For the past
couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of this years One Minute
Play Festival happening here in the great city of Chicago. As a side note: I’m
personally a huge fan of the One Minute form. Recently, I along with Claire
Bauman, Grace DeSant, (re)discover theatre and Pursuit Productions just closed Making (the) Movement, a charity event,
that encompassed a family-friendly community art festival during the day and
showcased burlesque and variety arts at night. Making the Movement also had two
performances of One Minute Dances.
I learned of this
form, One Minute Dances, from my time
at Dell’Arte International located in Blue Lake, California (always seems to be
mistaken with the Accademia dell’Arte in Italy- but seriously no relation). In
an e-mail dated 11/4/15, I sought an almost “permission,” from my professor
Laura Muñoz to use the wording of “One
Minute Dances”. Laura instead replied in her e-mail to me with the history
of One Minute Dances:
“Ellen Bartel from Spank Dance in Austin
created an evening with 40 pieces, each lasting 1 minute. She called it Short Stories. Bonnie Hossack brought
it to Arcata in 2012 under the same name. I picked it up from 2013 to date and
called it One Minute Dances.
All the pieces are movement based, and raged from theater to dance to
performance art to music to...
Let me know if you are going to
produce it in Chicago (where and when in Chicago?) and, please, send me photos
from the event. I really care for this show, and love to see it popping up in different
places in the world.”
One Minute Dances, to my knowledge, has only
been performed in a handful of states in the United States as well as the only performance
of it curated by my old Dell’Arte ensemble mate, Andrea, in Puerto Rico. In 2015
I knew if I did this form, I had to respect its history, because I sought to be
a part of it.
One Minutes are
vast and infinite. Literally and metaphorically. Anything can happen. The
stakes truly exist on the stage. As an audience member you’re hit rapid fire style
with every genre theater can muster. During tech just the other night, I
equated it to the same feeling I had as a child sitting at one of those squirt
gun racing games at the carnival. On your marks! Get set! GO!
Which brings me
to: THE SILENT PROTEST YOU DIDN’T KNOW WAS HAPPENING. . . during this years One
Minute Play Festival.
As I said earlier,
I am huge fan of the One-Minute form as a curator, producer, writer, director
and performer. It is one of the most challenging forms I have ever had the
opportunity to be a part of. And I actually was only a part of this years One
Minute Play Festival, because my director, Enid Muñoz, had seen me perform at The Future is Female Play Festival back in mid-March at Chicago
Dramatists.
Mind you, I have
never seen or been a part of the One Minute Play Festival before. I literally
thought I was only signing up for just ONE one minute play, because that’s how
I understood what I had just done— One
Minute Dances. I was informed,
rather quickly, by a fellow actor that the form actually occurs in little
“clumps.” Directors are given X amount of one minute plays to cast and rehearse
on their own time. So I plunged into more than I was bargaining for. I was soon
cast in several of the one minute plays. It felt like I ended up with the most
lines to memorize. Rehearsals were hard to come by. In the theater world, we
all know what it’s like coordinating that many people to be at a specific place
and time. It drives you crazy until someone just yells “Doodle it!” Rehearsals were on the South side of Chicago and
my dumb butt didn’t realize that until I had to drive there from my place of
work—in Schaumburg. I say all of this to be fair to #1MPF, because before I
even stepped foot onto that stage, I was already having a hard time as an actor
being in this “thing.”
It was during the
first rehearsal that I learned what had happened. I was sitting on Enid’s couch
in her small garden level apartment asking just some basic questions. This was
the first time Enid and I were meeting. It was also the first time I was
meeting the rest of the cast. I finally came to realize that one of the plays
titled: She Built Me was written by
Enid herself. I was immediately enthused with “Wow! I didn’t know you wrote a
play for this! That’s so cool!” Enid was standing in her kitchen fawning over
the pizzas in the oven that she was making for all of us. As she began to tell
her story, the smoke alarm rang. Through fanning arms and buzzing ears, Enid
told the room something to the effect of, “Yeah. They wanted me to take out the
Spanish.” And that’s where many moments of my life seemed to click for me.
Bigger than my enthusiasm was my rage. Not only my rage, but my rage for
someone else.
To speak on Enid’s
character for a moment: she is, to my eyes— soft spoken, calm, and thoughtful. I
feel as if I know her better than some of my friends that I’ve had for years. I
have an unspoken and familiar history with her. Even though we’ve only known
each other save a couple of weeks. Enid is a special artist. Enid is that easy to
talk too. On the opposite spectrum I feel I am often— loud, direct and
sometimes rude. Perhaps, this is why Enid and I worked so well together during
this incredibly short process. The form demands it.
Yet, this image
happening right in front of me as I sat on a couch in this small garden level
apartment on the South side of Chicago watching Enid bounce around the room
fanning the smoke away all the while telling her story of what had happened
between her and the #1MPF curators I couldn’t help, but feel that this image
was all too familiar for people of color. To keep it short: I struggle, nearly
daily now, with my identity (ethnic or otherwise). To keep it short: I am half
white and half Mexican. To keep it short: I don’t see myself as a person of
color. To keep it short: I don’t feel that I have the “right” to claim that I
am Mexican. To keep it short: I don’t speak Spanish, I don’t look Spanish, I
don’t sound Spanish. But somehow, having this woman of color tell me that the
One Minute Play Festival wanted her to REMOVE the Spanish from her play made me
all of these things that I was denying myself all at once.
