No more WAITING

By Daniel A. Olivas

“What harm have you done to them? You are as much of this country as you are of México. But you are not home in either place. Ni de aquí, ni de allá.” 

                                                                                            –Isabel, in WAITING

***

On Saturday, I sat in the courtyard of the Atwater Village Theatre to watch the world premiere of WAITING, the one-act pandemic version of my play, WAITING FOR GODÍNEZ. All pandemic protocols were followed (i.e., masking was strongly recommended, ticketholders sat in “pod” seating with their respective groups, no reception afterwards, etc.). The production, which runs each weekend through August 15, stars Shanelle Darlene, Carolina J. Flores, Valentina Guerra, Amir Levi, and Raul Vega Martinez. Produced by Playwrights’ Arena and directed by Daphnie Sicre, I sat in awe as five talented, hardworking actors brought my play to life. I will never forget the experience.

Jon Lawrence Rivera is the founder and artistic director of Playwrights’ Arena which is dedicated to discovering, nurturing and producing bold new works for the stage written exclusively by Los Angeles playwrights. Daphnie Sicre is an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University in the Theatre Arts Program where she teaches directing, and theatre for social justice.

Many wonderful theatermakers have a hand in bringing my play to the stage. The associate producer is Natasha Kaiserman. Costumes are by Mylette Nora, and the sound and set design is by Matt Richter. Letitia Chang serves as the production’s stage manager.

Inspired by Samuel Beckett’s iconic Godot play and our country’s anti-immigrant policies, this play explores the meaning—and absurdities—of identity and belonging.

Here are a few photos from our dress rehearsal and also a small, informal celebration after the world premiere where most of the actors, the director, and some loved ones joined in. The first weekend sold out, so if you wish to see this production, visit this link for ticket information.

 

Playwrights' Arena presents the world premiere of my play, WAITING

By Daniel A. Olivas

In the summer of 2018, I wrote a New York Times opinion piece about my fictional response to Donald Trump’s election in the form of my 2017 dystopian short story “The Great Wall” where the President has finally constructed his long-promised southern border wall, and used the adjoining detention center to separate undocumented parents from their children. I argued that a year after creating this fictional, horrific world, my dystopian tale had essentially become a reality. In other words, for many immigrants and their children, the dystopia was here.

But it got worse. Trump flailed and sputtered—usually in late-night or early-morning Tweets—attacking anyone who opposed his policies and laying blame on others for failing to fulfill his promise to build the wall. He eventually unilaterally highjacked billions of dollars of the military budget to fund his wall. Even some Republicans were aghast at such self-help from an increasingly volatile president.

A year later, I believed that “dystopia” no longer fully described what we were witnessing. In my mind, the irrational hatred aimed at immigrants by Trump and his followers amounted to absurdity in its purest form. Merriam-Webster defines “absurd” as “having no rational or orderly relationship to human life: MEANINGLESS.” Under the Trump administration, we were certainly living in absurd times.

For over two decades, I had used fiction and poetry to depict and honor my Mexican American culture and experience all the while taking aim at the systematic bigotry my community has suffered for over two centuries in this country. But Trump took it to a new level. Don’t get me wrong: his thuggish, ignorant bigotry was nothing new. But to witness such unabashed hatred of immigrants—and anyone who looked like an immigrant—proclaimed and implemented as policy at the highest levels of our government in this day and age was flabbergasting.

So, in the summer of 2019, I was inspired to write my first play, Waiting for Godínez. Looking to Samuel Beckett’s iconic Godot play as the framing of my tale, Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, and Lucky were now embodied in my characters Jesús, Isabel, Piso, and Afortunada. In my play, Jesús is kidnapped each night by ICE and put into a cage. But the immigration agents forget to lock the cage, so Jesús escapes and makes his way back to Isabel as they wait for Godínez in a city park. It is a wholly different play, of course, but Mr. Beckett’s absurdist spirit runs through my work.

I wrote it almost in a fever—it was the literary equivalent of a primal scream. I immersed myself in Beckett’s text and watched many filmed versions of the Godot play available online. According to my journal, I started writing my play on July 23, 2019, with a working title of Waiting for Gómez. On August 3, I changed the title to Waiting for Godínez because, as I explained in my journal, it “fits better than ‘Gómez.’” The next day, I proclaimed in my notes: “Finished Waiting for Godínez!” In other words, I wrote the play in 13 days.

I then went about the business of submitting it to theatres and play competitions. I had never written a play before, and I do not have an MFA. So, I had to teach myself how to write a play and then figure out how to get someone to read it. In my research, Playwrights’ Arena looked like a potential home for what I was trying to do, so I submitted my play on August 7, 2019. The odds were stacked against me. But then remarkably, ten months later, I received an email invitation for my play to be included in Playwrights’ Arena 2020 Summer Series. I was suddenly a playwright.

That acceptance resulted in Waiting for Godínez being read on July 5, 2020, via Zoom, by professional actors and directed by Dr. Daphnie Sicre, a drama professor at Loyola Marymount University. I was bitten by the playwriting bug, and there was no turning back. I was invited the next month to submit a new draft of my play that addressed several notes made by Playwrights’ Arena’s artistic director, Jon Lawrence Rivera, and literary managers, Jaisey Bates and Zharia O’Neal. I quickly turned around a new draft and submitted it. But as I had learned from my research, there was no assurance that Playwrights’ Arena would make the commitment to fully stage my play. I was fine with that. My experience was already beyond anything I could have imagined, and I felt deeply gratified that my artistic challenge to our country’s anti-immigrant policies reached an audience, albeit a small one.

I started on a second play as part of a playwriting group sponsored by another local theatre. Then in November 2020, I received an email from Playwrights’ Arena asking for a Zoom meeting to discuss Waiting for Godínez. We were, at that point, well into the pandemic without widely available vaccines. In-person theatre was almost non-existent except for a few pandemic-friendly productions such as Playwrights’ Arena’s Garage Theatre where a small audience could watch a live play from the safety of their cars.

At the meeting, Jon gave me the wonderful news that Playwrights’ Arena wanted to produce Waiting for Godínez but I might have to wait a year or two for that to happen. Alternatively, I could rewrite it into a shorter, pandemic version—essentially trimming it by half—for a Garage Theatre-style production for the summer of 2021. After consulting with my director, Dr. Sicre, and my wife (not in that order), I decided to take on the challenge and rewrite my play for an earlier production.

