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In this series of essays, Fusco concentrates on examining the work of Latino/a performance artists born in the U.S., and the themes of “otherness” and culture clash. Performers such as Andres Serrano, Laura Aguilar, and Fusco’s longtime collaborator, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, are held up to the light for close consideration.

In the essay targeting her collaboration with Gomez-Pena, she details a performance done in public venues (museums, municipal buildings) where she and Gomez-Pena created a living exhibit, posing as “specimens” of a fictional indigenous tribe. They displayed themselves in a cage, with dress and talismans gleaned from Pan-Latino/a and popular culture. Her commentary on the experience, on being the observed ”other,” and what she saw as the fascination of the predominately Anglo audience as observer, underscored the themes of objectification and the blurring of public and private.

I had mixed feeling in reading about this performance. On the one hand, I think it was a bold and important artistic move to skewer the dominant culture's idea of 'preservation' and 'curation ,' to challenge it as a kind of pandering to that culture's fascination with they perceive as the 'exotic' indigenous. Never mind that in many cases, these exhibits are only possible as a direct result of colonialism, genocidal practices, and grave robbing. How different is Fusco's and Gomez-Pena's living exhibit behind bars from the guided tours held on the the rez, or in barrios, in farm worker camps?

I wonder to what extent the audience grasped that under the rubric of "Latino," there exists hundreds of complex societies, with a heterogeneity of language, practices, rituals. I'm concerned that the work only engenders the knee-jerk, superficial shudder of guilt in primarily white, middle-class audiences.

In the post-performance discussions of Housekeeper's Diary, the comments from some middle-class people reveal discomfort and their own lack of knowledge as to how to even treat their own maids in a more real, humane way. But there are also comments about what is the vitality and vibrancy of working people--comments about the inherent dignity they sense, despite an external objectification. This, to me is the kind of dialog and engagement I find most satisfying as a performer.

While those points of divergence are significant, I felt I had read something that will challenge me to keep thinking about the political context of performance. One last reservation with this book was Fusco’s tendency make referential comments about to different artists, without always placing them in context. This can make for a limited appreciation of the the work as a whole, as well as perpetuate an unfortunate tendency of performance artists conversing amongst themselves. (Particularly since Fusco plumbs the legacy of imperialism, colonialism in her work, it strikes me as odd that she gears her writing to the art intelligentsia. ) It's a challenge, however, worth the effort of cross-referencing and research for the reader.

ISBN-10: 1565842456
ISBN-13: 978-1565842458




Teatro Luna has a VERY exciting show opening in early November. It is called Machos, and it is based on interviews with 50 diverse men nationwide. Our ensemble members will be performing as men (we have a movement coach and everything) talking about their lives, their work, and, of course, women. If you'd like to bring a group of students to see the show, please contact [email protected]. We'd be happy to arrange a group rate, a post-show discussion, or even a classroom visit.

Volunteers Wanted!!!

We desperately need volunteers to help us transcribe the last few interviews. Transcription is a time-consuming, tedious process, but nothing could help us more as we work to finalize our script. We're looking for people who can dedicate 10-12 hours in the next week - a lot of ask, we know! In exchange, we will offer you your choice of $50, 4 tickets to MACHOS, or 2 VIP tickets to a MACHOS special event. And of course, a thank you in the program and our undying love. Well, at least MY undying love. I can't speak for everyone. if this sounds like something you can commit to, please e-mail Belinda at [email protected].

Oye-Listen! Call for Submissions for September & November

So far, OYE-LISTEN! - a new collaboration between Teatro Luna and Jane Addams Hull-House Museum- has been a blast. Our June and July series had packed houses and vibrant performances from Yolanda Nieves, Sandra Santiago-Posadas, Lani Montreal, Francis Allende-Pellot, Gesel Mason, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Anida Yoeu Ali, Cristal Sabbagh, Andrea Wukitsch, Keiko Johnson and more. There's still time to join the fun! We are currently seeking performers for slots in September and November.

For submission guidelines or questions, please email to [email protected].

Proyecto Latina - AUGUST 20th

The next Proyecto Latina is on Monday, August 20th @ 7 p.m. Our August feature is Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez, she shares from her collection of poems. As always there will also be Chisme box and open-mic . Free. Join us at Tianguis, 2003 S. Damen.

Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez A native of Chicago's South Side, has been involved with a number of organizations including Teatro Luna, About Face Theater, and el Cafe Teatro Batey Urbano. Stephanie has facilitated journaling and poetry workshops for young incarcerated women and adult female survivors of domestic violence. She moved back home to Chicago after a two and a half year stint in the hippy Bay Area. Her work addresses issues like anti-oppression, survival, healing, and hope. Stephanie is currently working as Associate Director of the Chicago Freedom School.

