Several African American writers have published intensely personal and poignant blog posts and OpEd pieces about how disturbing it has been for them to watch the series. Linda Fairstein (the author of 1993's Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape and 20 crime novels who oversaw the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002) relinquished her seat on the boards of directors of several nonprofit organizations. She was also dropped by her publisher, E.P. Dutton.
In the following interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, DuVernay discusses the Central Park Jogger Case and why she felt compelled to create When They See Us.
With much of the media's attention in early June being focused on the WorldPride events in New York City celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, two Bay area theatre companies are focusing on life challenges that accompany issues of cultural identity as seen through Latinx eyes.
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Because the San Francisco Bay area has become an important hub for new works, local theatre critics attend lots and lots of world premieres. While many are in desperate need of substantial rewriting and extensive pruning, some quickly make their mark as important, stageworthy plays destined to enjoy a long life. Back in 2010, I wrote:“The Magic Theatre's opening night performance of Luis Alfaro's new play, Oedipus El Rey, is a memory I will treasure in years to come. Not only did Luis Alfaro bring one of the earliest Greek tragedies to life in a brilliant adaptation that updates the tale of Oedipus The King (written by Sophocles and first performed in Greece in 429 B.C.) to a modern-day California State Prison with a heavy Chicano population, he was able to reset the tale of a dynamic young leader against a background of urban crime in Los Angeles. Using four inmates as the equivalent of a traditional Greek chorus, Alfaro (working with Magic Theatre's artistic director, Loretta Greco) has given movement, music, and a new vitality to a tale some might expect to have become static after almost 2,500 years in the dramatic repertoire."
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| Esteban Carmona stars in Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
In the decade since its world premiere at Magic Theatre, Alfaro's play has received 22 productions. Magic Theatre is currently presenting a "legacy revival" of Oedipus El Rey with costumes by Ulises Alcala, lighting by Wen-Ling Liao, sound design by Jake Rodriguez, tattoos by Jacquelyn Scott, and projections by Hana Kim. Once again, the production packs a wallop, having lost none of its dramatic strength. Its director, Loretta Greco, offers a fascinating perspective on why this is so:
“Nobody writes a play for us to read alone at home. Those words have to hit the air in a community for it to be what it was intended to be. Something is missing from our American spiritual ecosystem because we don’t realize how much we need to gather and experience stories together. The Greeks knew that the community needed catharsis. We need this now more than ever. Old stories need new storytellers. Through the Coro we are given contemporary guides to approach ancient questions (How do we face the gods? Can we change our fate? What is the unbreakable connection between fathers and sons? Mothers and sons? Are we doomed by our desire to know in a world that is unknowable?) Everybody thinks they know these plays, but they really only have a vague recollection. When Luis re-imagines the classics, he takes full ownership: breathing new life, building a truly new play. Then people realize they didn’t actually know this play because they didn’t understand it.”
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| Lorraine Velez is Jocasta in Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
Back in 2010, Joshua Torrez gave such a riveting performance in the title role that it was hard to imagine another actor matching his intensity. In this year's staging, Esteban Carmona does a fine job of rising to the challenge and triumphing in ways that make Oedipus seem a little less pugnacious and a little more manipulative, perhaps even vulnerable to being surprised by his faults. The audience becomes more aware of how he was raised in a Kern County prison facility by inmates who could not have prepared him for the emotional impact of a woman's tenderness or the harsh realities of life in a Los Angeles barrio.
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| Esteban Carmona (Oedipus) and Lorraine Velez (Jocasta) in a scene from Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
Doubling as Jocasta and a Sphinx, Lorraine Velez brings a powerful feminine presence to the production. Lending solid support throughout the evening are the four Coros (Sean San José, Juan Amador, Gendell Hing-Hernandez, and Armando Rodriguez), who also take on the roles of Jocasta's brother Creon, Laius (the biological father of Oedipus), and the blind prophet, Tiresias.
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| Sean San José (Tiresias) comforts Esteban Carmona (Oedipus) in a scene from Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
Revisiting Alfaro's play a decade later, one has a deeper appreciation for the scenes which describe how Laius commanded Tiresias to kill his infant son, how Oedipus's origin story was hidden from him by his fellow inmates, and how the "rules" governing prison life are not the same rules that govern civilian life. Considering how much more aware the public has become of the school-to-prison pipeline, the prison for profit industry, racial disparities in prison populations, and the steep rate of recidivism, Oedipus El Rey proves to be even more relevant a decade after its world premiere.
