"The Road to Xibalba"
Joann Farias
Miracle Theatre, Sept-Oct 2006
Photos by Stephanie Davis,
courtesy of Miracle Theatre Group
Miracle Theatre, also known as Teatro Milagro, is Portland's Hispanic theater. Some productions are all in Spanish, some in English, and some a mixture, but the stories always have a Spanish, Mexican, Central or South American, or Hispanic-American storyline. Milagro also does extensive outreach in the Portland Hispanic community and fostering of Hispanic playwrights and youth actors.
This company is also notable for its small army of technical people -- set designers, lighting designers, composers, and so on -- some of whom have extensive experience in Hollywood and corporate video work, who do amazing things with the theater's fairly intimate space, and who are intensely loyal to the theater.
"Xibalba" was the world premiere production of a play by Joann Farias that centers on Mayan shamanism. Ordonez (Stephen Lisk) is an American anthropology student of Mexican descent who travels into the wilds of Guatemala to study the ways of Mayan shamans. I played Don Isidro, the guy with the magic.
The play is designed in two parts, and the four adult actors aside from Lisk -- me, Stephanie Danna, Edward Lyons, Jr. and Joey Boyd -- only appeared as adult characters in the first half. In the second half, we were heavily cloaked and disguised as Mayan gods who menace and teach the teenagers Ordonez brings down from the U.S. on a field trip.
The production was directed by Milagro's artistic director, Olga Sanchez, a gifted actress in her own right who is much beloved and admired by the greater Portland theater community. I had not seen her work before signing on to this production, but I discovered a rare combination of firm professional vision and an almost childlike delight in the process of creating a show. These excellent photos were promotional shots that don't exactly depict actual scenes from the play but convey something of its spirit.
At the top, that's me on the left, Lisk on the right, and teen actor Albert Alcazar in a makeshift Mayan god outfit. Obviously Stephen and I are in the second photo.
WHAT THEY SAID
"...like dance, Farias' play is most riveting in the unspoken. It reveals itself not so much in the message of its words as in the moods and feelings it conveys. In broad impressionistic terms, it's about the tensions between belief and skepticism, change and stability, opposed worldviews. ... Among a largely appealing cast that includes several young graduates of Miracle's own bilingual writing and performing program, David Loftus also stands out for his wry performance as the shaman who upsets Jeff's apple cart. ...a fascinating and sometimes very funny evening -- both a challenge and a reward for theatrical adventurers." -- Bob Hicks, the Oregonian, Sept. 26, 2006
"An impressive set by Mark Haack, eye-candy lighting by Peter West and spooky sound design by Gerardo Calderon are almost enough to make this intellectual interesting but tedious and preachy play about Mayan mythology, the Guatemalan civil war and the contemporary challenges facing Latino youth." -- Ben Waterhouse, Willamette Week, Sept. 27, 2006
"Its pacing is uneven: sluggish in the first act and speedy in the second. Regional accents, probably unnecessary in the first place, melt away like stage makeup. And a decision to cast amateur actors results in, surprise, amateurish acting, although that could improve during the run." -- Eric Bartels, Portland Tribune, Sept. 29, 2006