About Proyecto Latina: Proyecto Latina is a collaborative between Teatro Luna, Tianguis, and Mariposa Atomica Ink. We are excited about showcasing Latina talent and are always seeking outgoing Latina poets and performers for our monthly open mic series. Proyecto Latina takes place the third Monday of every month. Its an open mic so everything's game: Poetry, spoken word, music, monologues, shorts y en el idioma que prefieras. And if you're too shy to get on stage come and be one of the lucky spectators.


Teatro Luna Upcoming Season!

Get ready for a whole year of Teatro Luna! We have three brand new shows coming up.

Machos, a new ensemble performance based on interviews with men nationwide, opens November 8th. Solo Tu, a collection of four solo plays about four very different women, opens February 28, 2008. Restaurant Spanish, an ensemble play about immigration and communication, opens late summer (dates TBA).

Visit us at www.teatroluna.org or www.myspace.com/teatroluna

Lisa Alvarado

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The lovely photo is of an equally lovely and powerful writer, Tara Betts. (Not quite the plain brown wrapper...) It's been almost ten years ago that I was paired with Tara as her mentor in a City of Chicago arts program. To this day, I'm not sure what I taught her, but it has been my privilege to read her work, watch her develop and soar as a writer, a performer, and as a critical thinker. She is a person of crystal clear intent and ethics and it is that clarity and that moral compass that infuses all of her work. Tara is that rara avis who is able to dive into the canon, retrieve what she needs and resurface to the real world where the rest of us dwell. She knows her sestinas, her villanelles, her haikus, but she is not seduced by the prettiness of form over content. Her work is rigorously constructed, but framed with direct, clear language, unambiguous. Tara Betts knows where her loyalties lie --- the African American experience, femaleness, urban life, the place where class and race intersect, and as readers we are all the better for it. Take a close look at the pieces following this interview, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Describe your odyssey in becoming a writer. How does African American and female identity influence your work? What would you say are your major influences, both personally and in a literary sense?

My major influences initially were ntozake shange, Maya Angelou, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes. When I was around 12 or 13, I kept a diary a little before this point, but began writing poetry shortly after I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I had always been a reader, but I didn’t always see books in the library that looked like they talked about people of African descent at all. When I was in high school, I worked at the Kankakee Public Library and learned the stacks better. Sometimes, I would sneak off and read. It was then that I aspired to be a journalist so Rolling Stone, Essence and U.S. News & World Report were also part of my obsession as well.

When I started attending Loyola University on the North Side of Chicago, I kept writing, indulged more and more in Vibe and The Source, and eventually did an internship in New York at BET Weekend magazine in conjunction with the New York Daily News office. It was an amazing summer too. It solidified that I had to keep writing, even though I was a student activist and editor for The Loyola Phoenix. It was in college that I read more about Hurston, the Negritude poets, Toni Morrison, Fanon and Cheikh Anta Diop.

Although I felt like these were eye-opening experiences, I felt like I was always challenged by the more conservative influences on a highly Republican, very Catholic Jesuit university that somehow managed to talk about social justice issues.

By the time I was in my second year at Loyola, I had started organizing poetry readings on campus. This was before poetry became trendy again, so I shared some of my favorite poets and collaborated with other student organizations to make the readings happen. I remember inviting Malik Yusef to campus and bringing Ramona Africa from MOVE Organization with help from Tyehimba Jess. Tyehimba and Malik were the first two poets I met on the Chicago scene. Shortly before I graduated from Loyola in 1997, Malik Yusef gave me my first poetry feature at The Cotton Club on Michigan Avenue. I started reading at Lit X, this jazz club called Rituals, Afrika West bookstore, Guild Complex and eventually Mad Bar, which is where I started slamming. I slammed once or twice at Green Mill, but it didn’t feel like an audience of my peers, even though I enjoyed the work from poets like Sheila Donahue, Cin Salach, Regie Gibson, Dan Ferri, Maria McCray, Marc Smith and most vividly Patricia Smith.

At this time, I was also exploring the feminist possibilities in my poetry. I performed with Sharon Powell, Marta Collazo and other women in a show about menstruation called “The Empress Wears Red Clothes.” I had sort of exited the hip hop heavy part of my life, even though I was still writing pieces here and there, going to shows, hosting a hip hop radio show called “The Hip Hop Project” with my good friend Lional Freeman (AKA Brotha El), meeting graf writers and admiring dj skills.

After leaving “The Hip Hop Project” and doing readings for about a year and a half, I started to slam at Mad Bar. I was on the first two Mental Graffiti teams in 1999 and 2000 with poets like Mars Gamba-Adisa Caulton, Marlon Esguerra, Dennis Kim, Shappy and Lucy Anderton. Although slam became a very stressful thing for me, I got to spend time with a wide range of aesthetics and personalities that I really loved and admired for different reasons. I also had the opportunity to co-host, curate and promote an all-women’s open mic and performance space called Women OutLoud with women like Mars, Lucy, Anida Esguerra and Krystal Ashe.

