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Inspired by his childhood growing up in a middle-class family in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, Ruben Polendo conceived and developed \u201cJu\u00e1rez: A Documentary Mythology\u201d as part of a personal quest to find out what happened to the city he knew\u2014the one that had been called the \u201ccity of the future\u201d before the news media labeled it the murder capital of the world in 2010.<\/p>\n
This collaborative performance piece by Polendo\u2019s New York-based Theater Mitu\u2014which played at Z Space in San Francisco on July 23-26\u2014opens with a family film clip of his oldest sister\u2019s coronation as the queen of the Ju\u00e1rez Lion\u2019s Club. We see a glimpse of that earlier Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, where families swam for fun in the Rio Grande and visited U.S. sister city El Paso by simply walking across a wooden bridge.<\/p>\n
Supported by funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts, a team of Theater Mitu company members spent two years traveling between New York, Cuidad Ju\u00e1rez and El Paso to interview hundreds of people. Those interviews and accompanying research became the \u201cscript\u201d of the performance.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s goal was not to portray the people interviewed but rather to present what they experienced. As the printed program notes, it was \u201cessential that the stage be a place of transmission, not of representation\u2014a landscape of voices and images\u2014not of characters and portraiture.\u201d Therefore, instead of the traditional character acting, the actors served as channels to the perspectives and memories of the 200-plus interviewees.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the stage with a large plastic sheet spread on the back wall and microphones, seats and equipment placed here and there, looked a bit slapdash as though the audience had arrived too early, before set up was completed.<\/p>\n
However, that seemingly haphazard stage soon became the infrastructure for an elaborate and well-choreographed dance between actors and equipment that flowed seamlessly throughout the 90-minute presentation. With strategic use of projectors, cameras, computers, lighting and even shadow puppets\u2014all operated by all six performers\u2014the memories flowed from the stage. The level of technical and physical coordination required to tell the story was impressive.<\/p>\n
The audience was taken on a voyage of emotions and analysis of the old Cuidad Ju\u00e1rez and the city it has now become, and why people should care. We heard the yearning, the anger, the racism and the hope of the interviewees who included activists, grandmothers, professors, students, librarians, and more from both sides of the border.<\/p>\n
The maquiladoras and the murder of young women, the gangs and drug cartels, the influx of migrants seeking to cross the border, the role of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the reasons for all of it were all touched on, as were the messages of hope, reaffirmation and change.<\/p>\n
Through their excellent work, Theater Mitu has shown that memory often creates a mythology of place that is burnished by time and longing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inspired by his childhood growing up in a middle-class family in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, Ruben Polendo conceived and developed \u201cJu\u00e1rez: A Documentary Mythology\u201d as part of a personal quest to find out what happened to the city he knew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":27392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5791,5789,5795,5793,5797],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-27391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ciudad-juarez","tag-juarez-a-documentary-mythology","tag-ruben-polendo","tag-theater-mitu","tag-z-space","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n