CRONES MEET DYKES -- Finally! (plus Update)

UPDATE OF LAST BLOG:  Finally got Stephanie's great photos of our performance at the University, on Friday, March 18:

A New Scene:  Coming out to Mom as Greek Tragedy

Sit-Com Mom Tormenting Her (rather overgrown) Baby Butch daughter

Audience -- Woman in Foreground is Translating the Show from English into Mexican Sign Language for her Deaf Friend

AND NOW, PUNTO GOZADERA:

On Sunday, March 20, we arrived at Punto Gozadera, an eight-month old feminist women's center/cafe/art gallery in downtown Mexico City.   It was in a great and funky space next to a big church:


Punto Gozadera describes itself as a "cultural restaurant for feminist encounters."  I'm still not quite sure what the name means.  Mariana in Oaxaca said it has to do with multiple orgasms, and these women are extremely upfront and in your face about the power of their sexuality. 

Here's the stage where we would perform that evening:

OF COURSE THEY HAD TO REMOVE THE GAMES FOR US

And just in case you can't read the banner in the back:

The place was filled with young dykes and feminists....


On the card tables, for sale, political and sexual images:



I mean, these young women are very clear that they love their bodies and are NOT in any way ashamed:

"TALKING VULVAS & VIBRANT UTERUSES, ISSUE #1"

Lots of posters for events at La Gozadera that we wished we'd attended:

And us...

Carolyn and I felt like we'd found our own sweet spot, with good vegetarian food!

Everywhere on the walls beautiful political posters:



This poster was very disturbing:

"I DIDN'T KILL MYSELF -- THEY ASSASSINATED ME."

I'm not sure if this refers to an actual murder disguised as a suicide, or actual suicides where women were driven to such despair by the patriarchy that they killed themselves.  With all the crosses, the artist is talking about many deaths.  

To Carolyn and me, it was exciting to see this deep, vibrant feminist response in Mexico.  Not that so many of the same things don't go on in the U.S.  But there's a different level of threat and oppression in Mexico.  Women have been sentenced to prison for 30 years for the crime of having an abortion.  And then there's the disappearance of all those women in Ciudad Juarez.   

Carolyn and I, as older women, didn't experience any of the street harassment by men that young women often endure.  But Carolyn told me that twice, when she was out walking, older men who were chatting blocked the sidewalk.  Even though her bad knee forced her to walk with a cane, these men glared at her and refused to move aside.  She felt, at that moment, their contempt for her as a woman.  They WOULD NOT make way for her!  

But in general, we found Mexicans overwhelmingly kind and considerate.

This poster, so simple, moved me deeply:

"ONE DAY, WE'LL WALK WITHOUT FEAR."

Finally, we got our backdrop up.  Of course we needed a photo of the woman, Libertad, with the word "Libertad" on our backdrop:

And then it was time for the audience to arrive! Would they show up?  This was a concern at ALL our performances, but especially the ones around Easter vacation.  Supposedly, everyone LEFT Mexico City for Holy Week, as it's called. Carolyn worried much more about audience numbers than me, since she had done all the work to get the bookings and do the publicity.  In fact, the whole Mexico adventure was her idea and her work.  I was just happy to be along for the ride.  

But it turned out the place was PACKED!  They were a wild crowd, hooting and hollering from the beginning.  

Again, as at the University, there were almost no native English speakers.  So that meant that we had to be big and physical in our acting.  Here's a moment from the "Coming-Out Transformations" that shows Minerva narrating in Spanish while we're frozen in position, waiting for her to say "Back to the scene!" in English, before we go on:

The response to us was overwhelming.   These young Mexican women loved them some Crackpot Crones!  During the Horror Movie Coming-Out, where I transform into a lesbian werewolf -- the only scene we performed in Spanish -- they were howling along with me from the very beginning.  We've never gotten that reaction before.  

And, because La Gozadera is also a cafe, everyone hung out afterwards and chatted.  People were not just enthusiastic.  They were GRATEFUL.  It was a response that reminded us of the 70s with Lilith Theater, and the early 80s with DOS LESBOS, when we had the feeling we were doing something that was NEEDED.  "You have to come back!"  "You have to come to Guadalajara!"  "You have to bring your show to Spain!"  

