It's a Fine Essay

That was the feedback from my spouse about my show the previous evening.

"It's a fine essay!" I repeated and then laughed at Mark's comment.

“I know, it’s more like a speech to the Commonwealth Club than theater", I said, "I have no idea how I’m going to turn this into an actual play.”

“You’ll get there.”

I wondered for a moment whether I would. Then, I remind myself that this is my process. I write and research and write and research some more; then I present the facts and the law and weave them together, determined to convince you that some injustice needs to be corrected. IMMEDIATELY. Case closed. The early drafts look more like a legal brief, only without the legalese.

The first presentation of The ICEmen Cometh was Tuesday night. I publicized it on my social media, wrote a newsletter telling readers about it, and mentioned it to friends and regulars I see at Catahoula Café in Richmond (where I sit at an outdoor table almost every morning, even when it’s cold). I casually told people, “Come if you can. Tickets are available online, but you can pay at the door. It’s a one-night group show for a class I’m in, and there will be space. These shows never sell out.”

Was I surprised! The show was sold out, and they had to add more chairs and allow overflow to sit upstairs, which is only occasionally used. Processing the large crowd meant the show started almost 30 minutes late. THANKS for your patience in getting seated. There were four other storytellers on stage that night, and they, too, had invited their community. We shared five very different stories, and we all appreciated having such a great audience.

The storytellers are David Ford’s students, who attended a 10-week workshop, getting together on Saturdays. We stand on stage, notes in hand, developing some story or series of stories we want to present to a broader public. At the end of those ten sessions, we have a group show, divided into two nights of performances.

Performers and Their Excerpts

Monday Night Lineup

Tuesday Night Lineup

Show night, David tells the audience, “We don’t know what we have until you hear these stories.” And that is so true, audience feedback is so important, and I feel the audience’s energy and reactions: maybe it’s an audible sigh, a gasp, laughter, groans, or the “you can hear a pin drop” quiet moment.  

I’ve been taking these workshops over the past decade, thanks to my dear friend Diane Barnes, who invited me to join her. She is the creator of two very successful solo shows, My Stroke of Luck and Not One of Us. David Ford's classes are where I developed my first play, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, and returned to the workshop as I made changes to that material at least three times.

Last year, when I was developing a new play, Class Migrant: de Aquí y de Allá, I signed up for David’s classes again, knowing that this is the most effective way for me to produce work and to get valuable feedback from him and the generous classmates.

Earlier this year, I signed up for another session starting in late spring. About halfway through, I felt compelled to address the assaults on our community under the Trump Regime and began writing a different play, The ICEmen Cometh. This work is new, and the material is quite raw. In fact, during one of the classes, I burst into tears, evoking the name of Anne Frank, knowing that today some families are in hiding. Some muchachita, maybe named Anita Franco, is frightened that one day she and her parents may be separated or disappeared. Although some may think this comparison is extreme, we are seeing the unfolding of a fascist society every day.

In some ways, I’ve been writing this play my whole life, as I’m flooded with all kinds of memories from childhood. One story is about my mother carrying my birth certificate when we visited our grandmother, who lived in Escobares, Texas, a ranchito on this side of the Tex-Mex border. As I was darker than everyone else in my family, she had proof that I was a United States citizen, in case that was ever questioned.

The two-plus-hour drive back home from the Rio Grande Valley included a stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint on Hwy 281 about 50 miles south of Alice (my hometown). It was usually nighttime when we pulled up. Traffic would slow down with the bright yellow blinking lights ahead. Once our station wagon had come to a complete stop, my Dad rolled down his window as the Border Patrolman approached and politely greeted him.

“Good evening, where are you folks coming from?”

“Escobares.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“Visiting my mother and other relatives.”

“Did you go into Mexico when you were down there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long were you there, and are you bringing any products from Mexico?”

“We just went to Ciudad Miguel Aleman for the afternoon, to have lunch. We bought a few trinkets for our kids, some Mexican candy, and my wife got some blouses for our girls.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Alice.”

“Is that where you live?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where were you born?”

“Yoakum, Texas.”

The officer would point his flashlight at my Mom in the front seat.

“Ma’am, where were you born?"

“Realitos.Texas.”

The flashlight would then scan the back seat.

“Are these your kids? United States citizens?”

“Yes, sir, they were all born in Alice.”

“Thank you. Y’all drive carefully.”

After we drove away, my siblings would tease me.

"Did you see, they kept the light on you a looooong time. Aren't you glad they didn't keep you?"

“Niños, stop it. Déjenla sola.”

My mother would tell me to ignore their taunting.

I don’t recall any encounters with the Border Patrol being unpleasant. I now wonder if my parents felt uneasy as they approached the inspection station. Back then, all the border patrol agents were white men. And for sure, there were NO women. Today, ICE and other law enforcement agencies have many Latinos, men and women. In several South Texas communities, the largest employers are prisons and immigrant detention facilities, so who they employ is not surprising. These are relatively well-paying jobs in communities with little industry and low wages. It is one of the reasons that rural counties with Mexican American populations in excess of 80% now vote for the supposed "law and order" Republican Party.

Caltrans Sign of Two Adults and Child Running

On two occasions, I’ve driven from the Bay Area to South Texas, and along the way, I’ve encountered border checkpoints; each time, I got flashbacks to the border check stops of my youth. More troubling were the CAUTION signs of two adults and a child running. The message: Be careful, don’t hit the fleeing Mexicans.

Seeing these signs always made me profoundly sad. And now we get to watch videos of people being tackled and beaten by masked ICE agents and thrown into unmarked vehicles. I process my grief and my rage on the page by writing.

I’m hoping that in a few months, I’ll have a new play about our current times and why we all need to speak up against the abuses and injustices. The rounding up of immigrants is the most visible sign of fascism. But I also plan to address the censorship and rewriting of history that the Trump regime is seeking to implement. All this is part of the same plan to dismantle our system of government and strip us of our Constitutional rights. All to enrich and give power to broligarchs and white supremacists.

If you’ve never read George Orwell’s book, 1984, I highly recommend you do so. And if you did read it years/decades ago in high school or college, I urge you to read it again. It will all feel so scary and familiar.

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement, and the emails and texts you send me with news stories that relate to the topics I write about. I appreciate your support and friendship. We will get through all this, but it requires all of us to be aware, to speak up, to take action.

As we say in Chicano Spanish, ponganse trucha.

I’ll end with the final words of the segment I performed this week.

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence, encourages the tormentor.”

            ~Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Winner, survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald

We all know that saying nothing encourages the bully. We’ve seen it in the school yard and in the White House.

Doing nothing is picking a side. Stand up, speak out, protest, band with neighbors and friends, and support organizations fighting the Trump Regime, while we still have these Constitutionally protected rights.

Pick the side fighting fascism, even when at times it feels futile. Don’t wait ‘til they come for you.

“In the end,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, “we will remember NOT the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

One more thing: find joy in your life. Make some time to engage in activities that bring you happiness, such as being with family, seeing friends, cooking, reading, playing, or listening to music. I was uplifted watching these South Texas jóvenes playing mariachi music.