While I was slamming, I started getting more into a range of poets like Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Julia de Burgos, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Carl Sandburg, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stanley Kunitz and others. I also started workshopping with various poets through the Guild Complex. My first workshop leader was Sterling Plumpp. He pushed me to keep writing, read more sisters and just be persistent. He’s a master of the poetic line and very much a blues man. More people should be reading his work. I also went on to do workshops with Afaa Michael Weaver who pushed me to be honest, vulnerable and study a diverse range of writers. I really wanted to just read writers of color at one point, and he still reminds me of how there is so much to learn from everyone. Lucille Clifton and Quincy Troupe were also poets that I participated in workshops with and these experiences led to my real urgency to be a part of Cave Canem, a workshop/retreat for writers of African descent started by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. There are too many poets to name that I have met through this retreat that have fed, taught and inspired me.

The students at Young Chicago Authors were also a big influence on my writing. Through YCA, I began teaching writing classes. Since I had to teach what I was doing, I was more conscious of what I did or explaining why a certain work moved me. I also got to develop my own classes, like an author study on Neruda, Hip Hop Poetics, Poetic Forms by Communities of Color and Women Writers as Essayists. By the time I left Chicago, I had firmly rooted my voice that I think is always expanding and refining itself. I had started the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College (graduated in January 2007) and moved to New York. Now, I think I’m trying to read as much as I can in fiction, new poets, history and the classics that I need to catch up on. Wanda Coleman, Martin Espada, Marilyn Nelson are just a few of the poets who really move me these days.

You've written extensively about African American labor leader, Ida B. Wells. Describe her significance as subject matter.

It’s funny you would ask about the Ida B. Wells’ poems. I started writing about her years ago, and I’ve never quite finished the series that I set out to do. I read about her and her own books like A Crusade for Justice, Southern Horrors and The Memphis Diary edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis, and I started researching lynchings. This was around the time that Without Sanctuary, a book of photographs taken at lynchings, was released.

In 1892, one of Wells’ close friends Thomas Moss and the co-owners of the Black-owned People’s Grocery Store were basically lynched for offering better products and better prices to Black customers than the white storeowners. Wells had already initiated a public transportation boycott and filed a successful lawsuit that was eventually repealed when she had been thrown off the train for refusing to go to a smoking car. She refused so adamantly that she dug in her heels, and it took two men to remove her after she bit the conductor on the hand. In fact, she started her paper The Free Press in response to this ousting, and convinced record numbers to leave Memphis and stop taking public transit.

As a result, at a time when women were not even considered able to handle the strong material of journalism, Wells convinced people to do things with the facts that she gleaned. She also started the first suffrage organization for Black women in Illinois, helped start the NAACP, ran an organization for Black men that was similar to the then-segregated YMCA who would not house or notify Black men of employment opportunities, and initiated the anti-lynching crusade in the U.S. and the U.K. So, her radical scope really drew me to her, but also some of the things she did that were just hilarious. For example, her daughter Alfreda Duster describes how she went into a department store in Chicago and was waiting to be served. Of course, they acted like this Black woman was not even standing there, so out of exasperation, she drapes a pair of men’s boxers over one shoulder and starts to walk toward the exit. Then someone finally asked her what she was doing, and she told them “trying to buy these.” So, her ties to Chicago, her sense of humor and strength, and her need to document her place in history when so many women were forgotten, omitted and erased, has brought me back to her example again and again.

You made a strong connection to Latino poets, Latino poetry and culture. Can you talk more about that?

In my youth, I studied Spanish in high school, and I hardly knew any people from Spanish-speaking cultures, but when I went to college, I finally met more than Black and white people en masse. I really tried to support all people of color, so I learned a lot and tried to understand how our experiences overlapped and differed. I also took a class with Dr. Susannah Cavallo called Afro-Hispanic Literature where we read writers like Carolina Maria de Jesus, Jose Lima and Nascimiento’s Brazil: Mixture or Massacre.

I would have to say that Pablo Neruda brought the metaphor to life for me in a way that no other poet has. After him, I was drawn to so many others like Xavier Villarrutia, Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, Daisy Zamora and anthologies like Martin Espada’s Poetry Like Bread and Stephen Tapscott’s Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry. I also read Chicago-based writers like Luis Rodriguez, Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros.

While I was living in Chicago, I got to read with so many Latina women who just wrote things that moved me. Some of them included Brenda Cardenas, the late Sulima Q. Moya, Susana Sandoval, Johanny Vazquez, Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, Katherinne Bardales, and of course, Lisa Alvarado.

In 2001, I had an opportunity to exchange with writers in Cuba at the now defunct Writers of the Americas Conference where my workshop leader was Jack Agueros, and we got to talk to writers like Junot Diaz, Maria Irene Fornes, Achy Obejas and Danny Hoch. While we were there, we met many local writers. One of them, Leo Navaro Guevara moved to the U.S., and his son Anton is my first and only godson.

