It is the custom of this reviewer to present a contemplation and not a traditional review that touches on everything.
For that reason, in the original piece, the focus was on the work of Fornes herself, extending into my own ancestral connection to the venue, and insight about Gertrude Stein from a gay Latino director I studied with in my youth.
It was perhaps not appropriate to omit entirely other threads about the Festival.
The first play presented, “Harriet and Irene: Infinite Muses,” was written by the inestimable Elaine Romero, and departed from her style somewhat, constituting a lovely homage to the Master.
To succeed in playwriting requires not just doing the art itself, but comprises a multitude of skills and business practices that I have sadly not cultivated in recent years, while Elaine has, and to perfectly normal and commendable outcomes.
She is an extremely prolific writer, a hale fellow well met who comes to everything, remembers your name, and is very friendly. I don’t just envy her — I like her. She touches a lot of people, and that is almost the sine qua non of putting together a great career in the arts.
She holds a coveted university teaching position and is famous all over the place, more so than most playwrights. She had an entire Festival devoted to her work. I wouldn’t be surprised to see university courses studying the oeuvre of Elaine Romero.
Whereas I have been day-jobbing it in eldercare for a decade. My own professional interactions go something like this:
DID YOU MAKE POO-POO TODAY, MISS MABEL?
So there.
The third play, “Pariah,” by Rose Cano, I sadly didn’t get to see, having to work that night, though I usually come to all of her events.
I’m sure it was good. I have reviewed her work in this blog before, in this very venue even.
Then there was the big debacle about this whole event, and that is LA VENGANZA DE TRUMP against pretty much everyone of Latinx origins. His own wife comes from Slovenia and got here on a fake genius visa, but no genius visa is granted the actual genius, a lifelong theatre artist and much-loved high school teacher named Fernando “Nando” Rocha que se captó y se llevó al ALCATRAZ DE COCODRILOS.
Nando did not get to perform that weekend. He was treated to the I.C.E. perp walk at his job as a theatre manager at an upscale high school on the Eastside a week before the Festival -- a remarkable insult to the Latinx culture club.
You don’t need live theatre when everyone is home on some trumped-up curfew, which is how military dictatorships function, and the United States is clearly heading down that path, with the pusillanimous Supreme Court allowing a power grab from the Executive Branch that is unprecedented and vile.
Fernando Rocha is now out on an I.C.E. bond and back to grading papers. Fortunately, our tax dollars are well-spent chasing down high school teachers, not actual criminals — and not providing health care for the less fortunate.
SU VOTA ES SU VOZ
HERE IS ELAINE ROMERO, STARING DOWN THE COCODRILO
