‘Just Like Us’ uses a bilingual script to put immigration issues on stage

The cast of “Just Like Us” | Courtesy of Brenda Marie Moran

Recently, stories of immigration troubles dominate the news, including undocumented students and workers as well as people being removed from their homes and torn from their loved ones.

Starting Thursday, March 14, the story four latinx students — two of whom are undocumented — will come to the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts when Teatro Tercera Llamada and Looking for Lilith Theatre Co. present a co-production of Karen Zacarías’ “Just Like Us.” The play uses a bilingual script.

Insider spoke with Brenda Marie Moran, who plays one of those students, as well as Haydee Canovas, TTL producer and co-founder, and Kathi E.B. Ellis, director of this production and co-artistic director of Lilith.

Brenda Marie Moran

For Moran, “Just Like Us” is an extension of her work in Latinx rights.

“I think it’s another form of being an advocate, because you’re also telling the story of other people,” she says. “You’re not just lobbying or rallying, you’re telling a story through theater.”

Theater wasn’t Moran’s focus until recently. An international studies major at Northern Kentucky University, she’s minoring in Spanish, fine-tuning and understanding the language of her culture and her family. Her parents moved to Louisville from Hidalgo, Mexico, just before she was born.

For her minor, she had to take an acting class in Spanish, but she had no intention of being in plays at NKU.

“The professor for the Hispanic drama class and the director of the World Languages department, they reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, we’ve seen you act for your final (for Spanish drama), why don’t you audition?’” says Moran.

She was similarly recruited by Lilith and TTL.

“The director, Kathi Ellis, and Haydee Canovas, both of them went to see me at NKU and apparently that was my audition.”

Moran isn’t likely to change her major — in fact she graduates this year — but she wants to continue doing plays, especially those that speak to the issues facing the Latinx community.

“I want to make sure that all the plays I get into are some kind of specifically Latino play,” she says. “I found out about this play, and it has to do with my life — everything I’ve done, my upbringing, everything I’ve gone through. I guess as a Latina living in the United States, it does mean a lot to me.”

Haydee Canovas

Canovas stresses the importance of the social issues at play on stage and what it means for the Latinx community.

“You don’t realize how important this story is for us,” she says. “This play is based on real lives … It goes over all the dilemmas of the culture and what the culture values, their desires and how some of them are being labeled criminals because they lack documents.”

She also corrects what she believes is a common misconception about the legal status of undocumented immigrants.

“That’s not a criminal offense. It’s a civil offense,” Canovas says.

Social justice gets addressed on stage in “Just Like Us,” but an extra-textual social justice issue comes with the play. Lilith and TTL knew they wanted to tackle onstage representation for the Latinx community, as well as representation behind the scenes.

Ellis agrees that Lilith was very intentional in this partnership and how they interacted with the theatrical presentation of these issues.

Kathi E.B. Ellis

“It was important to Lilith in choosing to produce this script that we partner with artists who can help us to tell the story authentically,” the director says.

As individual artists, members of TTL, Louisville’s Spanish-speaking theater company, have worked with Lilith for several years. So there were prior relationships to help create an official connection.

In addition to concerns about authenticity, Canovas explains there are logistical reasons for the co-production as well.  

“This show is like a monster of a show because it has so many actors and so many characters … (and) Kathy is the mastermind,” she says. “I don’t know if you know this, but she is a mastermind. And she said, ‘What do you think if we do a co-production?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a no-brainer.’”

The “monster” of a show includes actors who have to play multiple roles. That’s not too uncommon. What is a little more out of the ordinary is that those actors have to play characters in two different languages. All of the actors — half of whom are Latinx, half of whom are white — play characters who are Latinx and white in attempt to truly reinforce the themes of the play.

Whatever ethnicity we claim as our own, the people around us, the myriad of other ethnicities found in Americas citizenry, are just like us.

“Just Like Us” runs March 14-16, 18 and 21-23 at 7:30 p.m., and March 24 at 5:30 p.m. at the Kentucky Center. Tickets are $21 for general admission, or $16 for seniors, students and military. And on Monday, March 18, all ticket prices are $11. 