The result is Waiting, which I like to call my pandemic remix of Waiting for Godínez. It is about half as long as the original, and the pandemic is now part of the storyline. In fact, the pandemic theme served an important role in helping me to trim and rewrite it into a shorter play that maintained the spirit of the original but that stood on its own as a separate and new theatrical work.

And as Playwrights’ Arena’s production of Waiting moves forward, we are still witnessing the residual violence done to immigrant families by the Trump administration. And the current administration—though eons better than the last—is still grappling with the harsh realities of a broken immigration system and the cruel politicization of the border.

Through absurdist humor, I hope that my play shines a bright light on the human rights tragedy suffered by immigrants while also humanizing that suffering. My goal is to give a voice and face to those members of our community who deserve to be respected and appreciated for their humanity. In other words, though I looked to Beckett’s absurdist theatre for inspiration, I actually do believe that there is something to be done. The alternative is too much for me to accept.

***

Waiting will have its world premiere on Saturday, July 24, and will run through August 15, 2021, at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039. For show times and ticket information, visit Playwrights’ Arena’s page for this play. Tickets are now available.

Talking With Your Mouth Full. Reichle Reviews LATC Show. News'nNotes.

Review: Paloma Martinez-Cruz. Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019.
ISBN: PAPERBACK (9780816536061) EBOOK (9780816539789)

Michael Sedano

What a compelling title, Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace. Compelling turns out to be a perfect descriptor of this battle protreptic whose audience constitutes anyone who eats food.

Raza, “millennial mestizos” or garden-variety Chicanos like me, will find Food Fight! extra-spicy and authentic. A word of advice: buy the paperback because this is a book readers want to dog-ear, underline, respond to, and share with fellow grocery-shoppers. Here's a wonderful proposal: read parts aloud on your final-ever visit to Starbucks.


Paloma Martinez-Cruz is a food warrior who doesn’t want to be alone on the front lines, that’s why she’s recruiting you. Her final word to readers of Food Fight! is “knuckles up” when it comes to inimical elements she describes in these four scintillating chapters. The phrase means give the author a fist bump and a gluten-free knuckle sandwich to purveyors of brownface “authenticity.”

If Food Fight!’s TOC were a restaurant, salivating diners would look over the menu and know not where to start:

1. Farmworker-to-Table Mexican: Decolonizing Haute Cuisine
2. On Cinco de Drinko and Jimmiechangas: Culinary Brownface In The Rust Belt Midwest.
3. Home girl Café: La Conciencia Mestiza as Culinary Counterstory.
4. From Juan Valdez to Third Wave Cafés: Lattes and Latinidad in the Marketplace.

No te dejes, might be the sub-title of the book, and as with most other Spanish in this text, it won’t be translated, because, no te dejes. Martinez-Cruz is a warrior-scholar holding your attention with literary expression and clearly delineated structure. Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace needs to be widely shared, as an example of quality academic writing, inveiglingly good structure, and obviously, as an important documentary on food communication in United States American culture.

The author explains what she means by key words, Latinidad, and Millennium, Mestizo of the title, in event some readers aren’t entirely clear. The words form the rhetorical strategies of the text, identification and affirmation. Pointing out the gachismos of marketing--what would appear to be a subversive motive--instead must be understood as purification discourse about marketing practices.

Haute cuisine isn’t just frenchified expensive food, not since Alice Waters launched a farm-to-fork movimiento in Berkeley. Across the nation, diners and chefs featured the notion of local ingredients as a way to dine well and to help the environment and their self-respect all on one plate.

Organic food comes at a premium diners eagerly cough up. Along comes a Mexicana chef in next-door Oakland, Cosecha, with the same ingredients philosophy as Chez Panisse, and diners whine about the Chez Panisse-level prices for Mexican vernacular food. Then, when fancy chefs from Frisco spot Cosecha’s owner buying veggies in “their” farmer’s market, those chefs express amazement to see her there all so out of place among the enlightened victualizers.

No te dejes ignore the laborers who produce that comida, especially while you’re patting yourself on the back for being an organic consumer saving the earth. Discussing the gap between diners and pickers, Martinez-Cruz cites a zen gardening book whose “readership is coded as White and privileged: agricultural employment is exotic, unpaid, recreational, and leads to the aggrandizement of the self.”

Gente with dirt under their uñas hear Martinez-Cruz loud and clear when she concludes, “for farmworkers the ugliness and pain of their working lives erode the spiritual connectivity and dignity that elite and recreational conservationists insist is their right to enjoy.”

Every essay will be thrilling to raza readers who share the scholar’s comprehension of the status quo of farming, and appreciate her articulate expression. No te dejes be fed brownface authenticity in theme restaurants nor fine dining “found Mexican” food:

“This is where Anglo cooks narrate a traveler’s tale about their interactions with Mexican cooking and carefully construct a 'romantic crusader' image of the intrepid entrepreneur. Positional superiority is naturalized via the discourse of discovery. The most famous example is Rick Bayless, who is credited as the first to bring Mexican cuisine into the realm of fine dining in the United States.”

Bayless isn’t the only outsider getting rich and comfortable in the role of culinary Christopher Columbus. There are Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken whose Border Grill narrative of discovery makes a foundation myth of heroic proportions. 

A kandy-colored tangerine flake streamlined VW bug (I made that up, the color), travelling dusty roads deep in the heart of Mexico, a pair of foodie vagabonds. That the women steal recipes and techniques from market vendors along the way, taco stands, family barbacoa in el patio, is spun by the computer-driven rhapsode as praiseworthy. “When they returned,” Border Grill’s webpage exults, citing an article in Los Angeles magazine, “they opened Border Grill and ‘applied the same intelligence…to green corn tamales and cactus-paddle tacos that other chefs might to a lobe of foie gras'.” Without torturing the nopales, of course.

The author, not content to let that stick in one’s craw, makes her point clearly and forcefully:

“The ‘intelligence’ is not attributed to the Oaxacans and Yucatecans in the back of the house, but to the French-trained Millikan and Feniger for capitalizing on their [raza] traditions. Once again, Mexican knowledge is made to appear as though it pertained to the public domain.”

