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‘The Comfort of Anger,’ drama about sexual violence, race to make debut at Cincy Fringe
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Tagged: Cincinnati, Ohio, Theater, violencewww.cincyfringe.com/the-comfort-of-anger
Playwright Fernando Dovalina knows his one-act drama “The Comfort of Anger,” is not a neat little play.
“It’s just not,” he says about a play that deals with sexual violence, a woman’s love affair with a much younger man and racial discrimination. “Any more than life is. On an average day, we might juggle family, work, school and health problems.” His protagonist, Dalia Rios, he says, “is going through one of those moments in life when everything seems to come undone.”
“The Comfort of Anger” will have its first performances at the Cincy Fringe Festival at Duveneck 3, 1220 Vine St., at 9:15 p.m., Thursday, June 10; 7 p.m., Friday, June 11; and 8 p.m., Saturday, June 12. The play has had two readings and will have one open dress rehearsal in Houston on Monday, June 7.
Dalia Rios is a 50-ish Mexican-American woman and successful novelist who is writing her first non-fiction work, an in-your-face discussion of race in America. She’s propelled to write the book by the anger she harbors over the racism she has experienced.
But she’s having writer’s block. And that’s just for starters. The stares of those who judge her relationship with her lover disturb her, and she’s having visitations in her dreams from two mysterious young men bearing secrets from her sexually violent past. Her graphic descriptions of that violence make the play suitable only for mature audiences.
And then there are those confrontations with her unorthodox psychotherapist. “The two engage in a rhetorical fencing match,” Dovalina says, “each jab drawing blood and, I hope, a drop of truth, too.”
Dovalina thinks about what he’s saying, then adds, “That’s awfully heavy, isn’t it? But there’s love and romance in this play, too. And lots of humor. That’s life. The funniest moments in life often occur at a wake.”
In “Comfort,” the humor surfaces during Dalia’s sessions with her psychotherapist, sessions that cover racial conflicts, religion, the relevance of psychotherapy, family relationships and, Dovalina says, “coming to terms with the hand she’s been dealt.”
The humor also explodes during Dalia’s visits with Emilio, a once-randy gay brother who is beginning to accept that he’s not young anymore.
Lidia Porto, a well-regarded Houston-based director and actor, was drawn to direct “Comfort,” she says, by “the chance to discover a new play, by the playwright, by the cast and by the scenes with the boys” in Dalia’s dreams. “I find them very moving.”
But she says she was also attracted to the play by the protagonist. “I bring myself, as a Latino, to this play. I bring my life experience to the play as a Latina woman, as a woman, as a mother, as a lover–as a woman struggling to succeed.”
She has directed Latino-themed plays before, in Spanish and English. She predicts that plays about Latinos and Latinas have a future with a mainstream audience.
Dolly Fischer, who plays Dalia Rios, believes her character sends out a message to other Latinas, “that it’s all right, acceptable even, to be intelligent, creative, gifted, and to love whom they choose.”
“A Latina woman doesn’t have to fear repercussions from other women of any racial or ethnic group, or men for that matter, because she chooses an education, because she chooses a profession she wants to have, because she chooses to have a lover or husband who is different from her, whether it’s in age, race or religion.”
Anthony Hernandez, who has acted in New York, plays four roles, Dalia’s love interest, her psychotherapist and the two mysterious strangers. He finds the psychotherapist particularly intriguing. “I look for myself in each character and vice versa,” he says. To prepare for the role, he says, he asked a counselor friend to read the script.
“She said that her profession tends to be misunderstood by public opinion.” But, she added, she felt that the dialogue validated her profession, despite the psychotherapist’s out-of-the-ordinary techniques. “This blessing puts the responsibility on me,” says Hernandez.
Dan DeLeon, who plays the bigger-than-life Emilio, doesn’t believe his character will play into stereotypes of gay men.
“Emilio is a prophet. He is accepted by the audience because he is provocative, profound, witty and wise. He can be the voice of acceptance and tolerance. Despite Emilio’s over-the-top demeanor, the audience connects with him. This is how I humanize Emilio. For his boldness, fearlessness, he has a special place in society.”
Dovalina once created a character for one of DeLeon’s comedy monologues, and now
DeLeon hopes some of the Emilio scenes discarded in rewrites of “Comfort” find new life in a monologue. “Emilio’s time is overdue,” DeLeon says. “Emilio is a beautiful human being…he is not an insignificant sissy to be dismissed because of his demeanor. It’s time for Emilio to remind mainstream society that his outer shell is irrelevant.”
Jada August plays seven roles in “Comfort,” and two of them are racially insensitive women. Some Latino actors complain that they have to play racial stereotypes. But August has no problem playing her unpleasant white characters.
“Narrow-minded, biased people are the ones who perpetuate racial stereotypes, not the actors who play them,” she says.
August relishes the idea of playing so many characters, “to flex,” as she puts it, her “acting muscles.”
“I embrace these roles and concentrate not just on one character, but on becoming one with the story. It doesn’t hurt that the costume changes also change my demeanor, which propels me into that character.”
The play, which Dovalina began to write in 2007, has a number of references to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Dovalina asked Houston singer-songwriter Cynthia Martinez to write a song specifically for the play. The result is “Underland.”
Dovalina has wondered if his play will work in Cincinnati, but Edwin Large, a Cincinnati actor-singer and stage manager for “Comfort,” has no doubts that it will. “This play needs to play in Cincinnati,” he says. He brings up recent racial tensions and discrimination against the LGBT community in the city.
“This play’s importance,” he says, “lies not in the unflinching honesty about these racial/cultural issues, though such openness is refreshing. It’s importance lies in its ability to see past our socio-cultural barriers of creed, class, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation or political ideology. It crushes the artifice of our over-hyphenated culture and brings us to a common table: this human experience.”
“The importance of this play for Cincinnati,” he says, “is that it tells us that we can envision a world of honesty and openness in racial dialogue…but more important, it tells us that no matter what the difference, our shared human experience is the focus.”
Large worked with Dovalina before. He played televangelist Jim Bakker in “The Gospel According to Tammy Faye,” which played the Cincinnati Fringe in 2006. Dovalina and Ohio resident J.T. Buck co-wrote the musical.
Eric James, a Houston playwright, became involved in the play as dramaturge because, he says, he wanted to “assist with the further development of a play I believed in and felt strongly about.”
Like Porto, he mentioned the growing importance of Latino plays.
“The Hispanic culture is horribly under-represented in American theatre, especially Latina characters. A play that presents such a searing look into the culture and psyche of contemporary Latino women is very powerful.”
He predicts that as Hispanics grow in proportion to the rest of the population, “pieces like this will grow in importance. Hispanics represent a significant voting bloc, yet continue to remain mostly ignored. And, with the recent developments in Arizona, a study into this culture is all the more immediate.”
The play is being presented by Houston’s Driscoll Street Salon Theatre, an informal umbrella group created by Dovalina to nurture plays written by Houston-area playwrights. The theatre has held numerous readings of plays that have gone on to other readings, workshops and productions.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Fernando Dovalina
713-528-2723
Posted on: May 19th, 2010Curation from Tomás
Filed Under: Cultura, Cultura News, Entertainment, Press Releases
