Mexicali troupe struggling to be heard gets to share its talents at a Spanish-language festival in Los Angeles
http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-ca-mexicali16oct16,0,5555210....
By Reed Johnson
October 16, 2005
THERE'S a simple rule one should always observe in Mexico's vast, unforgiving northern wastelands, says ?ngel Norzagaray: Move too fast, and you'll
dry out and die.
So Norzagaray has developed what he calls a "desert aesthetic," a list of artistic guidelines for making theater on the edge of nature's blast
furnace. First, do away with inessential action and extraneous dialogue. Second, pare sets and props to a minimum: a red clown's nose, some
strategically placed chairs, a long, narrow paper roll painted to look like a stretch of endless asphalt highway.
Third, and most important, never forget where you are ? or how you got there. The scorching terrain along the U.S. border can be a desolate, even
deadly place.
Yet its spare beauty captivates. Its austerity imposes discipline. Its sheer openness leaves room to imagine and experiment, away from the rigid
cultural orthodoxies of Mexico City, far to the south. Here in the desert, Norzagaray says, an artist can be truly free to invent a cultural scene
from the ground up, then nurture and watch it grow.
And though Mexican theater still tends to be heavily concentrated in the country's chaotic capital, Norzagaray and his collaborators are determined to
put Mexicali on the nation's, if not the world's, cultural map, one play at a time. "It's impossible to speak of theater in Mexico. You can't. We're
an enormous country," says Norzagaray, an actor, director, playwright, university administrator, newspaper columnist, husband and father of two (soon
to be three) young boys. "And I am 3,500 kilometers, 2,000 miles, from the Federal District [Mexico City]."
Fortuitously, though, Norzagaray is only 4 1/2 hours by car southeast of Los Angeles, where he and his intrepid theater company, Mexicali a Secas,
will be headed this week. On Thursday, they'll open a 10-day run as a featured attraction of the fourth annual FITLA, the Spanish-language acronym for
the International Latino Theatre Festival of Los Angeles.
The company will perform three plays at the Ford Theatre and downtown's Los Angeles Theatre Center, plus a signature piece, "Cartas al pie de un
?rbol" (Letters at the Foot of a Tree), a haunting, lyrically autobiographical play by Norzagaray, on Oct. 26 at Garrison Theater at Scripps College
in Claremont. As in previous years, the festival will present works by U.S. and foreign artists encompassing a wide variety of theatrical styles and
genres, including four performances at REDCAT by the avant-garde Catalan theater-dance artist Marta Carrasco.
Mexicali a Secas ? a colloquialism that means "having to do specifically with Mexicali" and also puns on secas, the Spanish word for "dry" ? performs
in repertory, allowing its members to showcase their formidable versatility. Its home, a 319-seat theater built by the federal government in the 1960s
as part of a national culture initiative, regularly hosts performances by arts groups from throughout Mexico.
Theater is a lifelong calling but not a full-time occupation for the members of Mexicali a Secas, a loose collective of about 12 actors, directors and
designers. Norzagaray carries a full load as an administrator at the Autonomous University of Baja California. He writes his plays late at night or on
planes and says he plans to break away from the FITLA festival for a few hours so he can attend his son's scheduled birth by caesarean section at a
Mexicali hospital.
Other company members hold jobs ranging from plumber to director of communications for Mexicali. Felipe Tututi, a former student of Norzagaray's who
will perform with him at the Ford in Carles Pons' existential clown show "Gracias, Querida" (Thank You, Darling), is a carpenter. Norzagaray's actor
brother Heriberto, who handles promotion for Mexicali a Secas, will perform in Los Angeles in Victor Castillo's play "Recuerdos de la Ira" (a.k.a.
"Villa y Zapata"), which posits a reunion in limbo between the heroes of the Mexican Revolution, Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Emiliano Zapata. "We all
do everything," says ?ngel Norzagaray.
The company's nonhierarchical, let's-put-on-a-show-in-a-barn mind-set suits Mexicali, an unpretentious, self-made city of more than a half-million
that is barely a century old. Residents here are accustomed to low-key cultural exchanges: They take in a steady diet of U.S.-beamed television,
celebrate both Halloween and Day of the Dead, and make frequent trips to Calexico, Calif., to shop, buy gas, work and, in some cases, live.