Every essay will fill a reader—millennial mestizo or just plain old Chicano—with joyous smiles at the zingers. Advertencia! This book is not one for idle consumption, it’s not fast food. Food Fight! is a head-spinning read to me, accustomed to the subtlety and implicit structure of novels. Paloma Martinez-Cruz dishes up a scholarly dissertation of substantial complexity with a heaping portion of humor, verbal sleight-of-hand, and barely-restrained ire.

The publisher, University of Arizona Press, tags the book as “Latinx Pop Culture.” It’s a series. Call me outdated, but I didn’t realize “pop culture” was still a thing. When I think of pop culture I think non-Mestizos like Marshall McLuhan or Irving J. Rein. Those guys, and tipos like them, ruled the roost for pop culture when I was in grad school, ya hace muchos años. Delving into deadly serious topics with a satirist’s pen and a scholar’s ken, that pop culture writing was good stuff, admirable scholarship if unconventional at the time.

High school readers will improve their SAT score after reading Food Fight! College readers will take pleasure at being forced to enjoy this textbook. All will understand the book's contribution of diversity and access. Scholars will be jealous. Chicanx will applaud.

Pop culture, the Latinx variety evidently, is seriously scholarly and similarly good stuff. Each essay comes redolent, in a good way, with the smell of the lamp—lots of footnotes, an extensive bibliography, excellent diversity in her primary/research sources. For example, Martinez-Cruz cites the most outstanding raza pop culture treatise extant until now, William Anthony Nericcio’s Text(t)Mex. Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. In fact, Food Fight! and Text(t)Mex constitute the two best works about Chicana Chicano Pop Culture communication.

Students learning to write scholarly articles will be well served observing how this author structures her work—classic strategy of introduction, preview, transition, point one, transition, point two, transition, conclusion. But she weaves intricate pathways through contentions and evidence. Take the Homegirl chapter apart, kids. An historical overview locates cholas as outsiders and objects of fear. Investigate that claim, dig into the deeply-held prejudice against raza, e.g. the wingnut television headline about “three Mexican countries”. Fox teevee and its antecedent marketing agency ilk, have little substance, yet their semiotics plant roots in the public mind.

Institutional culture, Martinez-Cruz points out, needn’t hold sway over public opinion nor pop culture imagery. Homegirl Café converts the subversive chola into a life-affirming role, la chola as a provider, a person who brings nourishment. When visitors arrive at Los Angeles International Airport, they can dine at Homegirl Café. Welcome to LA, Chola town, have some sprouts. And that’s a good thing.

Professor Martinez-Cruz hits a high mark with the homegirl chapter then delights further with her views on Chiquita Banana and Juan Valdez, “the fetish of the agricultural Other”. Here is a bit of exposé, needful given the self-congratulating claims of “Fair Trade” plastered on Starbucks’ windows. It’s a ruse.

International and U.S.-based “fair trade” certifications aren’t inventory strategies, it's marketing. Starbucks and others can be certified as “fair trade” by blending as little as 11% of Fair Trade products with 89% non-Fair Trade. It's "fair-washing". 

Martinez-Cruz’ protrepsis is most clearly spoken with reference to coffee and fair trade, noting “For multinationals and their shareholders who try to skirt fair trade movement demands, the only force that can compel practices toward more just and equitable partnerships with growers inevitably comes from consumer pressure, but the problem is that consumers do not ask for what they believe they already have.” As a Wendy's commercial says (link),  "you get what you pay for." No te dejes, millennials. 

The author has done battle as a food warrior in the corporate trenches. Joining with workers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers at a Wendy’s corporate meeting, the professor wore her white girl traje while the brown-faced CIW workers just did their thing. After the first CIW portavoz spoke at the beginning of a shareholder confab, Wendy’s board chair ignored the brown hands raised for a public comment.  Martinez-Cruz was chosen to ask the last question, which is a minor slip-up from the big shots. 

“After hearing from Reyes, Wendy’s Chairman of the board Nelson Peltz refused to call on any other members of the CIW. It was evident that there were many other representatives with their hands up, but they were excluded from the conversation. It appears that my dark suit had been the right choice…I used the opportunity to explain that, as a professor at the Ohio State University, I was joined by colleagues and students to oppose the university’s contract with Wendy’s while they remain connected to the abuse of workers rights. But I felt shame in having been granted the opportunity to speak while important fair food program organizers had not, owing to the color and class lines drawn throughout the room, and across our faces, bodies, and life chances.”

Much as I enjoyed the heck out of these nonfiction essays, I struggled to make sense of the author’s concession to custom where she passes up a rhetorical opportunity to enhance identification between some readers and this scholarship. She explains,

“At its most useful, and in spite of its homogenizing implications, Latinidad provides a descriptor for the Pan-Latino experience of institutional racism, stereotyping, and shared cultural knowledge of hemispheric domination by the United States. My use of Latinidad here seeks to call attention to the ways that Latinx audiences are impacted by a discrete set of political vulnerabilities that are silenced and effaced by the performativity of coffee in second and third wave marketing campaigns.”

Good stuff. I bet Paloma Martinez-Cruz struggled for hours over the next paragraph. It’s the “battle of the name” that post-war mestizos fought, all over again for millennials. I wonder its provenance, her or the editor? I wish she’d not conceded the point to majoritarian values, particularly galling given this book-length objection to forces that promulgate images like Chiquita and Juan, Speedy and Frito Bandito, and the little dog, too:

“While terms mestizo, Latinx, and Latino are employed throughout my study, here, the terms 'Hispanic' and 'Latin' make an appearance, as these are the census- and marketing-sanctioned designations used most frequently in the business and government sources I discuss.” I don't buy it.

It’s a significant error. The author attacks the credibility and validity of absurdly broken marketing-sanctioned conceptualizations of raza peoplehood butchered in the abbatoir of contemporary food culture. And yet, she asks the reader to capitulate because it's their media. Chimichingao!

Don’t call me “Hispanic,” esa. In Lak’ech.