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| Armando Rodriguez is Creon in Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
In preparing for the 2019 production of Oedipus El Rey, dramaturg Sonia Fernandez (who worked on the 2010 world premiere production) analyzes the core strength that lies at the heart of the Oedipus tragedy and the contemporary appeal of Alfaro's adaptation.
“While Sophocles’ intention with his play was to remind Athenians of the importance of humility towards the gods, Luis reminds us of the crushing weight that the circumstances one is born into can have in determining one’s destiny. By transposing these characters of Greek myth into contemporary Latinx culture, Luis urges us to see the inherent nobility of a human being. Bringing these larger than life, mythic figures into a Chicano context is a political act. To see Oedipus as prisoner, Medea as undocumented immigrant (these figures that live in the shadows of society that we’d prefer not to acknowledge), Luis makes them royalty. Both dramatists -- across millennia -- aim to affect the way we view our role in the world through these plays. They seek to offer catharsis as well as a new understanding.”
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| Esteban Carmona stars in Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
“What is more human than an ability to dream? To imagine a life, a story, greater than or different from the one we currently lead? Oedipus el Rey is a story of pride, prophecy, and devastation in which the issues of mass incarceration and the ravages of poverty that strip people’s humanity away and erase the possibilities of those dreams are juxtaposed against the weight of myth. Luis’s writing resonates with me for its visceral action, striking poetry, and irreverent humor that cuts through it all. Isn’t that a purpose of art, too?
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| Esteban Carmona stars in Oedipus El Rey (Photo by: Jennifer Reiley) |
A tightly-written 100-minute one-act drama, Alfaro's play proudly holds its own against the Greek classics while standing head and shoulders above many recent attempts to update or reinvent great works of drama. Performances of Oedipus El Rey continue through June 23 at the Magic Theatre (click here for tickets).
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A friend of mine described his disappointment with a recent outing to the Amway Center in Orlando as follows:"The pre-show was great -- Citizen Queen (an a capella group) and Rachel Platten ("Fight Song"). The sound was great and they were very entertaining. Then the volume went up so loud we couldn't understand a word. The Pentatonix are known for the quality of their sound, but the only quality at that point was LOUD. We left after the third song. Hundreds more left after the fourth. A capella shouldn't be so loud you can't understand what they are singing."As President Bill Clinton often said: "I share your pain." On select occasions ranging from a touring production of Les Misérables at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre to the pre-Broadway run of Head Over Heels at the Curran, I've struggled to enjoy performances in which the amplification had been cranked up to a decibel level that was much too close to my pain threshold. As I entered Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre for the world premiere of Kiss My Aztec! I was greeted with a crushing wave of loud music at a decibel level that did not let up for most of the evening.
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| Richard Henry Ruiz as Pierre Pierrot in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The sorry result was that, while struggling to hear and digest David Kamp's sharp and snappy lyrics, I found it extremely difficult to enjoy this long-gestating creation from such talented artists as comedian John Leguizamo, composer Benjamin Velez, and Berkeley Rep's outgoing artistic director, Tony Taccone (who also staged the show). My advice to anyone who has already purchased tickets is simple: Bring earplugs!
Based on an original screenplay written by Leguizamo and Stephen Chbosky (and inspired by Monty Python's Spamalot, with a working title of Pain in the Aztec), the show has been hyped as a "fresh, irreverent musical comedy and an inspired mash-up of Elizabethan dialect and modern slang to celebrate, elevate, and commemorate Latinx culture." As a result, Kiss My Aztec! is set among "woke" Aztecs in Spanish-occupied Mesoamerica during the 16th century who "somehow get entangled in the dysfunctional dynamics of the Spanish viceroy’s bickering family. Will our heroes get conquistadored by whitey or win the day?"
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| Chad Carstarphen (Reymundo) and Zachary Infante (Fernando) in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Led by a fierce young woman named Colombina (Yani Marin) and a lovably geeky goofball named Pepe (Joél Pérez) whose specialty is a pair of sock puppets named Machu and Picchu, the score is a combination of salsa, hip-hop, gospel, funk, and merengue. "In a musical you have to keep the momentum. It’s a difficult art form," stresses Taccone. "The many elements have to feed each other... and we are trying to write a nontraditional musical. It’s a crazy new hybrid. There’s more book than usual, and we’re doing this Elizabethan/urban slang combination -- this colliding of worlds because it’s set in the 16th century."
One might well wonder why, if the story takes place in Spain and Latin America, so much of the script sounds like it came from Shakespeare's Globe. "I’ve always loved slang, American vernacular, and urbanisms. I grew up with that, and love hearing it combined with the Elizabethan language," confesses Leguizamo. "I wanted to create an Elizabethan patois -- a Shakespearean language with ghetto slang. I love that juxtaposition in my ear." I suspect, however, that running a word count for the number of times "fuck" and shit" appear in the show's libretto might demonstrate how too much of a good thing can become surprisingly counterproductive.
