Teatrotaller production triumphs in Belgium, heads to Mexico in July

Teatrotaller members ham it up on campus, from left, top row: Yasmine Legendre, Guillermo Izabal, Rodrigo Lema, Oscar Gendrop, Leo Sánchez; bottom row: Tania Cornejo, Jacqueline Burke, Alex Santiago, Jacobo Bibliowicz, Eldar Noe, Rocio de Félix, Amy Liu and Benita González. Jocelyne Slepyan

By Linda Myers

Teatrotaller, which means theater workshop in Spanish, offers the members of Cornell's and Ithaca's sizeable Spanish-speaking communities, an estimated 2,500 on and off campus, a chance to see and take part in high quality Hispanic theater.

Founded in l993, Teatrotaller has since performed 17 full-scale, professional quality productions and has 45 active members, nearly all of them students or recent graduates of Cornell. The plays, usually three a year, in November, April-May and July-August, are by Spanish, Latin-American and U.S. Latino and Latina playwrights. Some students who participate in Teatrotaller's Spanish-speaking productions get course credit for their involvement.

Last fall, the group was invited by Argentine playwright Nora Glickman to produce "Una tal Raquel" ("Someone Named Rachel") and give her new play its world premiere on Cornell's campus. The play is based on a true story about Raquel Liberman, a Jewish woman who immigrated to Argentina from Poland in the early part of the 20th century in search of a better life. She soon found herself at the mercy of a group of unscrupulous Jewish Argentinian gangsters, who preyed on immigrant women of that era and place. Widowed, penniless, with small children to support and without resources, she was lured into a sham marriage and forced by her "husband" and his gang into a life of prostitution but eventually found a way to turn her captors over to the police and obtain her freedom. Her story became something of a legend in Argentina, attracting Glickman, a prolific award-winning playwright and scholar who teaches Latin American and U.S. Latino drama at Queens College, to research and write a book and then the play.

Teatrotaller first presented Glickman's play in the Statler Auditorium last November, then took it to Barnard College Feb. 26 of this year. Following that, the troupe accepted a special invitation to present the play at the Rencontre International de Theatre Universitaire (RITU) in Liège, Belgium, Feb. 28-March 5 and will take it to Mexico this summer.

"Representing a real person was an amazing challenge," said Maria Burgos-Ojeda, a Cornell master's degree candidate in communication from Puerto Rico who played Raquel in the Teatrotaller production. "What I wanted to get across was not a defeated person but someone you can sympathize with. How did she cope, how did she make this her daily life and keep believing that eventually she would get out?"

A challenge for all the actors was performing a play in Spanish that involved characters whose native language was Yiddish. "We had the characters who are immigrants speak Spanish with a Yiddish accent and incorporated Yiddish music by Cayuga Klezmer into the production," said director Jacobo Bibliowicz, a 1998 graduate of Cornell in applied and engineering physics from Colombia who has been active in Teatrotaller almost since its inception. Another challenge, a play within the play, was resolved by having the players in that sequence wear stark white masks, said Bibliowicz. The group also consulted with movement expert Kriszta Bodoni, who helped choreograph the actors' movements during the shifts from scene to scene. The Ithaca Tangueros also contributed music and dance. In the final production the actors move about the stage with the drama and intensity of a slow, somber Argentinian tango.

The weeklong festival in Belgium, where Teatrotaller performed this March, showcases dramatic university theater from around the world. Like the performers, the audience is international. Several plays in different languages are performed daily and discussed in workshops and symposiums. This year's festival repertoire included works by Chekhov and Racine as well as contemporary playwrights in German, Bulgarian, Arabic, Dutch, English and French, in addition to Spanish. Playwright Glickman, who accompanied Teatrotaller to Belgium, gave workshops at the festival on U.S. Latino theater.

"There was some fantastic theater, and they treated us royally," said Bibliowicz, who was surprised and pleased to discover a sizable Spanish-speaking audience in attendance. The troupe's photograph appeared in several Belgian newspapers alongside articles praising the festival.

Debra Castillo, Cornell professor of Spanish literature and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow who has been the adviser to Teatrotaller since 1995, also traveled to Belgium with the Cornell theater troupe. She said it was particularly important to present Glickman's new play to international audiences so as to make them aware of the richness of the U.S. theater scene, "which is not limited to works in English." Glickman's work "crosses numerous boundaries," said Castillo, and "her choice of materials derives from her various cultural affinities: U.S. Latina, Jewish, Argentine."

The play's focus on border crossings and women in poverty at the fringes of Latin American society who are coerced into prostitution is also of interest to Castillo, whose research on Tijuana prostitutes touches on those topics too and was one of the reasons Glickman initially asked Castillo to help produce her play at Cornell.

Castillo praises Teatrotaller's members for taking on such a demanding production and taking it overseas in mid-semester. "These are all accomplished students with demanding schedules and extracurricular activities in addition to their work with Teatrotaller," she said. The volunteers handle publicity, stage sets, costumes, lighting and sound as well as acting, producing and directing.

One reason for Burgos-Ojeda's commitment to the theater troupe, despite a demanding schedule, is the nature of Teatrotaller itself. "Theater is collective, communal," she said, and "I love the sense of community that Teatrotaller affords."

This July 3-7 Teatrotaller will perform "Una tal Raquel" at Jornadas Internacionales de Teatro Latinoamericano in Puebla, Mexico, and Jornadas Metropolitanas de Estudios Culturales in Mexico City. Both events are well known in Mexican and Latin American theater circles. In addition to performances, they feature wide-ranging discussions about theater and culture among authors, actors, directors and researchers.

Performers in "Una tal Raquel" include: Jacobo Bibliowicz, Jacqueline Burke, Sara Troyani, Rocío de Félix Davila, Maria Burgos-Ojeda, Guillermo Izabal, Jimmy Lou Nieves, Eldar Noe and Alexander Santiago Jirau. Amy Liu is the sound technician, and Nohemy Solórzano is the lighting technician.

The theater troupe and its members have been recognized for outstanding community service by such groups as the Latino Civic Association of Tompkins County and cited by Cornell President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes for their contributions to campus cultural life. Funding for the trips have come from the Department of Romance Studies, the offices of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the dean of undergraduate research, the dean of students, as well as the office of Vice Provost Mary Sansalone.

Funding for Teatrotaller, in general, comes from the campus community and, like most arts funding, can be "precarious" at times, said Castillo. Contributions and volunteer efforts are welcome. Contact Saul Mercado, Amigos de Teatro Taller, sm115@cornell.edu.

Teatrotaller's next production on campus is "Noche de los Asesinos," by Cuban playwright José Triana, May 5-6 at 8 p.m. in the Statler Auditorium and is open to the public. The suggested contribution is $5. For tickets contact the Latin American Studies Program, 190 Uris Hall, or the Department of Romance Studies, 283 Goldwin Smith Hall.