Now, that I’m on the East Coast, it’s such an amazing experience to see the range of writers like Willie Perdomo, Magdalena Gomez, Tato Laviera, Sandra Maria Esteves, Jesus Papoleto among others. The Acentos series in the Bronx also gave me the chance to see a lot of these poets up close and to hear more of the type of work that I had only read.

What would you describe as your major themes?

History, family, politics, and love (mostly because we need to remember why we struggle in the first place).

You've had a lot of interface with spoken word, slam poetry, etc. How would you describe those genres v. 'literary' poetics and form?

Spoken word is an untapped wellspring of possibilities. Unfortunately, since people are catering to the lowest common denominator and writing pieces that will garner a shock, laughter or a tour through the spoken word circuit, there is not the same kind of interest in the work that I had before. Now, do I think that the slam offers young writers a chance to build their confidence and articulate themselves clearly in front of an audience? Yes. Do I think that it can lead people to read their work with feeling and internalize the meaning of what they’ve written? Yes. Do I think it can lead to people producing one-person shows, records, verse plays, books, creative collaborations and radical, through-provoking performance? Yes. And lastly, are there too many people competing for little-to-no-paying gigs for the big payoff of three-five minutes on television? Yes.

What most people don’t realize is that performance becomes a job. Even if you love it, you must maintain what will keep you working, and there are contradictions that compel people to ask hard questions about the growth and integrity of their work. Not enough people are asking themselves about that. I also think that if spoken word is continually pigeonholed as slam poetry and watered-down hip hop by wannabe emcees, then it will be relegated to the ghettos of forgotten poetry. There are too many good poets of color coming out of such performative experiences to be limited by this kind of categorization. Spoken Word is a category promoted by NARAS. Oral traditions across centuries and cultures have always existed, so we have to remind people that internalizing what we write and sharing it orally is not new. So, I don’t necessarily think there is a difference in the text, unless you’re a lazy writer who overcompensates through performance. Anything written can be performed, published or exhibited. It’s just about how it’s done.

What would you describe as your core strengths as a writer....where would you like to see yourself grow?

My core strengths. Now this is a difficult question. I think it’s been my willingness to always do what I feel like I need to do to grow. I haven’t always made many friends that way, but inevitably I wrote what I wanted and earned most people’s respect. I want to spend more time reading, trying to grow as a critical writer and write more prose. In terms of poetry, I’m intrigued with poetic form and how can we subvert with Eurocentric canonical notions that we have about it. I would like to collaborate with more visual artists and musicians since I’ve often been a solo writer sharing my work.

How would you describe your connection to young writers as it relates to your creative life?

My connection to young writers has kept me from being hyper-cynical/critical. They look at the world with new eyes, and when they have the breakthrough moments where they articulate something so honest and challenging for the first time. I live for those moments. Young writers make me always consider what it takes to keep writing new, how does writing work as an art and a disciplined practice. Sometimes, I think it’s only me who keeps me writing, which is true to some degree, but they are the ones who keep me writing.

Where do you see yourself in ten years, personally and creatively?

Ten years from now, I’m hoping to have published at least two or three books, not necessarily all poetry, maybe one of them is an anthology. I’ve thought I might have a Ph.D. in African American/Africana/Black Studies (whichever term people think they need to apply), American Studies or Women’s Studies by then. Teaching, traveling and balancing that with a family would be nice. Hopefully, I will be practicing yoga on a regular basis. I remember one time a student at Wright College asked me in a Q & A, what I wanted to do with my life, and I proceeded to tell her about all my professional goals and writerly aspirations when she cut in and asked, “other than that?” I felt like some inner voice had been plucked from my head and embodied in this girl. So, I thought about it, and yoga, having a garden, developing a spiritual life, staying politically responsible and critical and having good friends who could give a damn whether I write or not were my response to her question. All of that is still a work in progress.

What's something not in the official bio?

I always liked the fast, gravity-defying rides at carnivals and amusement parks. I recently freestyled on the mic with an all-female Afrobeat band in New York called Femm Nameless.



Not On the Menu

If Portugal was edible, could it be swallowed
like some country fruit, goosebumped as unripe
avocado, heavy with sweet guava wet
that lingers inside the cheeks?

Would Africa taste bitter and glitter
on the tongue from its ripe diamond seeds?
Would the silt of India be the truest curry
bursting a heat against the mouth’s roof?’

Every day an international hors'douvres platter
crosses so many tourist imaginations like
a hectic maitre’de.
There are Indian families in steamy kitchens,
Taiwanese men’s bicycles crisscrossing
Manhattan’s traffic-glutted streets,
Puerto Rican girls smiling for bigger tips
when offering mofongo,
and Cubans proffer mojitos
and freshly killed chicken
for that one night at El Hueco.

America, though, would distance itself
from its bitter Billie Holiday image in stalls
of worldly produce. America would be slick
with campaigns on its nutritional benefits.
America would be so shiny the shellac needs
cracking and peeling. Imagine.
America’s fruit, so sweet it eats the teeth
with its ache.

