam rubber prop, but the “you’re number one” finger--in appreciation of a finely honed collection of short fiction any reader will find absorbing. And a bit of a heartbreak, in the end, when little Roxanne calls from her mother's crib, "I want to come home." I'll survive until López brings that little girl back in a fully-fleshed novel.

Daniel Cano Signing and Fundraiser

Saturdays in Los Angeles tend to come filled with excellent events and difficult forced choices. November 14, for example, featured a fabulous pair of art openings in Pomona at the far eastern reaches of LA County, and Daniel Cano's publication party about as far West as one can go in L.A. and not be in Santa Monica Bay.

I'm happy I elected the Cano event at the Pete Valdez Sr. AMVETS Post II near the Sony Studios, née Paramount Pictures, in Culver City. Cano's historical novel, Death and the American Dream, recounts an unknown period of Los Angeles history in his story of a Spanish-language journalist in the era of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. See this La Bloga review of Cano's novel. Mejor, buy the novel and read it.

The event was heavily attended, SRO, and only one fellow left his cellphone on. How silly some folks can be. He left the room to carry on the conversation behind a curtain. Hey, vato, we can still hear you! The only good thing is the caller was lost and needed directions. My Prius talks to me so navigating the bumper-to-bumper route from the Eastside to the AMVETS post was relatively painfree and no one gave me the finger.

The evening kicked off with an important message from Frank Juarez about political movidas chipping away at West L.A. land deeded in perpetuity for Veterans care. It's a deadly serious concern of itself, but appropriate to remark upon, since the "old soldiers' home" makes several appearances in Cano's novel. Please click the link and read about the shameful theft of land from wounded military Veterans.

Comic relief buffered Juarez' talk from Cano's reading, in the personage of The World's Most Radical Chicano, Che Castro. Castro launched a MEChA club in pre-school, talk about credentials. The actor, Elias Serna, a Ph. D. candidate in English at UC Riverside and CSU Northridge English profe, has a good sense of comedic timing that reinforces several hilarious bits, including his response to racial profiling. When ICE agents accost a Chicana or Chicano--we're citizens you know even if we don't have papers--show them que eres documentada, documentado:

And that's the antepenultimate Tuesday of November, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga. Buy books, gente!

mvs

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Doce días de mis Krismas

Intro

Okay, it's a day late, but since there has yet to appear an overwhelming opposition to this more-or-less annual La Bloga tradition, I will again post the dreaded Spanglich version of "Doce días de mis Krismas", in as many days.

In deference to regular La Bloga contributors, each short installment will be posted below their assigned daily post, so if you for whatever silly reason, wish to keep following the breathtaking momentum of this comedic attempt at capturing the Chicano Krismas spirit, you'll only be able to partake of them after checking out the regular post. As always, let us know how these move you, even if it's in the direction of repulsion. To play catch-up, below we begin with the first two installments.
RudyG

Doce días de mis Krismas
the Spanglich version
Esa's voice in red; Ese's voice in black

On the 12th día 'til mis Krismas,
My true love gave to me,
12 numbers numbing ...

"Cariño!"
"What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Cariño. Why do you ask?"
" 'Cause it's always something when you call me that."
"Not this time, Cariño."
"Oh, okay."
"By the way ..."
"Qué ching--"
""... Cariño, you did remember to get my numbers, qué no?
"Tus num--"
"My lotto numbers--my 2 winning tickets. Today's the drawing, and I need that 50 mill. I gotta get presents, get mis uñas done and there's that bingo tomorrow. I'm just feeling lucky."
"Numbers--"
"You must not be feeling lucky 'cause it sounds like you forgot! Uh, bobo?"
"What happened to cariño?"
"Same chingada that's gonna happen to you if my numbers come up!"
"But Cariña, I--"
"And if you forgot, Ese, you get nada de lucky from this cariña--that will be tus Krismas."
"But, but--"

On the 11th día 'til mis Krismas,
My true love gave to me,
11 peppers pepping ...

"Honey, Esa ..."
"Ahora, qué quieres?"
"I want you mi corazón."
"Did you stop at that preppie tequila bar, otra vez?"
"No, mi muñeca magnifica."
"Then why you calling me those names?"
"Because of my infinite adoration for you."
"Did you eat?"
"Amor, I didn't have--"
"That's what I thought. There's frijoles you can microwave, and there's still that chile mi 'amá brought over."
"Still?"
"You speaking ill of my mom's cooking?"
"Nunca, mi flor encantada, it's just that--"
"Just that you're a huevón when it comes to eating real chile, huh?"
"Perhaps you'd consider whipping--"
"You, maybe?"
"No, mi estrellita lindísima, I just thought--"
"You just thought you could come in late bien pedo and sweet-talk me?"
"I thought you might find it in your heart--"
"This heart's tired from cleaning up after your marrano friends' poker game last night."
"But I thought you agreed--"
"I tell you what I agree. I agree I won't tell your macho friends what an aguitado you are about chile and you ..."
"Anything you say, mi mariposa mas luminosa que ..."

[Continued on Day 10.)

© Rudy Ch. Garcia