“¡Que Diablos! Fausto,” is part of the 10th anniversary production for Teatro en El Verano, a collaboration between Rhode Island Latino Arts and Trinity Repertory Company.
The Public’s Radio Morning Host Luis Hernandez talked with Jesús Valles, the playwright who created the adaptation, and Marta Martinez, community program administrator, activist and historian at Rhode Island Latino Arts.
¡Que Diablos! Fausto – multiple performance July 5 through August 1.
Art Inc. feature: The Show Goes on for Bilingual Theatre Group Despite Federal Funding Challenges available at RIPBS.org
Transcript
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Jesús, I’m really fascinated by this show, but I wanted to know why this one for the 10th anniversary?
Jesús Valles: Well, mostly because it’s public domain. When I was considering what material I wanted to adapt, I kept thinking about the fact that the structure and story of Faust is probably one of our most commonly referenced stories. It’s “The Little Mermaid,” it’s “The Devil Wears Prada.” It’s all of these stories, right? And, the conceit is almost always the same, which is, as you said in your introduction, the desire to be the best at something or to have the things that we cannot have so often drives us to make deals that might seem innocuous but often end up costing us more than we bargained for.
Luis Hernandez: One of the things I really enjoy when you have something in the public domain is the fact that now you do have a lot of artists who can go in and they can have some fun with it. And so I wondered, your thoughts on adapting the show. One or two of the themes or something that you wanted to do. What was going through your mind?
Jesús Valles: I think I was thinking a lot about labor when I was starting to adapt the show. I was thinking about labor, I was thinking about healthcare. I think in the United States it’s pretty difficult to divorce labor from healthcare. I think the question of labor is always the question of how we might be able to care for our bodies or not. As I was approaching the adaptation, I kept thinking a lot about this story of a doctor, quite literally like the story of a doctor who wants to be, and do and know and possess more than he already does. And I kept thinking a lot about the state of the country and, and who owns how much of the wealth. I have two parents who are nearing their seventies and they do not have any kind of benefits that they’ll be able to tap into once their bodies give out.
I’ve always grown up knowing that certain kinds of labor costs certain kinds of people their bodies, and always in the service of making other people wealthy. So I think the seed of the story really begins with a kind of, for me, a class resentment, I guess. And also I was thinking a lot as I started approaching the adaptation about El Teatro Campesino and how their approach to theater and to organizing and helping to gather farm workers in California really began with these 10 minute plays that would happen outdoors in the backs in the flatbeds of trucks, and how much of the ethic of that particular playmaking process was to say we are dealing with very serious issues. The people who are oppressing us are far more powerful and wealthier than we are. And also we have ingenuity. We have the flatbed of a truck, we have this message, we have humor. How do we use all of these elements to create power for ourselves, to galvanize ourselves?
Luis Hernandez: Marta, thinking about the fact now, it’s almost a decade [since you started Teatro en El Verano], right?
Marta Martinez: Yes, it’s exactly a decade. This Saturday when we open will be 10 years.
Luis Hernandez: Think about that, you know, 10 years ago. What was the vision? What were the goals? And tell me what you think this last decade has been like.
Marta Martinez: (For) the audience that I serve, the arts is such an important part of our lives, the cultural arts. In my case, when I interview Latinos as part of my work, the first three things that they list among others is their cultural celebrations. That’s part of why I started the organization.
To communicate, to share a story, to maybe just entertain. And the idea that the Latinos here had no, especially the more contemporary, as the community was growing, they didn’t have bilingual theater.
I specifically did not want an all-Spanish language theater because I wanted to make sure that it was all inclusive of every generation and my audience were the Latinos. And the only place they had that was calling to them was Trinity Rep. And people just didn’t know what it was. ‘Where is that?’ And ‘I’ve never heard of it.’ And they just didn’t feel comfortable — not only when you walk into the reception area, it was just very foreign — but then once you watch the play on stage, they didn’t identify with the actors, the storyline.
Luis Hernandez: Have you heard from Latin artists and maybe have just a quick story, you know, who’ve told you how Rhode Island Latino Arts, and especially how Teatro en El Verano have helped them?
Marta Martinez: Yes, I hear that all the time. And I think even Jesús has kind of alluded to that. It’s helped their careers. It’s just helped their soul. They say, ‘I’ve never — it’s been such a long time that I’ve been in a room where there’s other people like myself who can speak two languages, go in and out and dance and sing and exchange Latino recipes.’ And it’s really that it’s saved them in that way. It’s really uplifted them.
Luis Hernandez: I want to ask about a really serious issue here. Something that we’re dealing with in today’s times. And, it’s of course the story of immigration in this country and especially right now, the ICE raids that we see. And it’s caused a lot of anger, a lot of rage, a lot of fear, within the Latino community.
But I’m wondering how this impacts our Latin artists, but also, not just the kinds of shows you might do or talk about the issues you might talk about, but also just the artists in general. Like, the people who come to watch, the fear that they may have. Jesús, your take on that.
Jesús Valles: I have two brothers who were deported, one in 2008 and one in 2009. So, for me, I think the issue of immigration has always been part of the landscape of theater-making. For me, it’s always been a thing that I think about because no matter what administration is in place, the need for an immigration machine that categorizes some people as undocumented, has been made essential to the workings of this country and in very unfair and very broken and, and I think painful ways.
My hope is this: We have spent the last few months of this year, yes, watching community members be kidnapped and watching communities and families be torn apart by ICE. And also we have seen a tremendous amount of videos of folks recording or shouting or explaining their rights to other folks, or blocking vans or blocking entrances or escorting each other into and out of court.
So I hope we are also keeping watch of how much power we as people have. How much power and how much ability to activate each other to protect one another we have. And I would hope that an event like this play can gather people in a way that sort of makes us look at each other and say, ‘Hey, I got you.’
The opening performance of “Que Diablos! Fausto” is on Saturday, July 5, at Galleria del Pueblo in Central Falls. And there’s a performance on Thursday, July 10 at Dexter Park in Providence.