While movies ripen into
culinary pornography
Eat, Drink, Man, Woman,
Soul Food
Tortilla Soup
Like Water for Chocolate
The cinematic menu sounds
like a veil pulled across the face,
the sweaty thump of samba,
a pinprick protruding
from a map of exotica
where spare grain
of days remains unsampled
since the trees of America
require so much tending.


There Goes the Neighborhood
for Maxine Kumin

Aerial shot omniscient view bent above
asphalt playground. Sidewalks become
concrete football fields where Brooklyn
accents weigh down boys’ tongues
that count like girls circle one another.

They bend clothesline, extension cords,
double helix style rotations beneath
spinning jumping sneakers.
Speakers turned walls claim
the street as official block
party bidness. Metal drums split
open with orang charcoal guts plead
for red meat, then sizzle relief.

Brownstone stoops fill with girls
clinging to gossip like the new neighbor
holding his golf club bag as if announcing
shift change for baggy pants & oversized
shirt-wearing boys who stand too long on
the corner. Count each baby
in mad math that’s called living.
Take a breath when change claims
one more before you blink.

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Teatro Luna was founded in June 2000 by Coya Paz and Tanya Saracho, with an original ensemble of ten women from diverse Latina/Hispana backgrounds. We came together because we realized that the stories and experiences of Latina/Hispana women were undervalued and underrepresented not only on the Chicago stage, but beyond.

Many of us had similar experiences of being asked to perform stereotyped images of ourselves that were often one-dimensional and, at times, offensive: spicy sexpots, voiceless maids, pregnant gangbangers, timid "illegal" immigrants, etc. We were also concerned that the few parts written for Latina women often went to non-Latina actresses. We felt that we had to do something. Our answer was Teatro Luna, Chicago's first and only all-Latina theater.

Teatro Luna, Chicago’s only all-Latina Theater company is pleased to announce the world premiere of LUNATIC(a)S, a new play about women’s everyday insanity.

LUNATIC(a)S

From Chicago-style road rage to an obsession with catching muggers, LUNATICAS uses Teatro Luna’s trademark humor and honesty to tell a truth we don’t always want to tell: Sometimes, we’re just a little bit crazy.

Directed and developed by award-winning playwright Tanya Saracho,
LUNATIC(a)S tackles Teatro Luna’s namesake The Moon (La Luna) and places our true-life stories in the context of myths and superstitions about women, Latinas, and the moon.


LUNATIC(a)S follows Teatro Luna’s critically acclaimed shows Quita Mitos and S-e-x-Oh!, bringing a range of Latina stories to light. Reimagining the Mayan goddess lx Chel as a modern day urban Latina, LUNATIC(a)S moves from the mythical (the moon is always female) to the serious (violent mothers) to the tragically hilarious (the slow slide from jealous girlfriend to bonafide stalker). As always, Teatro Luna is cheeky, straightforward, and willing to tell even the most outrageous secrets about our Latina lives.

Where: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, Chicago, IL

When: PREVIEWS: June 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2007 || OPENING: Thursday June 7th, 2007 || RUNS FROM: June 7th to July 15, 2007 (Thursdays @ 7:30pm, Fridays and Saturdays @ 8pm, and Sundays @ 3pm)

Who: PERFORMED: by Belinda Cervantes, Maritza Cervantes, Gina Cornejo, Yadira Correa, Miranda Gonzalez, and Suzette Mayobre. DIRECTED AND DEVELOPED BY: Tanya Saracho

How Much?: PREVIEWS: $10, $7 Students (ID required) || GENERAL: $15, $10 Students (ID required), Groups of 8 or more, $12

For Reservations: Call 773-878-LUNA

For more information visit: www.teatroluna.org

As all Teatro Luna shows, LUNATIC(a)S is performed in English with a sprinkle of Spanish.

Important note: This show features frank discussion about intimate topics as well as images of real women’s bodies and may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

About Teatro Luna:

Teatro Luna is Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theater ensemble dedicated to creating work that showcases the talents of Latina/Hispana artists. Founded by Tanya Saracho and Coya Paz in 2000, Teatro Luna is dedicated to expanding the range of Latina/Hispana roles visible on the Chicago stage and beyond. Previous shows include Generic Latina, Dejame Contarte, Kita y Fernanda, The Maria Chronicles at Theatre on the Lake, and Solo Latinas at Chicago Dramatists. In addition, Teatro Luna is frequently asked to bring their trademark blend of ensemble performances to theatres, universities and festivals across the county. www.teatroluna.org


Teatro Luna announces auditions for our fall run of MACHOS, an interview based project drawn from conversations with men all across the country.
We are looking for Latina/Hispana performers of all ages who are comfortable and able to play MEN. Previous performance experience is a plus, but not mandatory.

