BaumBlog: CRONES GO TO UNIVERSITY IN MEXICO CITY

So sorry no bloggie for so long. I don't know why I procrastinate because I really do ENJOY doing it immensely and SO love people's responses. But there it is. Plus we were working and then we were sick and then we were working and then we were exhausted. But still.

Now in San Miguel de Allende. 4 am. Carolyn and I have landed in the honeypot, after a stay at a rather scruffy but warm-hearted hotel in Mexico City. We are living in luxury with Carolyn's old friend Emerson, who has spent the last year bringing back to life an abandoned complex filled with rubble into gorgeous tiled and brightly-painted life. My croney and I each have our OWN spacious one-bedroom apartment. It's nice to have a little break from each other after twin beds in a hotel room.

I've got laryngitis and a performance in two days, so I guess won't be talking much. It's kinda nice to be forced to be silent. I never have to figure out what to say! Except, when we arrived last night I felt compelled to rasp out "This is spectacular!" multiple times as Emerson showed us around her beautiful home and the apartments and the courtyard and the patios and the roof and the…. People in San Miguel live in spacious digs. I'm now sitting at the table in my own rather large kitchen/living room, listening to crickets and distant roosters and dogs.

The ceiling above me is a work of art.

So. Mexico City. Theater. Performances.

Our first performance was Friday, March 18 at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. We met Minerva Valenzuela there, a flamboyant cabaret performer who Carolyn had wisely hired to do the narration, the day before to rehearse. Isn't Minerva a fantastic and unique name?! Unfortunately, it's so unique, I have a very hard time remembering it. The only way I can do that is by thinking of Minnie Mouse Since there is absolutely no resemblance between Minerva and Minnie, except the first three letters of their names, I feel guilty, even traitorous, associating this witty fiery woman with the Nancy Reagan of the Disney universe. But one does what one must.

Minerva, a lifelong Mexico City resident, informed us that Autonomous University of Mexico City, whose campus looked like a very down-at-the-heels high school, is a very special place. It's relatively new and an educational experiment where the students are all chosen by lottery! UAMC is a very creative and political college. Political posters are all over the place -- including about The 43, the busload of college students who were murdered -- still with no explanation. We saw so many posters about this in Oaxaca too.

While we were rehearsing, a folk song concert took place in the courtyard outside the theater. We were sorry we couldn't attend. And as we were leaving rehearsal, a student dance troupe moved in to rehearse. They were going to be taking original work to a festival. So the Autonomous has a lot going on.

But would anyone come to our performance at Friday 5 pm on the beginning of Easter Vacation? And, just as important, would people understand our show? This was the our first performance for an audience that would have no native English speakers.

This was in one of those caverous old-fashioned school auditoriums with a stage high above the audience. We had a huge stage, of which we used only part. We hung Judy's beautiful backdrop on the red velvet curtain.

We had a wonderful technician, Gabino, working with us. Whatever we needed, he found or created. His wife, Stephanie, came along to help run the sound.

Here's Carolyn, Minerva, Gabino and Stephanie during the tech.

Then it was time for a break for subsidized lunch! Mexicans don't eat lunch until 2 pm. The UAMC had a great hearty lunch for 10 pesos. That's about 60 cents!

As you can see from the photo, Minerva is a woman of strong opinion, happy to educate us about life in Mexico for women, from a feminist perspective. How Carolyn found two such different fabulous women to narrate our show, I don't know.

For the performance, Carolyn and I knew that, because of the space and because at least some and perhaps a lot of the audience would not understand English, we had to GO BIG! When you're touring, you're always adjusting your performance to the space. If you're too big for the space, then the audience pulls back from you. No chance of being too big on that vast stage!

So we did have a decent sized audience -- about 100? -- in that huge space, and we so ENJOYED being BIG! We realized there was so much comedy in our show that we were missing by being too restrained. Also, one of the wonderful things about touring is that you get deeper and deeper into your show. There's something about changing up your surroundings all the time that stimulates your creativity, your understanding.

We had rehearsed the show with Velina Brown before we left San Francisco. Velina's one of the SF Mime Troupe stars. She also directed our last Christmas show.

Sorry about the photo. Had to grab it from the internet. Yes, she's very beautiful. And graceful. Her hands…. Fun to watch when she directs us. Velina takes our writing more seriously than than we ourselves take it and asks us questions that no one else does. Startling, irritating questions that you really don't feel need an answer the first time you hear them. When she worked with me on HICK before I went to Baltimore, she asked me, "Who is Hick talking to?" Me: "I don't know, but nobody's ever asked that so nobody cares about it." Velina never demands that you answer her question. She just gently persists. Finally, I decided Hick was telling her story to her imaginary friend, and that was a helpful image for me.

With The Crackpot Crones, she asked us, concerning Rosa in RED HANKY GRANNIES, about two octogenarian activists in a nursing home, "Why DOES Rosa turn against political action?" We've been doing the scene for years now, and no one ever asked! So why bother thinking about it now! "Yes, but why does Rosa…" Always so gentle, never challenging. And then we realized we had to answer Velina's question, because she would never stop asking because she was truly puzzled. And we decided that Rosa had recently been involved with some young activists who treated her dismissively because of her age, which deeply hurt her. So now Rosa tells Emma her painful story, and the whole scene goes to a new level and has a new issue. Exciting. Oh, by the way, for those who have seen the Grannies before, we've switched parts. I have NO idea why Carolyn would prefer radical Emma to sensitive, lady-like troubled Rosa, but she seems quite happy with the change too.

Velina also pointed out to Carolyn the import of the moment in EVE IN THERAPY when Eve offers the apple to Lilith. And Velina's direction bore its full fruit on that big stage before the red velvet curtain. Carolyn told me after the performance that she finally GOT in a deep way what a truly revolutionary act it was. Exciting. Thank you, Velina, for all your probing, questioning work with us.

Unfortunately, Stephanie took lots of photos of Carolyn and me performing which I somehow could not download. But here's our sassy narrator. As you can see, we continued with our tradition of working with Mexican women who looked like us.

The audience was VERY responsive. The show worked with a Spanish-speaking audience! That was a pretty damn fantastic moment for us. AFterwards, I talked to some of the audience members. There was a young deaf woman in the front row who had come with her friend, a sign language interpreter, who translated the whole show for her. The interpreter said it was the first time she had ever translated a play in progress --- let alone translating from English into SPANISH sign language! To me, it was so moving that they had both made this effort to come and hear what The Crackpot Crones had to say. That was a big.

Coming up: The Crackpot Crones Meet the Young Radical Dykes of Mexico City. But, before that, a few random Mexico City photos:

For some reason, I had a very strong desire to see an obscure Diego Rivera mural -- ANY obscure Rivera mural -- and took a taxi to a water pumping station in the middle of a giant dusty area of Chapultapec Park to see Rivera's murals about water. I had the taxi wait for me, which cost a LOT but it was worth it. Just a couple of views of the tank that the city's water used to flow through. I've got dozens of photos. That man did such beautiful work.