A few photos of the after-show gang:

Of course there has to be a gay male ally!

 

This audience confirmed for us that we were doing something important by bringing our theater to Mexico.  For both of us, what started out as an adventure turned into something else on that night.  We know we're going back -- after we learn some more Spanish and translate more of our show!  We have since heard from Minerva that some recent incidents of violence and harassment of women have inspired the feminists to organize demonstrations across the country on April 24!  Wish we could be there in solidarity.

THA...THA....THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!

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.  

A taste of the renowned Anthropological Museum.  It would take a week to even begin to absorb it all:

And an exhibit in a tiny museum on La Lucha Libre, Mexican wrestling, a huge phenom.  Of COURSE there are lady wrestlers:

Next blog: Trotsky's house.  Forget about Freda's house.  It was too crowded.

Tha…tha…that's all, folks!

GREATEST CRONES ON EARTH DO MEXICO!

Below is our full itinerary for Mexico.  Please forward this info to anyone who might be able to make the remaining performances  or who might know folks in Mexico City or San Miguel de Allende.

In Oaxaca, with Mariana Mordente:

Tuesday, March 15, 5:00 pm

Oaxaca Lending Library

Pino Suarez #59, Oaxaca Centro

$150 pesos - benefit for OLL

Wednesday, March 16, 7:00 pm

La Jicara

Porfirio Diaz #1105

Oaxaca Centro

Free admittance

In Mexico City, DF, with Minerva Valenzuela:

Friday, March 18, 5:30 pm

Auditorio Plantel del Valle, UACM

San Lorenzo 290, Colonia de Valle, DF

Free Admittance

Sunday, March 20, 8:00 pm

Punto Gozadera, restaurante cultural de encuestas feminista

Plaza San Juan #15,

Centro Delegation, Cuauhtémoc DF

Free Admittance

In San Miguel de Allende:

Tuesday, March 29, 5:00 pm

Teatro Santa Ana

The Biblioteca Publica

Insurgentes #25, Col. Centro

$150 pesos, benefit for La Biblioteca

Wednesday, March 30, 5:00 pm

Teatro Santa Ana

The Biblioteca Publica

Insurgents #25, Col. Centro

$150 pesos, benefit for Ser Mujer

For those in theater, you will recognize that this is an insane performance schedule in a foreign country.  Three cities, five different performing spaces, five tech rehearsals, two different Mexican actresses to work with.  However, this is the kind of thing Carolyn does when left to her own devices, which I foolishly did for the two months in Mexico before I arrived.  But, as she said, I'm the perfect partner for her, because no one else would be ABLE to do this tour -- let alone WILLING.  

Here's Carolyn and her daughter, Mica, who lives and works in Oaxaca and is the reason we performed there.

We're at a rooftop restaurant with a view of the city
and famous mescal cocktails.

Carolyn did an incredible amount of work finding people to help with booking, publicity, tech, and performing the Spanish narration that she had written. Here's our Oaxaca narrator, Mariana Mordente, rehearsing howling with my lesbian werewolf in rehearsal on the roof of the Oaxaca Lending Library.

Rehearsing the Restoration Coming-Out Scene

The saving grace of this intense and stressful first week is that everyone we've worked with couldn't have been nicer or more competent  or creative or calm or cheerful.  I know machismo is a huge problem here.  I KNOW it.  I've seen the feminist posters about it.  But the men we've worked with have been truly gentle and  -- there's no other word for it -- sweet.  Of course the women were fantastic, but that's more to be expected.  

Now we're in Mexico City, having done two shows in Oaxaca and one here last night.  Phew.  So we're on the downhill slope, in terms of work.  

AND NOW, OAXACA:

Oaxaca is a very special place.  It's a beautiful Colonial city with a famous cuisine and a notoriously rebellious past and present.  It's surrounded by Indian villages with very deep craft and art traditions.  And there are ancient pyramids nearby.  Unfortunately, I only got a little taste of Oaxaca, because we had so much work to do -- but enough to know I'll come back soon, to do one of those immersive Spanish courses.

