When Aliens Fall from The Sky @ Cara Mía Theatre Company (“Teatro En Fuga” Festival of New Play Staged Readings)
—Teresa Marrero
After the necessary hiatus from live performance during the pandemic, Cara Mía Theatre Company has reopened "Teatro En Fuga," the company's annual Festival of New Play Staged Readings.
The first piece of the festival was performed on June 14 at the Latino Cultural Center. A "solo work-in-progress" from New York-born poet Lemon Anderson, it is intriguingly titled When Aliens Fall from the Sky. Created, written and performed by Andersen (with development input from Elise Thoron, who also directs), Aliens is not exactly a play, nor is it about ET-type aliens falling from an apocalyptic sci-fi sky.
Andersen has gathered a myriad of Latina and Latina voices into his one-man piece. During a talkback the audience commented on how thoroughly they connected with the images generated by the various voices from the barrios, and how one or more of the voices and stories touched them. One audience member remarked on Andersen’s ekphrasis, which is defined as the use of poetic description to generate or describe visual art.
Since there was no playbill to help identify the various characters, I will begin by saying that during the one-hour performance I noted nine different breaks in Andersen's storyline. Some were identifiable characters and others appeared as the poet´s own voice.
Andersen occupied the sparse black box space to his advantage in marking these changes. This helped the audience navigate the various narratives, and was also a credit to intelligent directorial choices from Thoron. Andersen used the cadence and rhythm of hip hop poetry to inform his movements. He had many segments fully memorized but did use a script on the podium at times. A flow marked the oral and visual experience. And, while he did not dance, an economy of movements communicated more clearly than any exaggerated action might have. I found this element fascinating.
His wide array of voices, and I say voices rather than characters because I never saw an attempt to impersonate, but rather to tell stories, included that of Sammy from Miami (who debunked stale stereotypes of an idealized Cuban revolution and exoticized notions of Cuban Africanity). The segment focused on the conquistadores (then and now, they still conquer and leave destitute) appropriating the genre of impoverished hip hop legends--old men who make a buck conducting tours in their NYC neighborhoods, but don't reap the economic rewards of their music...or even have health insurance.
A segment I call “To love her forever” struck a cord in both men and women, reminding us to be there for each other, no matter the conditions of our aging bodies. To love her forever means to listen.
A teenager sequence landed hard as well, with its choppy scrolling, emoji, delete, and social media’s definition of self, so dependent on portraying ourselves as ever happy, ever perfect ever on top because, well, depression doesn’t sell.
Another voice, Jerome Martinez, is that of a high school athlete who makes it to university on a scholarship, and observes how much of an outsider he feels in this environment--geographically a part of his neighborhood, but ever so far away from him culturally. This struck a cord with the educator part of me. I hear stories like this constantly in a course I teach at UNT, Hispanos in the United States. So many are first generation college students (as I was) who suffer from imposter syndrome (the self-inflicted doubt that we really do not belong there, that we are not good enough).
Andersen also struck back at toxic masculinity, the voices that say men don’t cry or show their vulnerability. He spoke to the man/child who attempts to carve a space for their softer side. “Don’t worry, man/child, if is safe to be that way”. Another poignant story involved a train ride to the Hamptons, where a white Andersen (although he self-identifies as Nuyorican) observes that the train is full of Mexican workers with rakes, and other tools. They are the Mexican gardeners to the East Coast elite. He relates his own experience as a hired performer in one of these homes, and how he ends up feeling more comfortable in the kitchen, where ‘the real party is at’ with the Mexican cooks.
Helicopter sounds overhead accompany a recruit, Jose, who joins the service to get out of town. The recruit tells the story of being deployed overseas and meeting his enemy; she is nine years old. “I tried hard to bend back into society," Jose tells us...."We are your aliens in the sky."
WHEN: Next staged reading on Saturday, July 2 (Fantazmx by Hector Cantu, directed by Jeffrey Colangelo)
WHERE: Latino Cultural Center, Dallas
WEB: caramiatheatre.org