Performers must be able to commit to the following dates:

Performances Thursdays through Sundays,
November 1-Dec 15th.
Rehearsals Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays
starting September 4th.
Performance/writing workshops twice a week (TBD)
June 15-July 15th

Auditions for Machos will be held June 2nd, between 10am and 2pm. To schedule an audition, please e-mail [email protected] with your preferred time (15 minute slots) and a phone number where you can be reached.

To audition:
-Please come dressed to show us that you can perform as a man. We are looking beyond the stereotypes, so whatever that means to you! (There is a changing room available if you would like to change before or after your audition.)

-Please prepare a short (1-2 minutes MAX) original piece - it can be a joke, a story, some chisme, a monologue, a poem, lo que sea - we just want to get a sense of what you have to say and how you say it! Pieces should be memorized if possible.

-Please bring a recent headshot or photo, and a copy of your resume.
Teatro Luna is Chicago's first and only all-Latina theater company. Visit us on the web at www.teatroluna.org and don't miss our upcoming show Lunatic(a)s, playing June 1-July 15th at Chicago Dramatists.

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Here's my review of both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye. If you're looking for spun sugar literary confection, and easy comfort, move on. But if you want to encounter poetry that disturbs you in the best possible way, keeps you up at night, demands that you respond with your heart and your mind, read these books.

Margo Tamez is a poet whose work is not easy, clearly born of experience raw and real, making the reader touch that place of pain, of personal wounding far, far, away from the romance of the Southwest and the stereotype of the "stoic noble" on the rez. Her writing forces us to look where the bodies are buried, when we want to turn a blind eye to the violence wreaked upon the individual and environment. Both Naked Wanting and Raven Eye gave me that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, the tight, clenched first buried in the chest. Bless her for that.

And bless her, too, for somehow still weaving threads of redemption and reemergence in the face of soul breaking sorrow, for offering real mythos and confronting false spirituality. But to put a finer point on it, read what others have written about this singular poet.

This book is a challenging cartography of colonialism, poverty, and issues of Native identity and demonstrates these as threats to the environment, both ecological and social, in the borderlands. Each poem is crafted as if it were a minute prayer, dense with compassion and unerring optimism. But the hope that Tamez serves is not blind. In poem after poem, she draws us into a space ruled by mythic symbolism and the ebb and flow of the landscape—a place where comfort is compromised and where we must work to relearn the nature of existence and the value of life. —Norman Dubie

Margo Tamez’s poetry is an emotional journey, and I find myself softly invoking a line from her book: ‘may the way be in peace.’ Read it; you’ll know what I mean! —Simon J. Ortiz

Margo Tamez’s poetry works like a heartsong, it makes us brave. Her alive response to what kills makes us want to stand up with her and sing in the face of the enemy. She shows how hard it is to fight oppression and reminds us what is at stake: living beauty. . . Margo Tamez’s call to battle both instills fear and thrills us. —Heidi E. Erdrich

My Mother Returns to Calaboz

"The Lower Rio Grande, known as the Seno Mexicano (the Mexican hollow or Recess), was a refuge for rebellious Indians from the Spanish presidios, who preferred outlawry to life under Spanish rule." -- Americo Paredes, With Pistol in his Hand

The fragmented jawbones
and comblike teeth of seagulls
sometimes wash up from the gulf
to the levee of the river
and gather straited along the berms
where my grandfather irrigated sugarcane.

My mother, returned after forty years
working away from Calaboz,
walks there often now,
hassled by INS agents
when she jogs by the river
where her ancestors planted, hunted,
prayed and resisted invasions.

The INS think she runs away from them,
that she is an 'illegal', a 'savage'
'trespassing' from Mexico.

Used to the invasion,
she asks them how they assume,
how exactly do they know
if she came from here, or there?
When she tells me this story
she exaggeratedly points to the spot
she stands on (here) and the land
I stand on (there) which means:
you idiot...we indigenous don't recognize
your violent settler borders

I am an an indigenous woman,
born in El Calaboz, you understand?
she says loudly, in mixed Spanish and Lipan-Nahuatl,
and they tear out,
the truck wheels spinning furiously,
sand sprayed into the humid air.

When I was a girl walking on the levee with my grandfather,
I thought I saw gull teeth
chomping at the soil wall.
The air was dank steam,
the scent of sand, roots,
and something alive beneath the soil,
deeper and older than memory.
when I immersed my hand inside
the cloudy water,
it became a fluid form,
soft, something becoming,
something ancient.

The air is still heavy with heat and damp,
and smells like diesel and herbicides.
the scent reminds me of failed gestations.
My reproduction, the plants', and the water's,
each struggling in the same web of resistance
and survival.