Buy Food Fight! Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace. Write the author a letter, tell her the next edition we, nosotras nosotros nosotrxs, expect a better fight on the "H" front from our millennials. Here's where to order: (link)



Transformative Theater: Activism and Art in Los Angeles Theater

Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

In 1995-96, my final year as a UCLA undergrad, I took History of Chicano Theater with José Luis Valenzuela and in the subsequent quarter, Contemporary Chicano Theater. With the production of Luminarias and August 29, a seed was planted.

My fiction writing has grown with a focus on strong women, historic injustice, and raising social consciousness. My characters are planted in the places I’ve called home: Imperial Valley, California; Hatch, New Mexico; Blythe, California; and Los Angeles. The stories I write reflect the diversity of my lived experience. I remain rooted in familia y comunidad, celebrating our contributions to the cultural landscape.

José Luis Valenzuela, Artistic Director LATC

Almost 25 years later, I walked downstairs at Los Angeles Theater Center to watch The Mother of Henry and Profesor Valenzuela was standing at the entrance to the theater looking the same as he had in front of that classroom. 

He welcomed me and my friends, excited we were there for the preview. Playwright Evelina Fernández (Luminarias 2000, How Else Am I Supposed to Know I’m Still Alive 1996) sat inside the theater as regal and dignified as she was 25 years ago. After the performance, I was so moved I could barely thank her for her words.

Their powerful language and direction came to life on that stage. Through projections of news reports, I was transported to 1968, where characters engaged with the Vietnam War and related protests in varied ways, given their social location. 

A time when women in the workplace faced sexual harassment without recourse and before the movement for change that we have today. A time when different class and cultural beliefs clashed before they could ever unite against a common social ill. 

The exploration of gender/sexuality dynamics in the context of political turmoil makes this play relevant across cultures and time periods.

Reichle and Valenzuela

The focal point of this world is Concepción/Connie, a newly separated mother who aspires to financial independence. Even though I’m not a mother, I felt her joy and pain. I cried – not something I do easily – and felt loss deep within my gut. 

The comedic interactions between colleagues and family members were relatable and carried the necessary political weight for the play’s purpose. 

While religion plays a role in Connie’s life, the apparitions she has of the Virgin Mary seem more like casual interactions with a friend and provide the necessary levity to serious moments of emotional struggle. 

And while the play focuses on the mother of Henry, her mother is also a significant force when she rolls on stage, offering consejos and representing the impact of profound historical events from the perspective of a different generation. 

Every character does the work necessary to create a transformative theatrical experience.

Local writers with Reichle

For about 25 years that seed that José Luis Valenzuela and Evelina Fernández planted in my young psyche has been growing and blooming, withering and blooming again. 

As a graduate student now, I’ve had the opportunity to take play writing classes and strive to infuse the same level of humanity and social consciousness into my writing for the stage. 

Watching The Mother of Henry has provided inspiration for visualizing my own work and reinforced my desire to have a profound impact on diverse audiences.

Extended Run! Through 20 April!
The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 
514 S. Spring St., Downtown L.A. 
Wednesday, 8 p.m. (4/17 only); 
Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; 
Sunday, 4 p.m.

On Saturday, April 13, 2019 at 8:00 PM stay for the Talkback with playwright Evelina Fernández. 

Running time: 90 minutes with one intermission. 

Get your tickets: (866) 811-4111 or www.thelatc.org.

News'nNotes

We are doing it all over again this year. Our chapbook series submission period will be open until June 15. There is a $10 reading fee which will go towards book production expenses. If you are a student or in financial need, we will waive the fee. Send an email request to editor@diggingthroughthefat.com for instructions on how to submit your chapbook with no fee.

Submit via this link.


Master of Arts Candidacy In Mind?

Alburquerque Reading
How beauteous that I know several of the poets en propria persona as a result of the late, bitterly lamented National Latino Writers Conference. Orale, NHCC, bring back the NLWC!

La frontera - our new war zone

So-called immigration reform = real militarization

Over at LatinoPOV.com, Jimmy Franco Sr. did an analysis of Senate Bill 774, the so-called immigration reform bill. He said, “Characterized as primarily being an enforcement law as the aspect of actual reform and family reunification were relegated to a secondary role in this legislation. The 2008 promise of immigration reform is still pending.

“Nine months after the election a military-enforcement bill is born. The Senate Bill designated 46 billion dollars for enforcement and militarizing the border. The bill does not pertain to actual immigration reform, rather it primarily focuses on a massive increase in police enforcement and militarization of the border.” [LaBloga emphasis] Go here to read the entire article.

Debating pros and cons about the bill’s value reforming immigration, when it in fact is “a militarized war on undocumented laborers,” as Franco calls it, might be as useless as citizens of Nazi Germany debating the architecture and energy efficiency of gas ovens constructed to liquidate the communists, socialists, union leaders, gypsies and Jews.

It might be better if the eyes of latinos and all Americans focused on how this militarization can and will later be turned on any American. German citizens failed to do this or sufficiently oppose their government’s militarization. What will happen here?

According to a Todd Miller post, How to Turn the U.S.-Mexican Border into a War Zone, Homeland will have “a staggering multitude of ways to monitor, chase, capture, or even kill people, thanks to modernistic arrays of cameras and sensors, up-armored jeeps, the latest in guns, and even surveillance balloons at the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“The Senate bill provides for the hiring of almost 19,000 new Border Patrol agents, the building of 700 additional miles of walls, fences, and barriers, and an investment of billions of dollars in the latest surveillance technologies, including drones.

“Calling this immigration reform is like calling the National Security Agency’s expanding global surveillance system a domestic telecommunications upgrade.  It’s really all about the country that the United States is becoming -- one of the police and the policed.

“Approximately 700 miles of walls, fences, and barriers already cut off the two countries at its major urban crossings and many rural ones as well. Emplaced everywhere are cameras that follow you -- or your body heat -- day or night. Overhead, as in Afghanistan, a Predator B drone may hover.

 

“On the U.S.-Mexican border, there are already more than 18,500 agents (only approximately 2,300 on the Canadian border). In counterterrorism mode, they are paid to be suspicious of everything and everybody. Some Homeland Security vehicles sport trailers carrying All Terrain Vehicles. Some have mounted surveillance cameras, others cages to detain captured migrants.

