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LTC was founded 41 years ago to\u00a0share authentic stories from the Latino community as well as create a main stage for Latino actors
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Addressing themes of aging, memory loss, and immigration enforcement, the dialogue flows seamlessly in both English and Spanish, with translations of both languages projected above the stage
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“The Storyteller of East LA<\/a>” has been extended and runs through May 24<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez is one of the five founders of Latino Theater Company, as is Lucy Rodriguez, who plays Mercy and Sal Lopez, who embodies her guardian angel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been together for 41 years,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cLonger than most marriages.\u201d<\/p>\n
They formed the company all those years ago to share stories of their community from their perspective, and now run five different spaces at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown LA. When he started his career, Lopez said there were few roles on main stages for Latino actors.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s what we\u2019ve done for our community,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe created the main stage for us, you know, so that we can also be included.\u201d<\/p>\n
They also want to make sure their stories are included in the canon of American theater and in their authentic voices. The dialogue in \u201cThe Storyteller of East LA\u201d flows seamlessly between English and Spanish, sometimes switching mid-sentence \u2014 with translations of both languages appearing above the stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many Latino households, that\u2019s how we roll,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cYou know, it\u2019s just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And idioms are really important. Sometimes you just don\u2019t… have the words in English, but bam, you know, you can say it in Spanish and everybody gets it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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(Image courtesy of Grettel Cortes Photography)<\/p>\n
For Rodriguez, playing Mercy is personal. Her older sister is in memory care. But it\u2019s the character of Josefa, the hired caretaker, whose story she\u2019s glad is included.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really love that we know her story, that she is a three-dimensional character,\u201d she said. \u201cShe has her life; she has her concerns. And she showed up to work. And I think that\u2019s true of so much of this segment of our community. Hardworking work ethic. Show up. And I\u2019m very glad that it\u2019s depicted here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Josefa\u2019s concerns are not small ones. She is undocumented, the mother of a child born in the U.S., and her husband has just been detained by ICE. She\u2019s worried and frightened about how family\u2019s future. An unseen character of the nighttime caretaker didn\u2019t come to work the night before \u2014 too afraid to leave her house.<\/p>\n
In writing the play, Fern\u00e1ndez\u00a0felt it was vital for audiences of all backgrounds to understand the role undocumented workers play in our lives and our economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you\u2019re aware of it or not, you do depend on that workforce, especially in caregiving, especially in the Latino community,\u201d she said. \u201cMany people who are taking care of our loved ones are undocumented. I just wanted to give those people a voice, you know. I just wanted these people to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Fern\u00e1ndez hadn\u2019t fully anticipated, though, was how seen audience members would feel.<\/p>\n
Every night after performances of \u201cThe Storyteller of East LA,\u201d people linger, wanting to share their own experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, that\u2019s me. That\u2019s my family. This is my family story,\u201d she said that people tell her after the show.\u00a0 \u201cAnd, you know, to me, that\u2019s the most important.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have so many stories, so many important and beautiful stories in our community that have never been told,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez continued. \u201cI feel this responsibility to my community to tell as many stories as I can about us and our experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Cradling a baby doll, the character of Mercy drifts in and out of reality. One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14438,5282,7,967,48,52,51,47,50,49,31534,129322,5996],"class_list":["post-307610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-arts","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-socal-editors-picks","tag-tara-lynn-wagner","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}