‘We Have Iré’ (Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater) @ Cara Mia Theatre Company
Photos by Tom Ehrlich/Graphic courtesy of Pregones/PRTT
—Teresa Marrero
Playwright Paul S. Flores’ We Have Iré was presented as the first part of Cara Mia Theatre Company’s Latinidades Festival 2023. Presented during Hispanic Heritage month, the festival’s next shows will be Your Healing is Killing Me (by Virginia Grisse) October 5-8th, and Barrio Daze (by Adrian Villegas) by October 13-16. All events take place at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas. The two upcoming shows are one-person events, while We Have Iré included a dozen or so actors, dancers, and musicians.
If anyone can produce an engaging and high-quality Latin musical-theatrical experience, it’s the New York-based Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Under the direction of veteran actor, director, dramaturg, and co-producer Rosalba Rolón and her team, Pregones/PRTT regularly offers its Bronx audiences culturally relevant experiences; whatever the sources (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban), the focus is on the Spanish-speaking Caribbean region. This group gets around: the playbill states ¨from the Bronx, NY, and San Francisco.¨
We Have Iré was written, performed and produced by Flores, a spoken-word performance artist of Mexican and Cuban-American heritage who tells the musical story of Afro-Cuban immigrant artists—with their dreams of leaving the island to test the waters beyond. The story line is a polyphonic narrative of intertwined testimonials from Christian (Flores), Monchi (Ramón Ramos Alayo), Nené (Christin Cato), Jony (Dennis Bain Savigne), and DJ Leydis (as herself). Ramos Alayo is listed also as the choreographer of the piece.
In the group, Nené is the only balsera, a person who left Cuba in a small boat or raft, hoping to arrive safely on the Florida shores. Her dream is to be a DJ and play her music to the world (or at least to Miami). Nené leaves her 4-year-old daughter behind, and she and others in the boat experience the anxiety of being lost in a sea of blue. The piece invokes the Afro-Cuban deity of the ocean waters, Yenmayá, an orisha (spirit) representing the mother of us all within the Yoruba-Lucumí religious pantheon. Nené sings her story, one of the evening’s most dramatically compelling segments. (More later on the dancing that accompanies it.)
Christian (Flores) is a San Francisco-based spoken-word poet who longs to return to Cuba for an international poetry festival. The character’s poetic voice conveys the push and pull of living the hyphenated experience (in this instance, Cuban-American). This can be described as the feeling of being emotionally tugged by one´s native land, yet being made to feel a foreigner upon the actual return. Christian’s Cuba journey is nevertheless a joyful and identity-affirming experience.
Jony (Bain Savigne) is a bass saxophonist from rural Cuba who longs to expand his musical knowledge and opportunities—but first must overcome his musician father´s objection to his desire to re-locate to Havana. Martial-arts fan Monchi (Ramos Alayo) is also from the Cuban countryside. But when he wins a national competition to an arts academy in Havana, he is placed in the dance department. Monchi eventually comes to accept that he (like the others in this piece) has iré (a blessing) in the form of talent that comes from ancestral Afro roots. He becomes an international dancer based out of NYC.
All these characters mention their comings and goings from Cuba to their homes in the United States. Given my own personal experience as a Cuban émigré, I know that travel back and forth isn’t always that simple. This is the only aspect of the narrative I found somewhat misleading—that anyone can come and go to the island without restrictions. It is certainly true that Cubans cannot leave the island at will.
The live jazz ensemble was phenomenal, moving seamlessly between Afro-Cuban and American jazz: Billy Evans on bass, Román Filiu on saxophone, Marcelo Pérez on drums, Javi Santiago on piano, and Yosvany Terry on the chekeré (a Yoruba percussion instrument consisting of a dried gourd with a covering net of beads or cowrie shells). They moved the action along well, and each individual player was featured in a jazz piece at the end of the evening.
The excellent dance ensemble was certainly one of We Have Iré ‘s best elements; members included José José Arrieta Cuesta, Julianna Cressman, and Delvis Savigne Friñón. Cressman, the only woman among them, displayed a virtuosity anchored in classical training, yet delivering true Afro-Cuban body movements. She became the torrid waters that Nené navigated during her crossing in a raft; she also morphed into the gentle and saving mother of the seas, Yenmaná. Her fluidity was admirable.
The choreography by Ramos Alayo displayed a wide repertoire of moves that highlighted each dancer’s virtuosity and brought the stage alive. Amadia Dijali´s costumes, particularly the choice of the flowing white sleeves for Grossman, were brilliant. Eli Jacobs-Fantuzzi (video, photography, documentation) brought Cuba and New York to the audience through numerous well-placed video clips of real-life places. With Leyma López (assistant director and stage manager), Yosvany Terry (composer, musical director), Leydis Freire (sound designer, DJ Leydis), Tanya Orellana (set designer), Maximiliano Urruzmendi (lighting), and Daniel Hernández Martínez (sound engineer).
We Have Iré is a first-rate show with a relevant story and fabulous musical and dance performances. Indeed, it does have not only iré, but ashé (also written as aché or asé in the Yoruba-Lucumí tradition of Afro-Cuban religions). Like iré (a blessing), ashé conveys the energy of universal forces, manifested through music and dance.
Teresa Marrero is Professor of Latin American and Latiné Theater and Cultures in the Spanish Department at the University of North Texas. She is an avid dancer of Cuban and Argentinean music.
WHEN: October 5-8, Your Healing is Killing Me; October 12-13, Barrio Daze (solo comedy show)
WHERE: Latino Cultural Center, Dallas
WEB: caramiatheatre.org
