In The News.

Peruvian poverty opens the eyes of two Kansas City playwrights
By ROBERT TRUSSELL – The Kansas City Star

Jeremy Lillig and Damian Torres-Botello thought they had a pretty good idea of what poverty looked like.

 

Torres-Botello, 30, had interviewed homeless people on the street. Lillig, 28, had ridden along with Kansas City police to a homeless camp under the 12th Street Viaduct. And a few years ago, they wrote a play, “Whispers From the Streets,” based on about 200 interviews with people in homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

 

But then they went to Peru to gather notes for another play.

For two weeks in July, the two theater artists who are dedicated to dramatizing social justice issues met people living at different levels of poverty in Lima and its outskirts. And they encountered conditions they were not prepared for.

 

They conducted seven formal interviews and met dozens of Peruvians living with no more than minimal amenities. Lillig said he couldn’t get his head around the dirt floors. And both agreed that they never got used to the omnipresent smell — a pervasive mixture of raw sewage, rotting garbage and frying meat.

 

“It seemed to me that we were getting a perspective on different levels of poverty,” Torres-Botello said. “So it kind of ranged from those individuals who had one- or two-bedroom homes to a family in the hills in a shack.”

Indeed, the South American country has a 44.5 percent poverty rate, according the current CIA World Factbook. Peru has enjoyed gradual economic growth in recent years, and the poverty rate has decreased correspondingly. But the English-language Peruvian Times reported earlier this year that 11 million Peruvians live in poverty, and 3.7 million of those are in “extreme” poverty.

 

The playwrights met people whose roofs were made of blankets and who got by on one meal a day. They saw neighborhoods where water was distributed from a rubber hose attached to a communal spigot.

They saw kids playing near raw sewage. They saw rows of primitive homes seemingly stacked in terraces in the hills above Lima.

 

But they saw something else, too — a sort of can-do community spirit that makes the best of a bad situation.

 

“I was surprised they don’t feel sorry for themselves,” Torres-Botello said. “They don’t have that sense of sadness. Like when you see the Sally Struthers commercials, and the kid looks all sad and depressed — that’s not how they are. The kids are truly enjoying life. And to feel sorry for them would be almost insulting. … If you don’t know any other way to live, that’s your life. And it is what it is.”

 

Torres-Botello and Lillig come from a Catholic tradition of fighting for the cause of social justice, which a few years ago motivated them to start up the nonprofit Full Circle Theatre Company.

To fund the trip to Peru, they applied for a $2,000 grant from Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet, a Catholic order based in St. Louis. They raised another $2,500 from private sources, including fees they earned writing and performing in a TV commercial for the José Pepper restaurant chain.

Sister Patty Clune, part of the order’s leadership, said the project dovetailed perfectly with the order’s values. It helped that Lillig was an associate of the Sisters. Associates, she said, are men or women who “feel a connection to the charism of the Sisters, but they lead their own lives. They share our values, and yet they don’t take any vows.”

 

“His project to kind of expand his study and research of homelessness fits right into what we’re committed to,” she said. “It was a no-brainer.”

The order also happens to have about 30 sisters in Peru, and they were instrumental in setting up interviews and serving as translators for Lillig and Torres-Botello, neither of whom speaks much Spanish.

 

Each took about 100 pages of notes, and they hope to have a finished play in six months. The challenge will be to write a five-character play that tells a dramatic narrative, unlike the “talking head” format of other projects.

The experience had an impact. Neither sees poverty as he did before the trip. 

“It would be easy for us to come back and say Americans don’t realize what poverty is like,” Lillig said. “But it’s all relative. And that’s what we’re trying to focus on. Poverty here is bad because of the way our society is (and) poverty there is bad because of the way their society is. But to do a comparative analysis of the two, they’re worlds apart.” 

In some ways, Torres-Botello said, the people are like people anywhere. 

“There’s really no difference,” he said. “Just like here, they want to survive. They want to wake up in the morning and live another day.” 

Lillig said the trip made him reconsider the concept of the “American dream.” 

“It’s not really the American dream,” he said. “It’s just our version of the (universal) dream. Because they have it, too.”

 

Top photo by Shane Keyser – Kansas City Star

© 2009 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

August 15: A Play…With Music.

Jeremy and I have have made some solid discoveries.  If you’ve been following this journey, then you know today was meeting #2.  Jeremy and I wrote our own scene-one of the Peru Play (working title: Made in Peru).  We came together today and what we read was quite astonishing. 

It’s a given that mine and Jeremy’s separate scene had ideas that will be utilized; the strengths and weaknesses of our individual works has given a great perspective on the possibilities we should capitalize upon and possibilities to save for another day. 

Despite our own creative processes, individual imaginations, and observations we seemed to share the same perspective on characterization, tone and strategy.  There where many similarities in our scenes from how it began to how it ended and how all the information in-between was revealed.  We also shared the same thought that this play should be a musical.