“Checkpoints 20-50 miles from the international boundary serve as a second layer of border enforcement. Stopped at one of them, you will be interrogated by armed agents in green, most likely with drug-sniffing dogs. If you are near the international divide, it’s hard to avoid such checkpoints where you will be asked about your citizenship -- and much more if anything you say or do, or simply the way you look, raises suspicions.

“Even outside of the checkpoints, agents of Homeland Security can pull you over for any reason -- without probable cause or a warrant -- and do what is termed a “routine search.” As a U.S. Border Patrol agent said, within a hundred miles of the international divide, ‘there's an asterisk on the Constitution.’

“Although unauthorized border-crossings have slowed down in recent years, tens of thousands continue to cross into the United States annually from Mexico and Central America, thanks in part to the continued havoc of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which left more two million Mexican farmers unemployed.

“The bill would come close to doubling the number of Border Patrol agents to 40,000 -- a small army -- stationed every 1,000 feet along the 2,000-mile border. To put that in perspective, the Border Patrol, created in 1924, took close to 70 years to reach 4,000 agents. In 2006, at 10,000 agents, it had its first major hiring surge, doubling its numbers. 

“Senator Marco Rubio laid out the following list that Homeland expected to order if the bill passed: 86 integrated fixed towers, 286 fixed camera systems, 232 mobile surveillance systems, 4,595 unattended ground sensors, 820 handheld equipment devices, 416 personal radiation detectors, 104 radiation isotope identification devices, 62 mobile automated targeting systems, 53 fiber-optic tank inspection scopes, 37 portable contraband detectors, 28 license plate readers, 26 mobile inspection scopes and sensors for checkpoints, nine land automated targeting systems, and eight non-intrusive inspection systems.

“Four unmanned aircraft systems, six VADER radar systems, 17 UH-1N helicopters, eight C-206H aircraft upgrades, eight AS-350 light enforcement helicopters, 10 Blackhawk helicopter 10 A-L conversions, five new Blackhawk M Model, 30 marine vessels, 93 sensor repeaters, 90 communications repeaters, two card-reader systems, five camera refresh, three backscatters, one radiation portal monitor, one littoral detection, one real-time radioscopy, and improved surveillance capabilities for existing aerostat.

“Homeland plans to have 18 drones in flight by 2016 and 24 in the years to follow patrolling over cities such as San Diego, Tucson, El Paso, Seattle, Detroit and Buffalo.

“Some drones will be equipped with the VADER “man-hunting” radar system used to detect roadside bombers in Afghanistan. Now, even more of this technology will be put to use. Recently declassified documents also show that CBP has been considering upgrading its drones with “non-lethal” weapons to be able to take down “targets of interest.”

Go here to read Miller’s entire article. I’m not sure where you go to do something about it, but it doesn’t seem we have a lot of time to prevent our southern border area from becoming a Constitution-Free Zone that's unsafe to cross at any speed. Even if you're from here.

Su Teatro 2013-2014 Season Auditions

from Su Teatro at the Denver Civic, 721 Santa Fe Dr., Denver, Colo.

Thursday, August 1, 2013


4:30pm until 8:30pm


Auditions by appointment only.

2013-2014 productions will include world premiere original works, period pieces, lots of music and lots of fun.

At tryout auditions we ask for a 1 - 3 minute monologue that best exemplifies your talent. If you sing we'd like to hear a verse a cappella.

Please bring a headshot and resume if you have them, and a snapshot for our records if you do not.

To schedule an appointment or for more information contact Mica at (303) 296-0219 x 111 or mica@suteatro.org

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Fonda's Sublime Moments On Stage; On-Line Floricanto

Review: Jane Fonda in 33 Variations. Written and Directed by Moisés Kaufman.
January 30 – Marc h 6, 2011 Ahmanson Theatre at the Los Angeles Music Center.
Also starring Samantha Mathis, Don Amendolia, Susan Kellermann, Greg Keller, Grant James Varjas, Diane Walsh, Scott Barrow, Caitlin O’Connell, Yvonne Woods Slaten, with Zach Grenier.
Music by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Michael Sedano

The first time I saw Jane Fonda in propria persona, 1973, she was hanging in effigy. Targeted by a gaggle of screaming angry partisans, not even singing the National Anthem stilled their vitriol.

When I more recently see Fonda, on stage in the Mark Taper Forum’s temporary digs, the Ahmanson auditorium, all the screaming signals that Fonda and company, in the middle of the run and in full stride, are delivering on the promise of a 2009 Broadway hit, revisited for the hustings.

On entering the sparely-decorated auditorium’s cavernous space, theatergoers in the front rows take in the two balconies and the fancy private boxes reigning above the orchestra seats before negotiating a path to the selected seat.

Dismay sinks in with center row seats. 17 laps 40 shoes assorted purses in the path. Multiply that by 1600 seats, an early arrival makes excellent sense. Shorter rows with lots of aisles sacrifice a few dozen seats. But then, anything that takes the ordeal out of being a paying customer of the Ahmanson Theatre makes sense.

The Ahmanson packs them in, but I imagine seeing this performance in the intimacy of the 760 seat Mark Taper Forum. Heaven. (FYI: 33 Variations is on the Taper bill, but housed in temporary quarters.)

After the shock of getting to one’s seat, the stage before one comes with a pleasant minimalist intensity. Hanging in six-high rows four across suspended on a grid, rectangular sheets flutter lazily in air conditioning currents. The sheets appear to be handwritten music paper, now serving as the projection surface for the musical notes coming over the loudspeaker.

The frames holding the sheets whirl on unseen wheels, becoming the curtain that flips open to frame Jane Fonda. It’s the only awkward moment of the performance, Fonda waiting to be recognized, the audience waiting to applaud maybe because they don’t recognize the thin woman waiting upstage to advance on the first handclaps.

Music by Ludwig van Beethoven. Talk about big credits. The piece, by Moisés Kaufman, holds its own in face of such powerful music, running parallel stories. One, set in 1819 and 1823, tells of Beethoven finishing the variations and dying. The other story moves from New York to Bonn, hospital room to library stacks.

Fonda embodies her role of Katherine Brandt, a musicologist driven by fatal disease to finish a scholarly investigation of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. The composer, superbly played by Zach Grenier, is dying, racing to complete the masterpiece 33 treatments of a simple tune. The researcher is dying, racing to complete her research using Beethoven's papers in Bonn. The crusty Brandt is obsessed with Beethoven’s obsession with Diabelli’s simple tune. Beethoven obsesses over the possibilities unleashed by this final spurt of composing. The Ninth. The Mass. The Diabelli Variations.

