‘the way she spoke’ @ Undermain Theatre
Production photos by Rob Menzel
—Teresa Marrero
Curiosity got the better of me.
Before I went to see the regional premiere of Isaac Gomez’s the way she spoke at Undermain Theatre, I did some online research on the play’s reception in the Big Apple in 2019. It had an off-Broadway run at the Minetta Lane Theatre with well-known actor Kate del Castillo. What I read revealed a general consensus that somehow the structure of the piece got in the way of the play itself—and its socially responsible message about the murders of women in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.
Variety said “The story’s emotional core is short-circuited by the play’s structure.…the voices of the real people who have suffered get lost in the dramatizing.” (Nicolas Serratore, Variety, July 18, 2019). Pretty scathing. On the same day The New York Times critic concluded that Gomez’s creation and Kate del Castillo fail “because the characters never feel inhabited, [and] it’s difficult to believe them….” One is to assume that since “the dominant voice doesn’t belong to the people of Juarez, it belongs to the playwright/narrator.” More on this later.
You get the drift: there is something wrong with the structure of this play. Their main point of contention seemed to be that the emotional impact of the play is somehow compromised by the meta framing devices used by the playwright.
All righty. I went and saw the play at Undermain. And one by one, the above objections seemed more and more irrelevant to everything I saw.
Let’s begin by taking on the meta framing of this play. This is a creative device employed by Gomez—a Gomez-the-playwright-character is an off-stage presence with whom the Actress directly engages throughout, questioning or simply reflecting out loud to him. The Actress is reading the script cold turkey; she has no idea what is in store for her to read. As a woman actor of color, she is elated by the mere fact of being called in to an audition, particularly in front of the playwright.
So far, so good. And any first-year theater student or experienced theater-goer has seen this sort of backstage/onstage “meta” situation, in which the play in some ways becomes about the play itself, and not only about the dramatic action of the plot. This…is…an…audition. Gomez the playwright is also doing what’s known as “breaking the fourth wall” (the assumed separation between actors performing onstage and audience members observing from the seats). He’s also added something even more: breaking a “fifth wall” that assumes separation among the individuals who make up the audience.
Complicated. But if masters of the Western theater canon have used these tropes, are they not available to a Chicano playwright from the border town of El Paso/Ciudad Juarez? This is precisely what the script asks the Actress to do, engage with her own process with an imaginary audience member (Gomez-the-playwright) and simultaneously with us, the general audience. There was nothing confusing about this in the Undermain production starring the formidable Gigi Cervantes—and the effect was to draw us in—and not in any way to “distance” the audience as the New York reviews suggested.
Under the direction of Blake Hackler, with Scott Osborne´s set and properties design, Cervantes´ portrayal of the eleven characters in the script is quite clear. She uses voice inflection and change of physical positions, but the rest rises from her capacity as an actor to get the job done, and done well indeed. She does not make an artifice out of the transitions required by the characters whose voices she is speaking. I had no difficulties following her various character changes, nor was it unsettling or confusing for her to address an invisible Gomez-the-playwright supposedly seated among us (he was not there when I saw the show). Personally, I loved both the Virgen of Guadalupe scene and that of the man who was convicted of the eight murders in the Campo Algodonero, a fascinating twist from the perspective of thwarting expectations.
Once critical analysis is swept aside, we in the audience are left with the harrowing testimonies of the families affected by the disappearance, mutilation and murder of so many women in the city center of Juarez. This is the center of the work, all “meta” and “walls” aside.
Who is responsible?
Is it the narcos who use women to convey messages to opposing gangs? Who are the accomplices, the bus drivers who take the women to the maquiladoras and bring them home late at night after work? Is it the local police, who take advantage of this scenario to rape and abuse women, later disposing of the evidence in some open field? Is it the government officials who turn a blind eye and offer TV sets as consolation to the grieving families instead of answers?
The play exposes all this and more. It brings before us detailed descriptions of the atrocities along with the names of each victim. One, after the other, after the other.
Frankly, it was overwhelming to hear. And, in one last move of wall crossing, the Actress strikes back at the playwright among us. saying: ¨You needed a woman´s voice to say these words. But did you not consider the effect it would have on me?¨
And this intratextual ´me´ came into question at one point in the beginning of the reading when the Actress corrects the use of a male noun in Spanish, saying that it should end in ‘a’ and not ‘o’ because she (the Actress) is a woman. Then, upon reflection, she ´gets it´. This masculine ‘o’ is Gomez the playwright. She becomes aware that she is playing him. This choice of casting a woman to play a ´he´ is unusual, particularly given that Gomez identifies as gay, and uses the pronouns ´they-them´ and not ‘he.’ This is the source for the NYT critic who said that Gomez is the real narrator of this play (and not his characters).
If I may speak bluntly…so what? It works.
Go see this well-crafted play and be prepared to witness a wonderful actor take on a monumental challenge single-handed. Come prepared to be deeply affected.
Teresa Marrero is Professor of Latin American and Latiné Theater in the Spanish Department at the University of North Texas.
WHEN: June 1-18, 2023
WHERE: Undermain Theatre, 3200 Main Street, Dallas
WEB: undermain.org