This post has been updated with the correct date for the $11 tickets.

Review: Teatro Tercera Llamada’s latest play tackles body issues and immigration

Penelope Quesada, Jay Marie Padilla, Luz Estela Gonzalez, Sarah Baker and Xenia Miller | Photo by Julio Samayoa

Teatro Tercera Llamada has returned to the stage with “Las Mujeres Verdaderas Tienen Curvas,” or “Real Women Have Curves.” The production is in Spanish with English supertitles projected above the action, and it continues at the Kentucky Center Jan. 20-28.

The play focuses on five Latinx women working in a small dress factory. Though one of these women, Estela (Penelope Quesada), owns the factory, it’s still a hot, uncomfortable environment. Maybe not a sweat shop, but certainly a sweaty one. The production is buoyed by a strong and socially relevant script, as well as solid performances, but it struggled with technical issues, rhythm and tone.

While the main action of the play centers around producing dresses fast enough to pay off the loan on the small factory, “Real Women” is more a slice-of-life play. It shows the daily life and conversations of five women, three of whom are family, working and living together.

The cast of “Real Women Have Curves” | Photo by Julio Samayoa

As the quintet sews and sweats, a handful of other subplots are introduced: a mysterious van; a handsome man; and the fear of immigration finding Estela, the sole women in the factory who has yet to obtain legal status.

The themes are more important than the plot devices. Women’s relationships — with each other and society — are examined from a variety of angles. The play shows us women in numerous roles as mothers, daughters, lovers, cooks, business owners and undocumented workers.

As the title suggests, many of the ideas are combined with a discussion of physical beauty. The topic is neatly locked into the action of the play as the women work and sweat over dresses they could neither fit into nor afford.

More than anything, the play reminded me of “Steel Magnolias,” another lady-led workplace drama that examines family and women’s relationships, providing males in audiences a window into a world they don’t know, and women in the audience the rare opportunity to see characters living a full range of experiences on stage rather than being relegated to playing either a love interest or a woman looking for love.

The script also shows an important and underrepresented subset of women by examining the immigrant experience. It makes this play doubly important as the President-elect Trump discusses how best to ban and imprison women like the ones featured in this story. While not aggressive, the politics of the play are not subtle, including a righteous and well-executed attack on fat-shaming.

Sadly, the body image discussion is marred by the title “Real Women Have Curves.” It body shames the thin, the trans and the muscular, while accepting an implied binary definition of beauty.

In addition to the action, in the dress shop, there is a loose frame for the story, as Ana (Jay Marie Padilla) narrates the action. We see her recording some of the actions of the play in her diary in stolen private moments, and it’s a familiar enough device that we assume she is narrating the story from the future. Padilla makes good use of these moments as an actor, but the device sometimes felt unnecessary — a crutch to make sure the audience was picking up on the themes and ideas.

Jay Marie Padilla as Ana | Photo by Julio Samayoa

With the exception of a wonderful and engaging meltdown from Sarah Baker’s Pancha, the cast never takes the action from sweaty simmer to boil. With a character study like this one, that’s not necessarily a bad choice, but I would have liked to see the actors go a little bigger.

Conversely, the comedy occasionally felt a little too broad for the quieter moments, but the laughs from the small audience were frequent Saturday night.

With director Padilla on stage playing one of the main roles, I can’t help but wonder if the tone would have been a little more even with a director whose focus wasn’t spilt between a difficult role and the difficult job of direction.

There were some ongoing problems with the projected English supertitles as well, making it difficult to keep up with the nuances of the action on stage. While it’s hard to say for certain when evaluating a performance in another language, it sure seemed like some of the actors were struggling with lines, a problem that is hopefully fixed for the second weekend.

Despite problems with the show, the script forces the audience to grapple with important issues, ones that likely wouldn’t be addressed by the rest of the theater community in Louisville.

“Las Mujeres Verdaderas Tienen Curvas” runs Jan. 20-21 and 27-28 at 7:30 p.m., and Jan. 22 at 6 p.m., at the Kentucky Center, 501 W. Main St. Tickets are $21.