Stop. Before reading today’s La Bloga further, put The Diabelli Variations on the record player and let Beethoven’s mind-numbing genius pour in. Listen. The waltz. Variation 1, a march. A march! Mockery! No, listen, Genier von Ludwig tells his assistant Schindler, ably interpreted by Grant James Varjas, four notes. Dum dum tat a. Now listen to this variation, the same four notes, dee ti ta t... Now this variation. The same four notes. Four notes that Beethoven takes off from to create new musical forms. Schindler sees it, the publisher-composer Diabelli (Don Amendiola) sees it, and you the audience see it. Playwright Moisés Kaufman fills the play with delightful moments musicaux that pass quickly to other treats: "Here, read this!" the excited Schindler tells the delay-frustrated publisher Diabelli. The actor takes the manuscript, scans it silently, "This is the greatest music I have ever heard!" they explode in delighted agreement at what their eyes have heard on the page.

Pianist Diane Walsh sits at the Steinway and provides the music that Beethoven/Grenier/Fonda describe. Walsh luxuriates at the keyboard, offering lengthy sure fingered passages--this is difficult music, and synchronized beautifully with the actors’ voices and words. Play and music achieve sublime dramatic artistry. Aside from being a dramatic tour de force, 33 Variations is everything your Music 101 class should have been. Trained musicologists aside—they already know this stuff--emotionally spent audiences take solid musical tutoring away with them.

The story wrings one’s emotions bare. There’s hardly a dry eye in the house as we lose both Brandt and Beethoven just as they attain their apex. Brandt’s last words are especially moving because they are so mundane yet they complete the cycle of Brandt’s life. As Dr. Brandt, her life has pursued the fine critical distinction. Her daughter—brilliantly cowed in Fonda’s presence is Samantha Mathis--has been such a lifelong disappointment owing to the girl’s refusal to dedicate herself to any systematic endeavor. She has never met the standard, never been good enough for mother’s approval, but as Dr. Brandt dies she asks a question, thinks about the answer, nods slightly, and her final words to her daughter are, “All right.”

Jane Fonda’s breasts make a spectacular cameo appearance that cannot escape notice.

Stage nudity has long been a staple of the Taper. “The Robber Bridegroom” opens at a rustic forest fest where a totally naked actress does a slow 360 degree turn back to front to back again. A woman in the audience complains loudly “for shame! For shame!” as she is ushered out the auditorium. “Blade to the Heat” shoehorns full male nudity when an actor showers then strolls across the stage drying his face with a small towel.

Not that I hold anything against Fonda’s breasts. The scene works perfectly. Dr. Brandt is getting sicker. She must undress to be examined. In silhouette she removes her blouse and sits upon a table. Bright white light flashes on. Fonda sits bolt upright, her breasts exposed her arms at her sides. The lights go black. Bright light. Fonda’s arms begin to move. Black. Bright lights. Fonda’s arms reach her breasts. Black. Light. Fonda has covered her breasts. Black.

While I suspect the sight of Fonda’s bare chest would shut even the traps of those assholes from back in '73 (more fotos here, click), the five or six views of Brandt moving in slo-mo strobe light to cover herself heap more pathos on the character and her growing vulnerability than some tear ducts can handle. When Brandt is gone and her daughter—not worthless at all but the key to mother’s final triumph—must stand in and fill mother’s shoes, then there will not be a dry eye in the house.

Greg Keller as Mike Clark deserves mention for comic relief but underdeveloped character. Clark lives one of those desperately boring lives. He’s floored by Clara’s allure. To Clara, who has slept around, Mike is such a nerd, but comes with such a decent heart. Although Mike's choices,other than Clara's love, deserve investigating, Kaufman leaves them alone. Maybe puro love is blind?

The love story between Mike and Clara will be another reward when you take the fast-diminishing time to get to Music Center Hill in Los Angeles to be floored by Jane Fonda’s artistry.

You can castigate me for omitting mention of the superb work of Susan Kellermann, whose flinty Dr. Gertrude Ladenburger softens and becomes Katherine’s Schindler, Gertie the confidante. Castigate me for failing to praise adequately Grant James Varjas’ Anton Schindler. Historical hindsight casts suspicion on Schindler’s veracity and motive, an aspersion slimily captured in Varjas’ movement and posturing. This entire production team merits special mention, I know. There’s a Tony for Outstanding Revival. With 33 Variations the Mark Taper Forum will win it or keep trying--reruns are the Taper's specialty. All those whom I fail now to mention will have a place in the limelight when they accept their Tony. When's the last time you saw a sure thing Tony winner?


mvs

On-Line Floricanto

Last week, La Bloga's On-Line Floricanto featured poetry for yesterday's festivities, St. Valentine's Day. What a joy to behold 13 love poems. Click here to revisit those selections. For today's first post-Valentine floricanto, Francisco Alarcón and the moderators of the Facebook group Poets Responding to SB 1070 offer five works for your delight.

1. "Dear World, Dear Earth, Dear Angel of Despair and Joy" by Alma Luz Villanueva

2. "Your America, My Turtle Island" by Susan Deer Cloud

3. "Hating the Haters" by James O. Michael

4. "Prose Poems, V1, Bracero Project" by Rachelle Linda Escamilla

5. "For Christina at 9" by Arlene Biala



Dear World, Dear Earth, Dear Angel Of Despair And Joy

January 6, 2011

by Alma Luz Villanueva


Early morning, as we land in Mexico
City, I see the immense angel, I
blink my eyes, I stare and
stare, it doesn't disappear, it

remains firm, hovering at the
edge of Mexico City's sprawl,
Cloud Angel, Spirit Angel, Angel
Of Despair And Joy, Begging Angel,

Starving Angel, Murdered Angel,
Tortured Angel, Child Prostitute
Angel, Angel Of The Well Fed Loved
Child, Angel Of Loving Parents,

Angel Of Those Who Feed The Hungry,
Angel Of Those Who Give To Beggars,
Angel Of Those Who House The Beaten
Human body, Angel Of Those Who

Weep For Mercy Compassion Harvest,
Angel Of Those Who Rage For Poverty's
People, Angel Of The Unashamed
Who Bellow, Angel Of The

Shamed Who Whimper, Angel of
Our Humanity, Angel Present Alive
Every Where, Angel At The Edge Of
Mexico City, I didn't know you

were there until this morning,
December 9, 2011, if I flew
city to city, country to country,
continent to continent, I would

see you firm, hovering, your
immense wings folded softly,
fiercely, your speed of light
eyes balancing the terror,

the wonder, of being
human, you temper our
blindness, give us sight,
Angel Of Diamond Light

Eyes, watching, weeping, gazing,
our strange, stubborn, human
beauty, we persist because of
you, Angel Of Despair

And Joy, at the edge of
Mexico City, every city, town,
village, every Turtle Island,
our Earth.