When I was a girl, my grandfather taught me
to put a small clump of soil in my mouth,
and to swallow it. I watched him.
Then I did.
I used to watch the gliding and swerves
of uprooted reeds in the river's unhurried flow
to the Gulf.
I reached with all my body,
stomach on the bank of the levee,
hands and arms stretched out like an acrobat
to touch and grasp their slender stems.
Once, my feet pressed into the soupy bog,
and stepping up was heavy, yet with the sound of gurgles,
puckering, a mouth opening,
like seaweed and millennium of soil, my ancestors and water breathing.

Now, I think I'd like to be,
that I will be
running with my mother
when she tells of la migra.
Listen to the bubbling duet of water and plant life,
listen to the sound of grandmothers and grandfathers
closely.
Again and again.

This is a visceral longing for home, for groundedness in the deepest and most literal sense. It reflects an abiding love for la tierra, but not the convenient, fantasy laden Southwest. It is a personal, damaged homeland, smelling of chemicals, shot through with run-off that is still somehow, unquestionably sacred. Tamez writes of border dwellers unbowed, unabsorbed, defiant, and ultimately triumphant---not noble, but stubbornly flawed and human.


In her second collection, Raven Eye, Tamez explores desire and the construction of indigenous identity, while imploring readers to unite against oppression in all its forms.

Written from thirteen years of journals, psychic and earthly, this poetry maps an uprising of a borderland indigenous woman battling forces of racism and sexual violence against Native women and children. This lyric collection breaks new ground, skillfully revealing an unseen narrative of resistance on the Mexico–U.S. border. A powerful blend of the oral and long poem, and speaking into the realm of global movements, these poems explore environmental injustice, sexualized violence, and indigenous women’s lives.


Ceremony of Peyote

A snakebird sinuous dim form silhouetted
On the porchroof of the hogan--

Comes out of a monsoon sky
Banded thickly red and flint

Snakebird in me curves slowly
Over my bed

the sinew of what can't be said

Nine months full of ocean and yolk
Scents of beautifully made starmatter

A smell of tongue and lip
Of moisture a scent of Snaketown's Gila clay

I'm a brown and black puddle a scent I know

____

You spent hours in the heat of midday fidgeting with rage
I'm unpredictable not the kind of Indian you can present to

Men all wrapped up behind panIndian shawls eagle fans
Who never bring their women to pray
Whose diabetic eyes devour
My pregnant belly
Full of a bird boy raven boy
Ripe with beautiful worlds

Corn meat and berries
You say the order
Morning food for the relatives always like that you say
The look in your eyes don't mess up don't embarrass me
don't talk too long when you pray for the water

Can't risk my prayers to the morning star
Risk what I can say about
This medicine a Mexican Indian woman brought
North got Christianized by subjugated men

My morning prayers only suitable
For waterbirds
Anhingas and herons
Not men or women
In shawls
Fanning and chanting
In chorus of what they deny

My body
The yolks of my body
Stories we must tell to undo
What has been done

There is no easy, pro forma way to reconnect, no perfect prayer that can be prayed. Colonialism and racism have taken their tolls both in daily life and spiritual practice. But this poem reclaims and reframes ritual with a frank, and unvarnished fervor. Tamez refuses to shirk from the distorted in herself, or in her people. But in the boldest move, Tamez' poetry reveals that Spirit still lives, lives deeply for her in the body, in the process of birth and renewal and in the threads of communion that emerge despite everything.

Naked Wanting ISBN-10: 0816522480
Raven Eye ISBN-10: 081652565X

My own words feel pale as I try to end this piece. Let me use last words of her interview last week -- gonya'a' golkizhzhi' (it has come a colorful place)

Margo, For truth's sake, in Her Name, thank you.


Lisa Alvarado

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Jambalaya
Luisah Teish
Harper/Collins, 1991
ISBN13: 9780062508591
ISBN10: 0062508598

"Somehow I knew that there was much more going on than was apparent on the surface. My existence and that of the things going on around me caused me to question everything, always looking for the deeper meanings."New Orleans-like the San Francisco Bay Area, where I now live-is a psychic seaport. The psychic energies of many people living and dead hovers over the city of New Orleans, possibly because of the water. Visitors to the city become "tipsy" after being there only a short time. "Tipsy" is the name given to that state of mind that precedes possession. (It is also used to mean slightly drunk.) I grew up tipsy.Due to the limited perceptions of a child and the nature of memory, I can only describe it vaguely. I remember a big, too soft, and bulky double bed in the middle room. This is the place where my cousin Frank Jr., took refuge from the whippings he seems always to have earned. He used to hide under this bed to smoke cigarettes; but for me smoke and Frank were not the only things hiding under that bed.

Perhaps I had eaten too many pickles that night and overindulged in the delicious teacakes and sweet potato turnovers my Maw-Maw used to bake in the woodstove. Whatever the external cause, when I laid my head on the duck-down pillow covered with an immaculate muslin pillowcase, I just couldn't sleep. Everything was so still and quiet that I could not tell whether the numerous and barely distinguishable adult relatives of mine were asleep in the front room or out for a night of church. I could have been there alone without concern because everybody on the block was somehow kin to me and would have come running at the slightest disturbance.

