Teatro Caliente! (review)

Despite its namesake, many assert that nothing new ever arises in Phoenix. Often assumed to be as culturally arid as its desert landscape, the city of Phoenix conjures images of relocated retirees, endless pavement, and the conservative politics of Barry Goldwater. Yet, original theatre is proving the exception. ¡Teatro Caliente!, an annual festival of alternative performing arts in the Southwest, opens a space for the artists who live in the area to come together as an eclectic performance community. It turns out that these artists have something important to say because as one of the nation's fastest-growing cities, Phoenix manifests all of our national problems; the city stands as a battleground for wars over identification, immigration, education, the distribution of limited resources, and the formation and maintenance of personal and political relationships. The festival has many strengths, perhaps the greatest of which is its dedication to ethically representing the diversity of the region. ¡Teatro Caliente! creates a forum in which a multiplicity of Southwestern voices can speak and be heard. By allowing artists to come together in their own particularities to speak in a variety of languages, performance genres, and forms, the festival interrogates the region's deep history and reimagines its future.

The second annual incarnation of the festival featured over twenty participants, who offered a wealth of artistic creation, including solo performances concerning identity and interpersonal relations; theatre pieces examining xenophobia and bigotry in USAmerican culture; butohdance evoking the cold cruelty prevalent in contemporary culture; and multimedia explorations of the marginalization of queerness and the legacy of white patriarchy. In a festival rich with innovative performances, several pieces stand out for the critical insight they offer. Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga presented The Panza Monologues, a multilingual collection of Latina women's thoughts and experiences surrounding their panzas. In the most simple translation, panzarefers to the belly, but more metaphorically references the heart, the center of the body, and the center of life. The production makes visible the way political, economic, sexual, and cultural oppression play out on the female body. Initially conceived at San Antonio's Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, where Grise and Mayorga worked together as activists, the performance grew out of the recognition that as the Esperanza women fought for social justice, it sometimes seemed the most tangible gains they made were in their own waistlines, at the expense of their physical well-being. This revelation made clear in a personal way the link between the health of the body and of a culture. As noted in The Panza Monologues,over sixty percent of USAmericans are overweight, a statistic that disproportionately affects minority and impoverished people. In contemporary US culture, it has become a privilege to eat well and to be physically active. At the same time, USAmericans are subjected to a deluge of media information about the perfect female body, which is always tall, thin, and white. The Panza Monologuesexplores the complex terrain of learning to care for your body while loving it for what it is. While the tough work of questioning the cultural practices that lead to obesity is somewhat underdeveloped in this piece that favors celebrating the overweight panza, the monologues chart a course through the landscape of identification rich with humor and sadness, resistance and repression. By introducing us to an entire spectrum of women—women who harness the power of their bodies, whose bodies are the site of physical abuse, who have destroyed their panzas and themselves, and those whose panzas have, in one way or another, led them to political or spiritual knowledge— The Panza Monologuesreveals how the panza connects us to everything, most importantly each other. The performance builds bridges across the cultural lines that divide us precisely because it is situated thematically, linguistically, and aesthetically in the particularities of the USAmerican Latina experience. It is thus fitting that the production shares the stage with latinidad.

The Panza Monologuesanimates latinidad scenically by employing a festive altar, complete with flowers, fairy lights, and pillows. These elements become...