Spanish language theater company Teatro Tercera Llamada offers a play on immigration

Gabe Scott as Bashir Lazhar | Courtesy of Teatro Tercera Llamada

Ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and around the world put refugees on the front page with alarming frequency, and this weekend, Spanish language theater company Teatro Tercera Llamada (TTL) is putting that issue on stage with their latest production, “Bashir Lazhar.”

It’s the story of the title character, an educator who is also an immigrant and a refugee. When a crisis in a school creates a sudden vacancy no one wants to fill, Lazhar takes the position. He then struggles to represent the students, when the administration would rather just keep any problems in their school quiet.

It’s hot-button stuff, but at the center of the play is the experience and emotion of one man; “Lazhar” is a one-person show. All the action is filtered through Lazhar’s perception, and the play jumps back and forth between his present and his past.

Haydee Canovas

Insider spoke with director Kathi E.B. Ellis and TTL producer and co-founder Haydee Canovas about the play and the steps the company is taking to grow and reach new audiences.

TTL is approaching its fifth year as a company, and Canovas’ plans to expand include working with new directors and collaborators. She first met Ellis through work at Looking for Lilith Theatre Co. Ellis’ involvement came from a conversation at a party.

“We were at a New Year’s Eve party, and I spent the whole night talking with Kathi about theater, and Kathi said, ‘When am I going be able to direct one of Teatro Tercera Llamada’s plays?’” said Canovas. She was quick to take Ellis up on the offer.

Ellis recalled: “As you may have learned about Haydee, when you say something, her follow-up is exceptionally sharp.”

The script, by Évelyne de la Chenelière, was originally French and written about an Algerian immigrant moving to Canada. The play was translated to Spanish, but the particulars of the story weren’t changed, as they speak to a wide range of human experience.

According to Ellis, “it has resonances for anyone who has chosen to leave their home country and journey to a new country, whether it’s as an immigrant or striving to find refugee status.”

Adding another wrinkle to the story is the question of Bashir’s ethnicity.

“There is the overlay of, is he an ‘Arab’? As an ‘Arab,’ is he Muslim? And how does that influence the way we respond,” said Ellis. The rhetoric and media attention around Muslims or others of Arabic descent has only gotten hotter throughout the election season, and recent violent attacks often have brought those issues to the fore.

While a story of an Algerian refugee may seem an odd pick for a Spanish language theater company in Kentucky, it reflects an ongoing national conversation about many kinds of immigrants, including those from Mexico, who have been a talking point of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The commonality of the experiences of varied refugees and immigrants points to an important truth Canovas must grapple with as she steers TTL through its next stage of growth. There is no single country of origin for Louisville’s Spanish-speaking community. “We’re from all over,” said Canovas. “(We’re) Spanish, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Argentinian, Columbian, Ecuadorean, Peruvian, Panamanian, Honduran, Guatemalan, Bolivian — all the countries are represented here in Louisville, Ky.”

Canovas said many people don’t realize how large the Spanish-speaking community in Louisville is. “If you’re not paying attention, you are missing out on a completely beautiful, colorful culture and language.”

Part of TTL’s mission is serving that community, but they also want to reach out to the rest of the city. And one of the ways they are broadening their reach is to expand their roster of directors to include people like Ellis, for whom Spanish is a second language.

“I have some Spanish, I am by no means fluent,” said Ellis. “I am much better at listening and reading than I am at speaking.”

TTL also is reaching out by transcending language. They have a mime-focused company, Las Pantomimas, who have a performance coming up in the fall. And TTL will perform before Kentucky Shakespeare’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” on Thursday, July 7, presenting a Spanish-language parody of the famous tragedy. Canovas believes it’s the first time a Spanish language version has served as pre-show entertainment for Kentucky Shakespeare.

As is their custom, both “Bashir Lahzar” and the performance at Kentucky Shakespeare will be accompanied by supra-titles — a nice light-up screen featuring full English translation.

“I hope this play is accessible to people regardless of what their first, second or third language is,” said Ellis.

Teatro Tercera Llamada presents “Bashir Lazhar” June 23-25, 30, and July 1-2 at 7:30 p.m. and June 26 at 6 p.m. at The Bard’s Town, 1801 Bardstown Road. Tickets are $15.