SPANGLISH TRIUMPHS

posted by James Reel

    Well, one out of three isn’t too bad:

    There's one excellent reason to see the Catalina Players' trilogy of one-act plays about immigrants: Silviana Wood's And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? It boasts a quality of writing and acting, and a love and understanding of very real people, that its two companion pieces can't match.
    Many Tucson Hispanics of a certain age will recognize as their own the situation in Where Was Pancho Villa. It's an anecdote about an elementary school class, not too many decades ago, in which a well-meaning teacher tries to turn her lively little Mexican-American students into nice little Anglo kids. First, she Anglicizes their names, because she can't pronounce the Spanish originals. … Then she goes after their pronunciation, their lunches, every evidence of their Mexicanness.
    Naturally, the kids find much of this humiliating. Some is necessary, like an all-out assault on head lice, but it's the manner in which everything is carried out that grinds them down, from the incessant pronunciation drills to the way the school nurse handles them like lepers.
    Will the kids find a way to fight back? Well, whatever happens, you can tell from the way the adults who play them are costumed that they won't all live happily ever after.