Pa'lante ire, siempre.

I cried. I laughed. I sobbed. I sighed. I shook my head in frustrated understanding. I stood and applauded in solidarity.

Such was the gamut of emotion I ran last night as I experienced the play Rum & Coke by Carmen Pelaez. I found the writing brilliant, the performance so heartfelt and sincere that I wanted to jump up there at times and console her characters.

Carmen does a wonderful job of being the women in her play. She starts as a Cubanita-Americana searching for her identity and takes you with her on the journey. She plays a santera/manicurist, becomes her staunch anti-Castro grandmother and then walks the streets of Havana as a jinetera (prostitute). She personifies her Tia Ninita, an elderly aunt left alone in Cuba. These five women are played beautifully, sometimes heartbreakingly pragmatic and yet always with that certain vivacious nature of a true Cubana.

While the characters are diverse, all different, they all have one thing in common. Not only are they all Cuban, but they all live in limbo, never knowing what their misfortune of being Cuban will bring next. They all seem uncomfortable in their skin yet understanding their true beauty is the same thing that makes them so, they are Cubanas.

It is a wonderful play. One that needs to be seen. It portrays the Cuban diaspora through the most beautiful and endearing thing the island has to offer: La mujer cubana.

Gracias Carmen for reminding me that I too am on that journey with you. It's been a long while since I hear my grandmother's voice.

Pa'lante iremos, siempre.

Posted by Val Prieto at January 23, 2004 09:18 AM