Gomez’s play is a self-acclaimed docu-mythologia—incorporating both interviews and magic—that details his own desire to understand the mass femicide that has plagued Ciudad Juárez, Mexico for years. the way she spoke was performed as a solo show by expert oracle of an actress Kate del Castillo. The show opens with a flustered entrance by del Castillo, playing an actress who has just experienced yet another discriminatory casting session. She is visiting her playwright friend, Gomez, who has asked her to read through a new script he wrote about his experience on a journey to Mexico, where he had spoken to locals about the femicide epidemic.
I could not help but sit in awe at how aware the playwright, cast, crew, and producers were of the value of raw storytelling—no bells and whistles, just words, facts, feeling, and meaning.
del Castillo’s knowing looks into the distance remind the audience that the playwright is an active character even without a physical actor there to play the role. This is the first of many choices made in the play to minimalize spectacle and accentuate the value of a storyteller and the power of our imagination. Very quickly I wondered: What does Gomez look like? What is he saying on the other end?
As del Castillo reads through the script, she transforms in and out of various characters Gomez met on his dark exploration through Ciudad Juárez. One moment we are in the home of the mother of a lost daughter and the next we are inches away from an accused murderer. del Castillo’s powerfully popping performance, unlike any I’ve seen before on the Minetta stage, pushed its audience from being passive consumers of theatre to activated and engaged listeners. Gomez enlightens del Castillo as an intermediary between past and present, there and here, and, from that, seamlessly builds audience trust and engagement in the story. The performance’s artful direction by Jo Bonney and the play’s clever, minimalistic design by Riccardo Hernandez work together to transform a bare stage with few chairs and a table to a playing ground for del Castillo. All together, these elements build a temple of a stage with no distractions, forcing the audience to listen deeply and to develop a level of investment and engagement in the story.
Throughout his text, Gomez smartly builds the experience to reflect the local statistics of Ciudad Juárez, but, even then, it quickly becomes relevant to its New York audience. By localizing a universal issue, Gomez articulates the larger assault epidemic in America. Toward the end of the piece, del Castillo begins to read from a list of over sixty names of women who have been murdered, some so brutally they were unidentifiable, some young, some old. In this list, the content and weight of the prevalence of assault cannot be unlearned, cannot be unheard.
These elements build a temple of a stage with no distractions, forcing the audience to listen deeply.
Watching del Castillo read through the list and halt partway through with tears running down her cheeks jolted viewers with a sense of this is happening all around us and to women everywhere. The implication was that the gravity of the issue—murder in Mexico—is where the United States is heading if we do not immediately act upon protecting each other. And, with a one-woman show, Gomez develops a space in which the power of the individual is highlighted.
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