In truth, I wasn’t
there when that conversation (e-mail or otherwise) happened. I heard it after
the fact. I heard this story even after Enid told me that One Minute Play
Festival had apologized to her. But the thing is: it still happened. One Minute Play Festival asked a person of color
to remove a foreign language from their play. The reasoning, as I understand it
as, One Minute Play Festival thought it would be too “hard,” for another
director to take on this story: She Built
Me. One Minute Play Festival thought it would be too “hard,” to find actors
of ANY Latinx descent to act in this play. One Minute Play Festival thought it
was too “hard,” for the audience to know what was happening. Let me repeat it
one more time: One Minute Play Festival asked—fuck that— SUGGESTED, basically
nearly perhaps DEMANDED that Enid Muñoz, a woman of color, to REMOVE the
Spanish that she wrote in her play so that it be EASIER for THEM to
produce/direct/show case it.
What did Enid do?
She took to Facebook and vented her frustrations. Mind you again—I still didn’t
know Enid at this time. It was then and only then did One Minute Play Festival
“reach out” and “apologize.” The compromise? The compromise to my understanding
was that One Minute Play Festival made an “exception” because they “don’t
normally do this,” but they made the “exception” and allowed Enid to direct her
own piece. Enid Muñoz did not want to be an exception. My director, Enid Muñoz,
was denied the opportunity of having her work as a playwright interpreted by
another director (a person of color or otherwise). Enid was denied the
experience of seeing her story She Built
Me be successful outside of herself. Enid was denied the privilege of
having her one minute play fail, because it never left her hands. This is something
that I think the majority of all other playwrights that were showcased in this
years One Minute Play Festival had— whether they agreed with their directors
choices of casting/blocking/line changes—they at least saw their play outside
of themselves. They received a critique. Enid did not. What is a playwright
other than to have someone else interpret a work that they wrote?
So of course what happens
next?
Literally the next
day all actors and directors receive an e-mail from those putting on the One
Minute Play Festival. It read as follows:
“Just today, one of our 1MPF playwrights posted on
FaceBook her frustration at the lack of women-identified writers and directors
nominated for Non-Equity Jeff Awards. Between two directing categories, there
is only one woman nominated for her work. In the new play
category, only two women playwrights nominated for a play they
co-wrote.
And
it's not because women-identified artists aren't in the community; In
this festival alone we have 8 women-identified directors, and over 50
women-identified writers.
This is why we do this work. This is why we
believe it is important to invest in women's voices and women's stories. This is
why we need women directors staging and shaping the stories of women writers.”
And
I read that, sitting at my desk in Schaumburg thinking: what a load of
bullshit. YOU ARE A LOAD OF BULLSHIT #1MPF. I was so angry I took to my own
Facebook with the hashtag #1MPF. Basically calling out theater that “calls out”
other theater for not being diverse of progressive enough. When in fact, #1MPF
was exactly what they wanted to say they were not. I was so angry, I actually
texted Enid at 10:41 am. I had always been operating under the assumption that
when Enid submitted her play and received some feedback about there being too
much Spanish in it, that she actually did go through it and take some Spanish
out. But it was in that 10:41 am text conversation with Enid that I learned
that she hadn’t actually taken any Spanish out at all. For context there is exactly
12 sentences in Spanish (14 if you want to get TECHINAL with the lines “Mami, Mami”—
as they should be spoken with a Spanish inflection) vs the 29 sentences in
English. And yes— for the record Enid’s play was the ONLY play in this years
One Minute Play Festival that showcased a foreign language.
Enid
went to the ensemble. To keep it short: we decided as an ensemble to participate
in a silent protest. Our clump— clump 3, was “placed” at the back of the
curtain call. We just so happened to have missed the last minute script add-on
from One Minute Play Festival during tech. Therefore, our cast didn’t know what
was happening anyway. (Which HUGE sidenote: Real talk. Here’s my opinion: it’s completely
UNCOOL to ADD script to a curtain call DURING TECH. You’re not paying any of us—especially
for an $18-$20 ticket price [WHERE IS THAT MONEY GOING ANYWAY???—not to your
actors]. We are not under contract. Also. I am not your marketing team. So it’s
not my problem that your sales were QUOTE “weak sauce.” No matter how many
people are “cool,” with it. Don’t ask. Don’t ever put actors in that position.)
We decided to remain silent during the curtain call. If you had the opportunity
to witness the curtain call—it was a call and response type of deal. Suppose to
be very cathartic and meta. SEE US. See us as we did this great work. Did you
happen to notice that the majority of those front and center were white? We
did.
 |
| One Minute Play Festival: Nevertheless, We Persisted Den Theatre 5-3-17 Photo by: Enid Muñoz Clump 3: (back row; left to right) Alex B Rodriguez, Sonja Lynn Mata, Stephanie Mattos, Elizabeth Hungary, Aissa Guerra, and Kevin Jandrists |
When
you decide that something is bullshit you can see right through it. For me, standing
there with my ensemble while the rest of the community stomped their foot and
shouted at the top of their lungs, I just, couldn’t help but smile to myself.
Because I had decided what was happening before my eyes was bullshit. I was
seeing all: the back of the heads of my community, as well as the faces of the audience.
And
here is the biggest question of it all: How do artists of color not put other
artists of color down? Because I damn well know that there were many directors,
playwrights and actors that were very proud of the work that they put on that
stage. They felt like they were heard and seen and it was because One Minute
Play Festival had given them the space to do so.
On
the final night of performance, the community was asked what #1MPF could add
for next year. My arm shot up and I spoke my truth in a hurried passive-aggressive
unapologetic tone. My heart was racing. Just like at the carnival. I praised my
director and playwright Enid Muñoz for having the courage to persist. Because
here’s the thing to those that run the One Minute Play Festival: if you cannot
handle 60 seconds of our story, then you cannot handle 90 minutes of our existence.
Now. Quiet in 3. . .2. . .1.
-sonja lynn mata
No comments:
Post a Comment