Borderlands Theater Season Announcement and Other Exciting Announcements!

 

From: Borderlands Theater <milta@borderlandstheater.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2019 6:01 AM
Subject: Season Announcement and Other Exciting Announcements!

 

 

http://www.borderlandstheater.org/current-season/

 

Season 2019/2020 Place keeping with Site Specific Theatre!

 

 

Their Dogs Came with Them

by Helena Maria Viramontes

adapted to the stage by Virginia Grise

Directed by Marc David Pinate

 

What happens to a community, and the people that live there, when a series of four intersecting freeways are built right through the heart of their neighborhood? 

 

From the award-winning writer of Your Healing is Killing Me, blu, The Panza Monologues and Barrio Stories, Virginia Grise returns to Tucson with a new play about the destruction and displacement of a Mexican-American community, roaming dogs, quarantines, earthmovers and ancient voladores: Their Dogs Came with Them. Adapted from the novel by Helena María Viramontes, the play ascribes new meanings to gang life dramas, gender queer identities, and Chicana/o/x coming of age barrio tales. Much like the structure of a freeway, the lives of four youth intersect and intertwine, unearthing stories about the effects and aftereffects of the Vietnam War, displacement, and state violence. Tucson, where the most diverse and densely populated neighborhoods were destroyed to create the Convention Center in the late 1960s, is an ideal site for a play that asks its community to consider how decisions around city planning and urban development impact everyone. Borderlands Theater, in collaboration with a todo dar productions, is producing this site-specific performance October 18-20, directed by Marc David Pinate and aptly staged underneath the I-19 freeway in South Tucson.

 

Musical director Martha Gonzalez of the Grammy Award winning band Quetzal brings together band members Juan Perez (bass), Tylana Enomoto (violin) and legendary guitarist Bob Robles (Thee Midnighters) to perform an original score, specifically composed for the Tucson production, live at all performances. The musical score expresses the "East Los" sonic landscape of the late '60s and early '70s. The multifaceted sounds and songs of the score embody "East Los" history in an amalgamation of Mexican boleros, classic rock, doo-wop, R&B, and gospel. Like the 5, 10, and 710 freeways these sounds intersect in the heart of the Mexican American experience brought to life in Their Dogs Came with Them.

 

Their Dogs Came with Them is supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Southwest Airlines, the Surdna Foundation through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant Program with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Latinx Theater Commons' El Fuego Initiative, The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona, and Southwest Folklife Alliance. For full announcement click here.

Click below to watch the video trailer for Their Dogs Came with Them!

 

 

 

 

Barrio Stories Nogales

by Borderlands Theater Ensemble

 

Playwright, Milta Ortiz

Project director/shadow puppetry,

Marc David Pinate

Media design, Adam Cooper-Terán

Giant puppet maker, Zarco Guerrero

Giant puppet director, Jonathan Heras

Community liaison/on-site producer, Cesar Lopez

 

 

April 2020

Downtown Nogales

 

A choose your own adventure site specific theatrical festival re-inhabits downtown Nogales with theatrical installations, large scale projections, musical performances, heritage foods, and walking tours all based on oral histories from life-long Ambos Nogales residents.

 

The creative team is currently working with Nogalenses to create an authentic fronterizo experience. We'll keep you posted on project updates.

 

Barrio Stories is a celebration of the history and heritage of Arizona's historic Mexican-American neighborhoods. Conceived by Borderlands Theater in 2015, the project is an ongoing site-specific series intended to preserve and reflect the stories, people, and places that made these barrios so vital to the cultural fabric of the Southwest.

 

 

 

Borderlands Theater receives National Performance Network Award!

 

 

We're excited to announce Borderlands Theater was one of 20 national projects selected to receive a 2019 Creation & Development Award from National Performance Network (NPN)! We look forward to developing Antigone at the Border this season, a collaboration exploring the immigration crisis through the framework of Sophocles' Antigone; co-commissioned by the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (Ajo, AZ), Milagro Theater (Portland, OR), and Su Teatro (Denver, CO). Borderlands Theater artistic director, Marc David Pinate (playwright), and Phoenix based Teatro Bravo artistic director Ricardo Araiza (stage director) combine their ensembles and artistic resources to create a contemporary adaptation based on ethnographic interviews with DACA recipients and Border Patrol agents. Borderlands and Teatro Bravo will collaborate with Aliento, a Phoenix based organization invested in the well being, emotional healing, and leadership development of those impacted by the inequalities of lacking an immigration status. Find out more about the award and NPN here. 

 

 

 

Additions to Our Team!

Please welcome Rylee Carrillo and Evan Taylor to our Borderlands Theater family! Rylee is interning with us after graduating from Columbia University and has been contracted as Their Dogs Came with Them stage manager and production assistant for Barrio Stories Nogales. Evan is a Pima Community College Theatre alum and joins us as production manager for Their Dogs Came with Them.

 

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