The past May 7 I attended the play La Gringa by Carmen Rivera in the Repertorio Theatre on 27 St. I’ve only attended a few theatres plays in my life and La Gringa was one that I will remember, I enjoyed it a lot and I want to share my thoughts about it.
As we discussed in class, watching the play live is a different experience than reading it or watching the recorded version. I was able to feel the emotion each of the actors was putting in their performances which would’ve been complicated to perceive from the recorded version. While reading it my interpretation filtered some of the scenes and language. For example, when Isis and Norma would talk about Maria and her mom Olga, it seemed both were more against her, and Isis was more condescending towards Maria. But in the live performance, in those scenes, you got to appreciate that Isis was somewhat influenced by her mom’s perspective of Maria and her mom. I felt Isis liked Maria and wanted to be closer to her because they’re family but at the same time on her mom’s side in some scenes, treating Maria not so nicely and with sarcasm.
In addition, as a native Spanish speaker, I understood and enjoyed the entire play with no issues. However, I agree with my classmates that the fact that Maria was more fluent in Spanish than while reading the play, was a little confusing because she was supposed to have English as her first language and struggled to speak Spanish.
Further, in terms of sets and props. I enjoyed the fact that it was very simple. The lighting of the stage at different times of the day like the morning, while raining, or at night was on point. I believe that when a play doesn’t have a lot of production and props the weight of the play relapses on the actors, to keep the audience’s attention while following each scene smoothly without confusion. I want to praise the actors from this play because even though there weren’t a lot of resources for each scene I followed the play without getting bored or lost. Also, as we discussed in class, this type of scenery allows the audience to focus more on the emotions that the actors want to transmit.
This leads me to my favorite part of the play, which is the connection that Manolo and Maria develop. It was heartwarming to see this relationship of complicity and support among family members, and how Manolo really cared about his niece’s wishes. I could feel the love their characters were growing for each other. Also, since my family is full of medical workers, I know about the Lucidez terminal (terminal lucidity) which is when somebody who is sick gets magically better out of nowhere moments or days before dying. So, because of this, I was expecting a sad ending the play had, and watching it live made me tear up.
In conclusion, I enjoyed the play La Gringa and how it was presented in the Repertorio Theatre. They did a good job focusing the play on family, connection, and the very specific experience of identity crisis a lot of Hispanics born from immigrants have in the U.S.
Hi Nicole,
I enjoyed reading your response as it shows that you enjoyed watching the play. As someone who watched virtually, I couldn’t experience the same emotions that you describe in your response because of the element of a screen that made the play feel more like a film production rather than a theatrical one. Despite this, I could understand the jokes clearly since I am a Spanish speaker.
To be frank, I preferred reading the play to watching it because while reading I could make scenes in my head that portrayed the story more appealingly. Comparing this to the play, there were really not enough props to make it as vibrant as possible. I do agree that Maria being fluent in Spanish at the beginning of the play didn’t make sense because in the play she struggled with her Spanish.