It was late Spring, still some flowers:

Jacaranda everywhere

Unknown Fabulous Yellow Flowers

The Door to my Studio Apartment with Patio

On my only free night, I saw a Oaxaca wedding celebration with women dancing with flower baskets on their heads and giant puppets and fireworks in front of one of the old churches.  Sorry, no good photos of puppets or fireworks.

 

That same night, we came upon a demonstration/art installation.  Women had spent the day dying shoes red, to represent all the women who have been killed in Ciudad Juarez -- and elsewhere.  It's hard to capture how moving these scattered scarlet boots and shoes were.

There is a vibrant feminist consciousness among women here that is very militant and widespread, unlike in the U.S.  Very exciting.  These posters below were in La Jicara, where we performed.

Verbal, Sexual, or Institutional:
it's all the same violence.
 Caution:  Machismo kills!

My Body is Mine.
Caution:Machismo kills!

We were so thrilled to find our poster below a lesbian poster, although we never found out what the rest of the poster said.

You think it's easy to translate "Crackpot Crones" into Spanish?  Carolyn consulted with a LOT of people.  She can't tell me exactly what "Rucas" means.  Of course "locas" means "crazy."  But she says everyone laughs when they hear "Las Rucas Locas," so that's enough for us.  The poster, designed by Margo Tufo, delighted the Oaxacans.

Our first performance was at the Oaxaca Lending Library, which is the cultural center for English speakers living here.  Here's Mariana (our narrator/clown), Saskia (publicist, booker, sound tech and probably a few other things) and Carolyn working on translating the script in the Library.  

I think this might have been the moment when we were searching for the Mexican names of Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie (as mentioned in the Coming-Out Sitcom).  EVERY country in the WORLD has their OWN names for the plucky little avians.  Saskia says in Holland it's Quik, Quak and Quok.  These are the kinds of things you investigate deeply when you're a serious theater artist.  In Mexico, it's Hugo, Paco and Luis. Just google it.

The Crones and Mariana before the Library Performance.
As Carolyn said, she tried to find someone who looked as much like us as possible.

The Library was our Mexican debut and the debut of our wild and wonderful backdrop designed by Judy Schavrien.  

"Red Hanky Grannies" 

Mariana introduced our scenes and then interrupted us at various points to describe what would happen in the next part of the scene.  So Spanish-only speakers were told what they were going to see before they saw it.  This was an audience of mainly English speakers, so we couldn't really tell how well it worked.  But Mariana was a completely adorable clown and improvised her own jokes with the audience.  She's a gem.  

People loved the show.  They loved the humor, the feminism, the lesbianism, the blasphemy -- and the fact that we took the trouble to bring our theater to them.  We did the "Lesbian Werewolf" scene in Spanish.  I felt terribly inhibited and awkward speaking Spanish, and did not acquit myself well.  Carolyn only had three short lines, so she did better.  

On to La Jicara the next night!  I wish we had something like La Jicara in San Francisco -- a community center/bookstore with great food.  I feel a sense of space for things like this to happen in Oaxaca, whereas there's no space remaining for such quixotic ventures in SF.  Here's the main room, with the Crone backdrop -- safety-pinned to nails, instead of velcroed liked the night before.  The ceiling is partially open and vine-covered.

Posters at La Jicara Protesting Genetically Modified Food

Unfortunately, I have no photos of our performance at La Jicara.  The place was PACKED and the audience was very enthusiastic.  It was exciting.  Again, most people knew SOME English.  Our performance took a step up, inspired by the energy of the crowd, which included lots of young people.  My Lesbian Werewolf en Espanol was MUCH better except…. oh, except… Instead of "hermosos pechos"  (trans. beautiful breasts), I said "hermanos pechos" (trans. brotherly breasts or something like that).  Oy vey.  What a mistake for a lesbian werewolf to make.    

After the performance, everyone hung out.  We had a full dinner!  We were starving.  How great to perform somewhere that people can stay long and chat and eat.  

Carolyn with Mica and friends

Crones with Jose Antonio, our dear lighting man

To end:  Just some cool Oaxaca images:

People drive on the Left Side of the Road for One Block!?!

Oaxaca is famous for its green stone walls.

Never seen THIS image anywhere before!

One of the many strange and beautiful murals

Just Plain Fun

Th….th…..That's all, folks!