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| Desiree Rodriguez (Pilar) and Maria-Christina Oliveras (Tolima) in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The creative team behind Head Over Heels tried something similar but, whereas that musical was set in England, the Elizabethan style falls flat in Spain. Like many of the comedic elements in Kiss My Aztec! it progresses from salty to sophomoric, from tart to tiresome. Leguizamo's preference also created a curious challenge for the show's songwriters. As lyricist David Kamp explains:
"When John originally approached us, he wanted [the songs] to be a Latin/urban mixtape. We’ve deviated from that a bit, but this genre-hopping fits how he wanted to reflect the genre he grew up with, whether it’s hip-hop, merengue, or boogaloo (which is really a New York thing). As a New York City Latino kid growing up in Queens, John had a swirl of genres in his head. There is a logic to how we select genres for songs. Generally, the Spanish colonizer characters will sing in more Old World musical idioms whereas the Aztec characters will sing in New World idioms. For example, the salsa song we’ve done (“Punk-Ass Geek-A”), even though that style is generally sung in the Spanish language, it’s a New World invention. The more 'white bread' genres are sung by the European characters."
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| Al Rodrigo in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Another challenge was how to find the appropriate rhythm and rhyme for each musical number. Kamp explains how he and Velez found a workable method for contrasting a perfect (or symmetrical) rhyme with an imperfect (asymmetrical) one.
"Benjamin has strict rules: If it’s sung, it must be a perfect rhyme; if it’s rapped, it doesn’t have to be. I gave him two different attempts at Colombina’s song (“Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do”) and he skillfully Frankensteined them together. Benjamin came up with a chorus framework you’ll hear of 'Why can’t a girl enjoy...' The first completions of that phrase that he gave me were 'shaving her head instead of shaving her legs' and 'slitting a throat instead of knitting a coat.' He got the ball rolling and I thought of 'whooping some asses instead of batting my lashes' and 'bringing the hurt instead of trying to flirt.' That’s a real example of how we collaborate. I have two failed attempts at that song and he took the best from both of them and came up with that hook. It's now probably my favorite song in the show."
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| Yani Marin co-stars as Colombina in Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Thanks to the scenic and costume design by Clint Ramos (which makes fine use of a fast-moving conveyor belt for quick transitions), the lighting by Alexander V. Nichols, and a hyper-energetic ensemble being put through their paces by choreographer Maija García, Berkeley Rep's production offers plenty of visual delights.
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| A scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Chad Carstarphen does double duty as El Jaguar Negro and the closeted Cardinal Reymundo while Maria-Christina Oliveras reveals an impressive belt as Tolima (an Aztec spy embedded in the Spanish forces). Al Rodrigo is appropriately villainous as the Spanish Viceroy, Rodrigo, with the full-throated Desiree Rodriguez resisting her father's plans for her marriage as if her life depended on it.
While Richard Henry Ruiz brings an element of high camp to the proceedings as the "fixer," Pierre Pierrot, Jesús E. Martínez is a forceful Captain Soldier for the Aztecs. Though much of the gay humor seems a bit lame (and dates back as far as vaudeville), Zachary Infante brings hefty doses of puckish queerness to the royal court as the wily Fernando and superbly silly Sebastian.
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| Zachary Infante (Sebastian) in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Following a strong opening number ("White People On Boats"), Kamp's lyrics and Velez's music impress with a comic duet for Fernando and Reymundo ("Tango in the Closet"), Pilar's lusty song of repressed desire ("Dark Meat"), Rodrigo and Colombina's "Spooneth Me," and Sebastian's Vegas-style "New Girl, New World." Add in Pepe's "Punk-Ass Geek-A," a fairly ridiculous Puppetry Slam between Pepe and Pierre, and Kiss My Aztec! certainly doesn't lack for variety. If sound designer Jessica Paz could be persuaded to lower the volume to more tolerable levels, more of Kamp's lyrics would be able to land with an audience eager to have a good time.
To their credit, Joél Pérez (Pepe) and Yani Marin (Colombina) are immensely appealing performers who give the show every ounce of energy they've got. Although Kiss My Aztec! will be staged at the La Jolla Playhouse in September, in its present form this show needs more tightening than Joan Rivers lavished on her face.
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| Joél Pérez as Pepe (with sock puppets Machu and Picchu) in a scene from Kiss My Aztec! (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Performances of Kiss My Aztec continue through July 14 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (click here for tickets).
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