(To the city of Tucson, the nine-year-old
angel, Christina Green, killed on January 8, 2011.
May the Circle Of Angels Of Despair And Joy unfurl
their soft, fierce wings, tip to tip, around Tucson at this time.)
* * * *
Los Angeles, The Angels, at noon,
Angel Of Illegal Immigrants, Spanish,
Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian spoken
on the streets, many more, do you

sing in every human language,
Turtle Islands once the massive
Tortoise emerging from primal,
cellular swirling sea, from

space blue blue blue womb
water, I hear you singing on
the streets of Los Angeles, your
sweet clear voice pierces my

stubborn, persistent, will-to-live
human heart...Angel Of Dreaming
Immigrants, Angel Of Native People
Of This Continent (their drums, their

voices, their rattles, dance, song,
keeping us alive, ancient prophecy
coming home, coming home to the
streets of Los Angeles, The Angels, the

Earth, coming home), Angel Of The
Ancient Trade Routes, Angel Of
Shimmering Shifting Borders,
Angel Of The Dispossessed,

Angel Of the Possessive,
Angel Of Diamond Light Eyes,
I hear your sweet clear voice
piercing even the concrete, flowing

over the Pacific, her still fertile,
swelling waves, piercing every
stubborn human heart, our
Angel Of Despair And Joy,

I hear you singing in every
language, I don't know
the words, what I hear/feel,
your harsh, persistent healing.
* * * *
Santa Cruz, Holy Cross, ancient
symbol of healing (not crucifix),
night, oh Angel Of Scattered
Families, oh Angel Of Gathered

Families, how do we stand to feel
so much, I wonder, these gathered
memories from sheltered womb to
open door, the delicious, terrifying,

lush, killing, O beauty, O horror,
this human world,
this perfect Earth,
O Angel Of Diamond Light Eyes,

O Angel Of Terror And Wonder,
O Angel Of Despair And Joy,
O Angel Of Scattered, Gathered
Families, the families we're

born to, birth to,
the families we create,
O Angel Of Endless Weeping,
O Angel Of Endless Laughter,

we heard your harsh, persistent
voice, healing, and we danced,
oh we danced to your song,
terror, oh the wonder,

at the edge of Santa Cruz,
at the edge of Los Angeles,
at the edge of Mexico City,
at the edge of every floating,

rooted Turtle Island continent,
at the very edge of our Cosmos,
O Angel Of Diamond Light Eyes,
keep watch as the ancient prophecies,

the ancient trade routes, come
home, keep singing your harsh,
persistent, healing song, every language,
O Angel of Despair And Such

Joy.
* * * *
Watsonville, Califas, a few miles south of Santa Cruz-

My granddaughter works with the
Farm Workers, their children born
two fingers to each hand, im
perfect (as my four children

were born perfect, spraying
of the fields, their parents
with cancers, dying to
pick the food of millions,

fresh cheap food at the supermarkets,
ICE separating illegal parents from
their legal children- we marched
the streets with Chavez, La Huerta,

over thirty years ago, still they
spray the fields (every where, this
Turtle Island), two fingers to each
hand, the im perfect children, to

their parents perfect- my youngest
son works with the families of the
dispossessed, the hungry, no
food or refrigerator to hold it, no

place to sleep (bed, mattress), no
place to sit (couch, chairs), no
table to gather (food food), the
country of wealth, abundance,

one in four children are hungry,
Martin Luther King, "The worst violence
is poverty," O Angel Of The Farm
Workers, O Angel Of Toxic Food,

Angel Of The Im Perfect,
Angel Of The Perfect,
Angels Of Violence,
Angels Of Healing,

surround each field, unfurl
your wings, tip to tip,
O Angel Of Diamond Light Eyes,
the terror, and always

the wonder.


*To my youngest son, Jules...and to my granddaughter, Ashley.
To all the daily human angels, wing tip to wing tip, every
Turtle Island, into the Sixth World.

Alma Luz Villanueva
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Always crossing the ancient trade routes, Kokpelli's song.






YOUR AMERICA, MY TURTLE ISLAND

by Susan Deer Cloud


In your America, you watch CNN for hours,
eat junk food, cheer your cowboy-president
when he brags about invading Iraq.
In my Turtle Island, I watch polluted sky
through South Side window, imagine
what Binghamton was like before the white man
invaded these hills, this river valley.

In your America, your flags sprout
on your porches like dyed carnations …..
red, white, blue in a forced spring.
In my Turtle Island, I grow flowers
in small pots filled with the earth
your America stole from us.

In your America, no one dies when you bomb
human beings in another country.
They just get liberated.
In my Turtle Island, I grow a red geranium
for my mother who died of your cancer …..
a white gardenia for my father who died
for your freedom in your “Good War” …..
a blue violet for the sky of my heart.

In your America, you make believe
that everyone lives in a nuclear family,
instead of the nuclear fission of dysfunction.
In my Turtle Island, I’m a mixed blood Indian woman
who loves a Korean-American poet
with a full blood’s eyes and hair ….. and
a Persian cat, our daughter, color
of Iraqi sands.

In your America, you shout “Democracy,”
even though money is king, and brings
your God into it. The one I don’t trust.
In my Turtle Island, I speak my vision with what
Haudenosaunee people call the Peacemaker’s voice.
I only need enough fried bread to live on …..
and silence for the Great Mystery.

