Students and crew from the Teatrotaller, Cornell student group, pose for a picture after their performance of desiertos Saturday. The set for the group's play included more than 50 milk cartons collected by Professor Stuart Day and University students to represent the thirst faced by immigrants as they cross the desert on the Mexico-US border.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Five immigrants in the back of a pitch-black, sweltering trailer by the Mexican-American border gasp for oxygen and water. One cries out in Spanish to God, another to his mother. Then they curse each other for panicking. Later, five women, in shawls and tears, sprinkle sand over the four who didn’t survive.
Emotional moments like these portray the perils of immigration throughout “Desiertos,” a play about Mexican-American immigration that 11 Cornell University undergraduate students performed in Woodruff Auditorium Saturday night.
The students are part of a group called in the group Teatrotaller, or “theater workshop.” The group performs a play in Spanish every semester at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., but the group has traveled as far as England and Israel to perform the plays. Professor Stuart Day was one of the first scene managers for Teatrotaller during his doctoral program at Cornell years ago. Day now teaches at the University of Kansas and helped the department of Spanish and Portuguese to bring the group to Lawrence.
“There were a lot of students there, and we wanted them to see what a group of undergraduate students can do,” Day said. “We also wanted to tie in a lot of issues that are important to us at KU as we have more and more Latino students from around the state coming to KU.”
The play, written by award-winning Mexican playwright Hugo Alfred Hinojosa, portrays the hardships of immigrants and those they leave behind. With the exception of one character, a bigoted border patrol agent, the dialogue is entirely in Spanish. The Cornell cast had six native Spanish-speakers and five students who started studying the language in school, said Jimmy Noriega, Cornell doctoral student and director of the show. Noriega, who grew up by the border in Douglas, Ariz., said although the characters and their words were fictional, their tragic stories were based on actual events.
“I know a lot of people who have actually lived this story,” Noriega said. “It hit me really big because it felt like home. I felt it had to be told because a lot of people don’t want to look at this side of immigration, the actual personal stories.”
Sani Brosig, Loredo, Texas, is a junior at Cornell and stage manager of the show. Brosig’s parents are immigrants and she grew up by the border. She said she had held past positions with Teatrotaller but her personal history made her want a more prominent leadership role in “Desiertos.”
“A lot of people in my hometown are immigrants,” Brosig said. “There were a couple of scenes where the moms of the men who went to find work didn’t know where they were. I know a lot of people who had that experience growing up.”
Debra Castillo, professor of comparative literature and romance studies and adviser of the group, said Teatrotaller had performed more than 50 plays since its origin in 1993. She said this play in particular had the most profound tie to an ongoing struggle in the modern world.
“This play is really powerful,” Castillo said. “It’s a very serious play.”
Austin Robinson, Overland Park junior, said the powerful effect of the show was what he appreciated most. He said the part he found most moving was the portrayal of the only English-speaking person: the southern border-patrol agent.
“It kind of captured, in an exaggerated version, what people feel who are opposed to rights of immigrants and don’t respect the lives of immigrants,” Robinson said. “The play gave a good counter viewpoint to that kind of thought.”
Robinson said, as a double major in theater and Spanish, seeing the example of Teatrotaller gave him an interest in possibly starting a similar group at the University.
“I think it definitely can be done at KU,” Robinson said. “Its just a matter of getting organized and enough people behind it. I think a lot of other students I know would definitely be involved as well.”
— Edited by Abbey Strusz
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