But tonight as Wind slipped slowly through the cracks in the wooden fence that enclosed the backyard, no one seemed to be afoot. At least, no one human. I could hear only the wind and the irregular tapping of Maw-Maw's white dog, who was born with only three legs. I was always afraid of that dog and kept a safe distance between us, not because he was in any ways vicious but because his eyes were always red and I had been told that he knew when somebody was going to die.Was it Frank? Had he crawled under it to avoid a whipping and fallen asleep? Had Maw-Maw's creepy dog gotten under the house and situated himself directly beneath the bed? When I asked myself these questions, Wind told me, "No, "Cher."" As my fear mounted, I became aware of a sensation of lifting subtly. My back seemed not to touch the buttons of the mattress. I kept rising and rising until I seemed to be five feet above the bed. I remember thinking that if I kept rising like this I was going to bump into the ceiling and smash my already flat nose. "I wanna go down," I said nervously inside my head, and at that moment my face seemed to sink through the back of my head so that my chest and feet were still facing the ceiling but my face was looking down at the bed. And what a sight it saw!

There under the bed was an undulating, sinewy, mass of matter as brown as the waters of the muddy Mississippi River. It was squeezing out from under the bed on all sides like a toothpaste tube with pin holes in it. The brown was taking forms, humanoid but undistinguishable by gender. They were getting higher, showing heads with eyes, bellies, legs, outstretched arms, and I was getting closer to the bed. My face, now only a few inches from the sheet returned to the other side of my head, and as my body descended I looked at these brown humanoids towering over me. I seemed to shake uncontrollably, my muscles moved about as if I had no bones. I opened my mouth, screamed but the sound was made only inside my head. The brown-folk seemed to take a deep breath as my body settled on the mattress. They touched me and their matter slipped into my muscles and ran through my veins. The floodgates opened and as a warm astringent liquid sank into the mattress, I sank into sleep.This happened when I was about five years old. Twenty-three years later I got a piece of an explanation of its meaning. A Puerto Rican woman water-gazed for me, and-without knowing my story--told me to make two dolls for my unknown ancestors and keep them under my bed." (from Chapter 1 -- Growing Up Tipsy)

This is a story of the reclamation of both history and religious practice. Luisah Teish is a priestess in the Yoruba tradition, healer, dancer and artist. She was raised in New Orleans by her family whose own members were "root women" and devout Christians, who practiced a familiar (to me) amalgam similar to Santeria and voudou. While Luisah was exposed to this kind of religious expression throughout her childhood, it did not become part of her conscious life until adulthood. A crisis or 'nervous breakdown,' precipitated a years long process of searching for her roots, reconstructing her past and embracing its traditions. Where it finally led her was to a new identity as priestess and woman-centered artist.

This is a highly readable, engaging account of not just her journey, but the Yoruba world view, the pantheon of gods and goddesses that populate its universe, and the individual's relationship to them. Striking to me are the contrasts between that world view and the Christian belief that attempted to supplant it.

For example: Teish contrasts the quintessential Christian belief in 'original sin' and the Yoruba principal of 'ache,' the divine force present in all things, existing in humans from the moment of their birth. There is no word for 'sin' in the Yoruba lexicon; there is foolishness, faithlessness and error, but all human beings are considered endowed with a piece of the sacred, animating force of the universe.

In order for the reader to fully appreciate this complicated universe and the depth and importance of the daily practice, Teish lovingly describes the Seven African Powers and their attributes, their significance, their domains and their roles in people's daily lives.

(The Seven African Powers are central to Yoruba beliefs, and also form the core pantheon in the Afro-diasporic beliefs of Santeria, Voudou, Macumba, etc.) I loved her description of Oya Yansa, who I discovered in my own odyssey about ten years ago.

She is the warrior queen, embodying the whirlwind, the catalyst for upheaval, cleansing and change on the deepest levels. She is constantly associated with imagery of keeping things clean, of sweeping things away--one of her talismans is the whiskbroom. (To put an Alvarado spin on it, she is the Ultimate Badass Housekeeper.) And she always hides her true face, presenting the one that is necessary for the work at hand.

On the most profound levels, Teish reveals to us Oya as harbinger of cosmic displacement and reconstruction, Creator/Slayer of Worlds, the one who while disguised, removes the stagnant and moribund: She is the girl who cleans up. Very different from the pale Virgin of my youth, asexual, whose chief attributes were endurance and the absorption of pain. Oya fights, takes lovers, reinvents herself to meet the occasion, revealing part, but never the whole of who she truly is.

I think here about my own disguises, my own decisions to hide or reveal in daily life, as well as writing and performance. I come back to Jambalaya time and time again to find imagery and meaning, to be strengthened, to deepen my connection with Oya and the warrior spirit. Teish's book is a completely accessible guidebook as to how to begin to touch the hem of Her skirts.

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