In your America, you support Homeland Security,
confident no soldier or policeman will ever force you
onto a Trail of Tears, no lawyer, no trial.
In my Turtle Island, people are too poor to buy
their way out of reservations, cockroach-slums,
jail archipelagos. I know what it’s like
to be invaded by your freedom.

In your America,
will you ever know how it feels to love
a family, a tribe, this sweet bitter beautiful country,
my broken home …..
the way I have loved
my Turtle Island for centuries?

© Susan Deer Cloud ... published in The Last Ceremony (FootHills Publishing)






Hating the Haters


It’s hard not to hate the haters
To kill the killers
To take an eye for an eye

But in doing so
We become blinded by our own hatred
Our thirst for revenge

We harden our hearts
And feel no compassion
For the uncompassionate
We show no love
For the hateful

So we become them
Without realizing that
the enemy is us

-Jim Michael

Odiar a los que odian

Es difícil no odiar a los que odian
No asesinar a los asesinos
No cobrar ojo por ojo.

Pero al hacer esto quedamos
Encegados por el odio
Y por la sed de la venganza

Se endurezan nuestros corazones
Y no sentimos compasión
Hacia los incompasivos
No ofrecemos amor
A los que odian.

Nos convertimos en ellos
Sin darnos cuenta de que
El enemigo somos nosotros

-Jim Michael




Prose Poems, V1, Bracero Project

by Rachelle Linda Escamilla

*
She wonders about the growing Mexican-American population in Pittsburgh. You smile at her position in front of the comal. Food family dancing. She dances while sizzling the tips of her fingers, for the sake of a hot tortilla. She tells you about the time her brother and her snapped crosses with ragged jeans in el cemeterio del campos. How when she tried to find her brother she couldn't because he had sat in the mustard blossoms fixing the crosses with gum and shoe lace. She huffs hot-hot while patting the tortilla between her hands and onto your plate.


**
Consider, for a moment, the weight the
financial burden of such a heavy nose on
a small, flat faced people.

We have mulled over the potential gains
hand-picked barrios containing short
coffee colored, mud streaked children.

We have calculated the cost of and cannot
apologize for Operation Wetback c. 1954

***
She tells you about that term, wetback, how it means that people crossed the river, she smiles we she says it. You know she loves the water. She directs your attention to the artichoke plants, the ones that look like a large scarecrow, dipping darkly against the shade of the mountain range. They look like people, well, she corrects herself, they almost look like people.








For Christina at 9

by Arlene Biala


i am trying to write you a love letter
but i don't know how to begin.
look both ways before you go, i hear your mother say,
as if blurted from my own lips. her words meant only
to guide you safely through the parking lot,
not deliver you into the arms of yemaya.

where are you now, sweet angel eyes?
i need to write you this love letter
to say how sorry i am that we have failed you.
i didn’t know the colors of your voice,
the scent of your sunkissed hair, like cherries,
or the spark of your tourmaline smile. i didn’t know

until after he killed you that you were born
on a day slammed with grief and dust,
that someone had reason to tremble in joy,
to raise your purple body to her lips
and whisper your name like rain.

can you hear me, little one?
do you see all these people crowding the room,
dressed in their finest, trying to behave?
at last they sit together, these warring
brats, trying to behave in your honor.
your mother is here. are you holding her hand?

our president voices his sorrow, he vows
to redeem you, her slaughtered lamb.
but, she will not be moved. angel eyes.
only the ache of missing you is clear.
all she wants is you. all she wants
is you.




BIOS
1. "Dear World, Dear Earth, Dear Angel of Despair and Joy" by Alma Luz Villanueva
2. "Your America, My Turtle Island" by Susan Deer Cloud
3. "Hating the Haters" by James O. Michael
4. "Prose Poems, V1, Bracero Project" by Rachelle Linda Escamilla
5. "For Christina at 9" by Arlene Biala

Susan Deer Cloud

foto:John Gunther

Susan Deer Cloud is a Métis Indian of Mohawk/Seneca/Blackfoot lineage. She has a B.A. & M.A. Literature & Creative Writing from Binghamton University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She has received various awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Chenango County Council for the Arts Literature Grant, First Prize in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition (twice), Prairie Schooner’s Readers’ Choice Award, and Native American Wordcraft Circle Editor’s Award for her multicultural anthology Confluence.

Deer Cloud’s poems and stories have been published in numerous journals and anthologies (Sister Nations: an Anthology of Native Women Writers on Community, Unsettling America & Identity Lessons multicultural anthologies, American Indian Culture & Research Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, To Topos (Poetry International), and The Florida Review, to name just a few). Her most recent books are The Last Ceremony and Car Stealer (FootHills Publishing) and Braiding Starlight (Split Oak Press).

Deer Cloud has edited two anthologies ~ multicultural Confluence and Native anthology I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool) ~ plus the 2008 Spring Issue of Yellow Medicine Review, a Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought. She is now an adviser to Yellow Medicine and also on the board of University of New Orleans Press. Currently she is editing the re-matriation chapbook series of indigenous poetry for FootHills Publishing, as well as a special Native issue for on-line journal Big Bridge (to be published in early 2012). Her proposed panel on re-matriation of Indian people through writing was a part of February’s 2011 Associated Writers Conference in D.C., where she also took part in three readings and a book signing.


James O. MichaelAlthough raised in a monolingual English-speaking culture in Illinois, I learned Spanish in College and have been speaking Spanish for more than 50 years. I taught English to Spanish speakers and Spanish to English speakers. Most of my students were Mexican farm workers or their children. I retired from the McFarland School District in 1997, but continued teaching part-time until recently.

I joined Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol in 1998. I write poems in English y en español, a veces mixtiando los dos languages. Mi esposa es del mero Chihuahua Chih. ¡Ajúa! El año pasado celebramos 50 años de casados.

Rachelle Linda EscamillaRachelle Linda Escamilla is a three time James Phelan Literary Award winner, the recipient of the Virginia de Arujo Academy of American Poets, and the Dorritt Sibley Poetry prize. Her poems have been published by Hinchas de Poesia, A Joint Called Pauline, The Villiage Pariah, La Bloga, CaveMoon Press, and A Women's Journey. She is a student at the University of Pittsburgh's MFA program where she also teaches US History.