Once upon a time, in the city of El Paso
Crawling with flashlights through a tent of bedsheets, the Flores children pretend they are ants. They speak their own ant language, rub antennae together, and share ant secrets. And Ceci is their queen.
Years later, a car crash has reduced Ceci to a wretched and incoherent body on the living room floor. Her younger brother, Misha, still attends to his broken queen, helping to feed and exercise her. But Ceci needs so much more. Enter Lydia, the title character of Octavio Solis' intensely dark family fable, who forms an immediate and uncanny bond with Ceci when she comes to care for her. Soon, Lydia is wearing Ceci's clothes, embodying the sexy young woman Ceci should have become, and flustering Misha and the other Flores men.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Lydia (So Far)
Commissioned by Artistic Director Kent Thompson, Lydia premiered last year at the Denver Center Theater Company's Third Colorado New Play Summit. Audience and critical reception for this tale of a haunted Chicano family in 1970s El Paso was overwhelmingly positive, and Lydia drew favorable comparisons to Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.
The Denver endorsement propelled Lydia on to great things, including a successful East Coast production at Yale Repertory Theater, a Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award nomination, script publication in American Theater magazine, and even some Pulitzer Prize buzz.
Now the play has found its way west to Center Theatre Group's Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where critical reception, perhaps because of all the hype, has been mixed. Los Angles Times theater critic Charles McNulty calls it "magical realism meets telenovela."
Director Juliette Carrillo, who has piloted Lydia since its Denver genesis, is perplexed by the disparaging criticism but questions whether it might just be a matter of sensibilities. "I think there is an element of surrender that needs to happen when watching this play," Carrillo said. "I don't think it works to watch it from your head. You have to watch it from your heart and soul and guts. There is a deep emotional ride that you have to be open to - It's visceral. For some reason, these L.A. critics were not willing to take that ride."
Carrillo would like to see Lydia move east again. "I'd love to see Lydia have a life in New York," she said. Concurrent to its Taper production, the play was done by the Marin Theater Company near San Francisco and is scheduled for production at Mixed Blood in Minneapolis. But whether the recent negative press will affect the play's New York prospects remains to be seen. More likely, LA audiences will decide the next move.
Up from Denver
Lydia is not the only bright star to have emerged from the relatively young Colorado New Play Summit. Jason Grote's 1001 (2007) has enjoyed a life in New York, and an off-Broadway production of Theresa Rebeck's Our House (2008) is in the works. But in Denver, where Latinos make up 35 percent of the population, Solis' Chicano tragedy really resonated - so much so that Kent Thompson has commissioned Solis to write another play for the Denver Center.
Is the disparity between Denver and LA reception limited to criticism? Lydia has challenged audiences from the beginning with harsh sexuality and difficult emotional turns. Some have been left shaken. Some have gotten up and left the theater. But the rewards for taking the journey can be profound.
Actor and playwright Adriana Sevan took a group of at-risk teenagers to see the Taper show. They were blown away. "We felt the famine in each character - what they would give their lives for, the stakes of excruciating life or death," Sevan said. "It was essential that they get to see a play written by a fearless raw-hearted poet, directed by a visionary soul painter, brought to life by a masterful group of shamanic artists."
Lydia 3.0: The Taper Production
Reprising her title role with squeaky voiced sass is Stephanie Beatriz, who, along with Carlo Albán, Catalina Maynard, and Ohahoua Rodriguez, has appeared in all three Carrillo-helmed Lydia incarnations. Other faces have changed, but together, the LA cast articulates in expert fashion the emotional impact of Solis' tragic tale.
Carrillo and set designer Christopher Acebo have added intriguing touches since the Denver premiere, including two inexplicable holes in the floor of the Flores living room. "I think he was looking for a clear way to define the walls of the hallway, but what I liked about it was the precariousness of it," Carrillo said. "People walk around on an emotional edge in this play. I think Acebo was looking for a way to physicalize that."
On the whole, the LA version retains both the stylistic edge and lyrical depth that distinguish it from so much other regional theater fare. If Lydia moves beyond LA, playwright Octavio Solis will determine if any further tweaking is called for. "I have already made some adjustments in the script," he said. "It's not done till it's done. When is it done? I don't know. Maybe it's done now."
Poetry of the Ant Queen
Solis' brooding story of one family's shame is a parable about the borders, real and figurative, that divide us. It's no wonder then that Solis has set Lydia in his hometown of El Paso. Growing up on the border has certainly influenced Solis, and division is an idea that permeates much of his work. It may be that Solis takes on too many themes in Lydia: immigration, evangelism, homosexuality, war and chance. But he makes up for his overreaching ambition with the kind of poetic language few playwrights can muster.
In a heartbreaking portrayal by Onahoua Rodriguez, Ceci delivers Solis' most notable poetry when she steps from her broken body to elucidate her muffled mind: "I hear your face clapping against the way things are, and I know it hurts, cause I feel my face smashing against the mad will of God."
Only Lydia, attendant to the queen, can decipher Ceci's pained language. And even she fails to recognize how Ceci longs for the sweet release of death - an escape from her tortured existence on the living room floor. But as Ceci says in a moment of spectral clarity: "In ant language, there's no word for die."
If Lydia can survive L.A., there'll be no need for one.
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