William Flores, FITLA's executive director, says that Mexicali a Secas is but one example of the immense theatrical talent that lies just on the other
side of the frontera ? but, sadly, off most Americans' radar screens. "The United States is very U.S.-centered," Flores says, "and what's happening in
other countries, even though it's very important, if there is no interest on the media, we don't get to know that." To help remedy the situation,
FITLA has launched a new initiative to bring some of its theater productions to four Baja California cities ? Tijuana, Tecate, Ensenada and Mexicali ?
and to develop workshops where Mexican and L.A. artists can create new works together.
The imposing bulwark of mixed feelings that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border ? envy, fear, ignorance, indifference ? runs smack down the middle of two
of the shows that Mexicali a Secas will bring to Los Angeles.
Between tragedy and comedy
IN "Cartas al pie de un ?rbol," a determined woman named Mam? Sorda from the drug war-ravaged Mexican state of Sinaloa goes searching for her son, who
has fled to the United States to seek work. Skirting the line between tragedy and comedy, "Cartas," which premiered in Mexicali in September 2001,
plays like a classical Greek drama, complete with a fateful crossroads, a chorus of mariachi musicians and a ragged, Tiresias-like visionary who
serves up Sophoclean reflections on the fate of those who risk their lives to reach el norte.
Norma Alicia Bustamante Mart?nez, the actor who plays Mam? Sorda, says that although "Cartas" addresses a bleak Mexican reality, its theme
reverberates globally. "While this polarization exists between the very rich and the miserables, we can't avoid it," she says.
Norzagaray, 44, says that "Cartas," which he also directed, is his most personal play. Raised in a poor rural family of nine children in the
northwestern state of Sinaloa, he spent much of his youth doing farm labor. "It was a very beautiful childhood," he says, "very hard, but very
beautiful." Writing "Cartas" for him was a way to help "recover the memory of your story, of your infancy" and place it in a wider context. "I am very
interested in the intersection of north and south, life and death, infancy and adulthood, the real and the mythic," he says.
"Deseo" (Desire), by the Chihuahuan playwright Victor Hugo Rasc?n Banda, brings the U.S.-Latin culture clash down to a human scale. The intimate
two-character drama explores the blossoming love affair and disastrous denouement of Susan (Lucia Marano), a control-freak academic from Los Angeles,
and Victor (Javier Guardado R.), a blue-collar worker whom Susan meets at a conference in his native Colombia.
Suggesting a contemporary, bilingual knockoff of Strindberg's "Miss Julie," with dashes of Edward Albee and David Mamet, "Deseo" explores the dynamics
of erotic power and psycho-cultural manipulation. Resourcefully staged by Norzagaray and assistant director Jesus "Chima" Casta?os, "Deseo" will
receive four performances, in Spanish with English subtitles, at the Ford Amphitheatre.
Marano, the Italian American actress who plays Susan, sees an offstage parallel to her work in "Deseo," which has required her to shuttle between her
Silver Lake home and rehearsals in Mexicali. "It's pretty heavy [stuff] to be, like, a first-class citizen and then a block away is such poverty,"
says the actress in her native Bronx accent.
Carving out an artistic niche separate from the rest of the border area is a particular challenge facing Mexicali artists, says director Casta?os. He
concedes that Tijuana, Mexicali's sprawling western neighbor, tends to dominate Baja California culture. "The same show that in Tijuana would bring
5,000 people here will bring 500," he says.
But Mexicali already has been able to develop its own distinctive punk-rock and electronic music scenes, different from the more celebrated ones in
Tijuana, Casta?os points out. Why shouldn't it do the same with theater? "We're trying to develop our own identity, not just watching Tijuana and
every move they make," says Casta?os, whose L.A.-based Teatro Apolo company will perform the play "El Jardin de los Reyes" (The Garden of the Kings)
Nov. 9 at LATC as part of the FITLA festival.
Of course, this do-it-yourself approach doesn't come cheap, even for as cost-conscious a company as Mexicali a Secas. Money and manpower are
perpetually in tight supply. The troupe gets government support, but not much.
Still, Norzagaray deplores what he calls the culture of "crying and wailing" when it comes to the arts. "To say, 'I ought to be helped because I am
poor, because I live far away, because I'm from a big family' ? no, no! You ought to be helped because you make theater of quality. So it's very
disagreeable to hear this moaning with respect to the lack of help and 'blah, blah, blah.' "
"We are going to make good theater," he vows, "with or without help." Make that one more point to add to Norzagaray's "desert aesthetic."
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