auditions/casting...

Before beginning callbacks, Mira told the actors to ask permission from those who came before them – call them into the room. With their hands on heart, she asked them to hear a resounding “yes” from those who guide them - a “yes” to them and their work. She explained how important it was to support each other, to help each other do their best work. One person’s brilliance does not take away from your own.

Then, Mira taped a sheet of paper onto the wall. On the paper - six rituals taken from my text:
- touch the floor with your feet/make contact
- drop the rice
- bring the ancestors into the room/thank them for being with you.
- throw the rock
- take out the fear/jump over it
- shake sorrow from the hips

She asked the actors to find each ritual in their body through gesture and then create a ceremony out of it. They had 10 minutes. Then, we turned on the CD player and danced to “Un rinconcito en el cielo,” again and again - around the circle – each person bringing to the center – ceremony.

What I learned:
- The dancing is necessary to hold in the joy. What happens when it stops? This is a place I have to explore in the writing.

- Andres is a sweet, gentle man – does not understand everything that is happening around him and yet it is a part of him/in his body.

- Physical action holds emotion. Wong paints memory with her body.

- The cumbia is a natural calling – calling each other into being (mother, grandmother, daughter) each one is constantly calling the other into being. The words are a conjuring of one another into the space. They are seeing each other – describing for themselves – one another. They must claim the need for each other in space, whether they are speaking or not. For example, WONG does not speak very much but she is holding everyone up.

Questions for the actors:
- How do you hold each other up in space?
- Who are you giving energy to?
- Who do you need to support?
- When do you need to be supported?

Challenges:
- The text is multilingual. In four different languages – English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Chicano slang. The actors are working hard to get all those words in their mouth - switching languages, accents, and tones. Our cast is multiethnic – which I very much believe in – a reflection of our mestizaje/chicanismo – brown, black, asian. After all, my mama is a brown woman who married a white man who took her to Germany where my first sister was born and my mothers father was a chinese man living in mexico who married a mexican whose father was indian and we grew up eating chinese sausage and tamales for christmas.

- The text is queer. I realize that in addition to language, I am also translating queer culture and I am reminded once again of the absence of queer voices of color on the stage. My cast, however, is both queer and straight, open and willing to learn.

- The text is non-linear and not literal. We move in and out of time, space and place. I am very excited to be working with someone who is both a choreographer and a director who understands the movement, the music, and the rhythm of the piece and who is capable of creating beautiful moving images from the text.