September 25, 2000
El Teatro de la Esperanza: Looking at the human condition through Chicano eyes
Rodrigo Duarte Clarke, playwright and artistic director of San Francisco's El
Teatro de la Esperanza, is talking about the different ways that cultures deal with
the same issues. He brings up his uncle, who lived in a small town in Sonora, Mexico.
"When he was traveling to the next town, his wife would tell him he should put
his coffin in the back of his cart. She believed that, above all, you shouldn't impose
on people, and foremost in her mind was the possibility that he might die while visiting
someone. And he did own his own coffin already. That's just the way death is treated
in that culture÷it's a part of life, not detached or hidden."
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| Ruby Nelda Perez stars in Rosita's Day of the Dead on October 11 at UCSC. |
| When: Wednesday, October 11, 8 p.m. Where: UCSC Theater Arts Mainstage Tickets: (831) 459-2159 |
For more than 30 years, Clarke has been in the business of depicting the human condition on stage through the particular sensibilities of Chicano/Latino culture. Clarke is a founding member of El Teatro de la Esperanza, which was formed in 1970 by a group of UC Santa Barbara students interested in seeing their experiences and viewpoints represented on the stage.
The subject of death is especially pertinent now, as Clarke and actress Ruby Nelda Perez gear up to stage Rosita's Day of the Dead, the sequel to the highly successful Doña Rosita's Jalapeño Kitchen. Written and directed by Clarke, the one-woman show will be presented by Arts & Lectures on Wednesday, October 11.
The story opens in the kitchen of Doña Rosita, who is preparing food for El Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). Actress Perez depicts a wide range of characters, many of whom cajole and entreat the title character to reconcile with her dying father.
"The play is about reconciliation and death. And you find out that as people die, it's not all that clean cut," Clarke says. "People put off dealing with these issues until the very end and then have to confront them at a very difficult time."
Clarke says he wrote both the Rosita plays with Perez in mind. "She's such a wonderful actress, it's kind of crazy to do it without her. You could do the play using three of four actors and, in fact, Kitchen was performed that way by other companies around the country. But it was written for Ruby÷I knew that she could do all of this. When you do have an actor who can pull it off, playing all the characters, that virtuosity becomes one of the wonderful elements of the piece."
El Teatro de la Esperanza toured the first Rosita play two years ago (UCSC was fortunate enough to be on that tour), and the play was so successful that Clarke wrote this sequel. There may be a third play down the road as well.
"It is rumored that this is a trilogy," Clarke teased, refusing to commit
further. "I didn't even want to do a sequel at first, but then I heard I was
doing it and, what could I do but write it? A third play could happen, but at this
point I have no idea."
The pieces El Teatro de la Esperanza stages are written by a range of authors but,
generally, are new works written specifically for the company and are usually by
a Chicano or Latino playwright.
"All the work we produce incorporates Chicano/Latino culture. It can be through
such elements as bilinguality or by raising pertinent social questions, but ultimately
what is important is that we are fully entertaining and engage the audience in intellectual
discourse. The play may be about a particular set of people, but it has to raise
universal questions. And if it's good it will resonate with everyone, no matter what
their culture."
Arts & Lectures will present a performance by the Ailey II dance troupe later in October. Read an interview with Sylvia Waters, the troupe's artistic director.