Now, let me say first that when I say musical I don’t mean the vary defined Broadway musical with belting ballads and show stopping dance numbers.  Though that specific genre has its place and serves its purpose for other stories, this play has an embedded feel and tonality specific to the people it is about.  Only through adding a lyrical component will the theme be heightened and better communicated.  The strategy with these songs will be to support the story.    

Music is a world form of communication and anyone from anywhere can relate to it; it’s a connector, an identifier, and we all have been transported to a moment in our lives through the reminiscent tunes of a song.  With the addition of song into a story a character has another ability to communicate, comment and/or give commentary on the action happening on stage.   This could be useful in our story as a tool to reveal something that otherwise would be used as a monologue or back-and-forth dialogue. 

Music surrounds the Peruvian people, it is as much part of their culture as baseball and hot-dogswould be for ours.  In our opinion, there was no way around this, Made in Peru needs to be done as a musical. 

Jeremy will take on the role of lyricist.  I will write the book.  How the music will be composed has not been discovered, but the way music and song is revealed in the play will be done only through the characters and environmet around them.   

The foundation of our works has always been to take social justice and make it a jacket for our audiences to try on, to see if it fits.  We want them to see themselves on stage; that the proximity between the seats and stage is not just measured by actual distance but also through experience.  What better way than through music? 

Next meeting: August 29th.

We encourage comments from our readers.

This post can also be read at www.damian327.blogspot.com.

August 1st: And We’re Off!

With the research trip to Peru completed it is time to begin the process of writing.  Jeremy and I have had the opportunity to collaborate on several theatre projects in the past, and what keeps our creative and professional relationship fresh is our want and desire to explore new ways of collaborating.  Our process for writing varies from play to play because each new play idea and subject doesn’t always call for the same process.  And sometimes it does.  Evaluation and assessment have been key in how we operate.  As we grow individually so does our art, and our ability to recognize that makes our collaborative partnership evolve and strengthen.    

The Strategy: Idea

It has been said by both of us that the information gathered could sustain a multitude of plays, each distinct in idea and theme.  How the story will be told has yet to be discovered.  Should it be a play with music?  A musical?  Two one-acts with a common thread?  A full length straight-play?  Though we are leaning towards the latter, one strategy we both agree upon is that the story will be linear.  Jeremy’s previous play, Whispers from the Streets, was a play that had similar beginnings in that research, interviews and information were gathered to compose a final product.  Whispers became a monologue/documentary play because that was the best way to communicate that particular story and theme.  When I came on board as a collaborator we discovered new ways to make the structure of that play as solid and effective as possible.  We believe the Peru Play does not lend itself to the same form.  We are not wanting to show but rather connect with our audiences, and to do that we are exploring a more traditional format.   

The Strategy: Story

As we prepared for our research trip to Peru we had made a point beforehand to be cognizant of the stories people shared about their lives, and to look at it from the perspective of how that story could encapsulate our mission.  There was one story in particular that moved Jeremy and I.  This story was told to us by a young woman who shared her journey towards a higher education.  During our visit, what had been discovered – at least for me – was that all of Peru could be found in the words she was saying.  But beyond that, despite the facts of who she was culturally, geographically and individually, I could identify myself in her story.  And if I could, could an entire audience?  Yes!  And during our nightly debriefings it was discovered that Jeremy felt similarly.  The seemingly unending obstacles and choices she had to make at every turn inspired us to place her at the core of our play.  Additionally, Jeremy and I heard various compelling stories and met amazing people that also needed to be acknowledged.  To give our play complexities and various colors, we will interlace pieces of our discoveries to create composite characters and sub plots to inspire a deeper impact.    

The Strategy: Process

This commission is a three phase process, and we have six months to complete it before moving on to phase two.  This first phase consists of writing, work-shopping and producing our own interpretation of the play.  To begin we have decided that each of us will write our version of the first scene.  We have outlined what will happen, the characters involved and an estimated length.  On Saturday, August 15^th we will reconvene and read what we have written.  This is the “juices flowing” stage, as I’m calling it.  After a couple of weeks of decompressing we realized there is a need to get something out on paper, and to do that individually first might be of great value.  There are possibilities and opportunities that could be discovered from our own scenes and prove to be useful.  Perhaps a new strategy, a mood could be established, a character idea, or both scenes could be crap and we start over.  However we move foreword, our individual efforts will be the foundation of this collaborative project. 

This project has become very personal to us.  It will be another journey of rediscovery of who we are as artists and as people.  What started out as a great opportunity has become a vested, life transforming experience.  What we have felt and how we have been effected we hope to impart to you through our play, and taken out into the world to generate awareness about the value and worth of humanity.  And We have every confidence that it will.  

Next meeting: August 15th.

We encourage comments from our readers.

This post can also be read at www.damian327.blogspot.com.