Vicky Grise's Play 'Blue' at the Guadalupe Theatre Speaks with the True Voices of the Barrio
By Gregg Barrios
Published: March 27, 2013
Vicki Grise’s play blu depicts the struggles of barrio life through voices seldom heard in American theater. It has been performed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to critical acclaim, but though the New York-based writer claims San Antonio as her home, the 2010 Yale Drama Award-winning play — chosen by playwright David Hare from over 950 submissions — has yet to receive a full production in this town.
Last Friday, March 22, blu was given the stage in San Antonio in a concert reading (a staged reading accompanied by live music). It was only a one-night stand, but hopefully our local theaters will take notice and give this important piece its due.
Author and Current reviewer Gregg Barrios was on hand to see the performance.
– Scott Andrews
**
Blu is vital theater.
A full house at the Guadalupe Theatre greeted a late night concert reading of blu directed by its playwright, Virginia Grise. The audience watched and listened as a cast of local actors and ¡Aparato!, a trio of L. A. musicians, kept them under the spell of a powerful performance.
It is rare when a theater/teatro piece addresses the concerns and stories of the Latino-majority population here or in our sister city of Los Angeles, aka the capital of the third world. The play is set in a “Barrio U.S.A,” a place where residents nightly endure police helicopters with their invasive searchlights patrolling the area as if it were a city under siege.
The play focuses on a Mexican American family that lives there. We quickly learn that the father Eme is doing hard time, while the hard-working mother Soledad has in his absence taken on a lesbian lover, Hailstorm. The three siblings from her marriage are Blu, a Marine serving in Iraq; Lunatico, a conflicted young gang member; and Gemini, the young daughter with a secret and a dream.
It is Gemini’s story that captivates us early on.
Read more at the San Antonio Current on-line. . . .
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