Playing the part of Ilona in USF's upcoming production of RIFT, I was fortunate to interview Svich on her work, especially on the topics of her inspiration for the play and her intentions for the audience.
RIFT by Caridad Svich takes a look at human trafficking in a war-torn place, where young girls must sell their bodies in order to get by. It follows the story of determined Ilona, a fighter in the resistance who loses her lover Maurice. When forced into prostitution by Mama Sondra, Ilona takes on the persona of Martin, who is stronger than Ilona could ever hope to be. Through all the violence and sexual tensions, this play asks the question: "Can a body that is torn find a way to heal itself and transform, and thus resist the tyranny of power?"
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| Caridad Svich |
What inspired you to write RIFT?
The play was commissioned by NYU's Graduate Acting Program and Mark Wing-Davey, the Program's Chair. The initial subject matter given to me was "feral children." From there I went into a rehearsal room for two weeks with a company of NYU grad actors and professional director Seret Scott and together we explored this rather vast yet specific subject from myriad points of view. Through movement and image and improvisation, somehow, the subject of sex trafficking emerged. I do admit that it is a subject that has been on my mind as an artist-activist for a while now. What's happening to young women, men, and children in this million dollar global "industry" is appalling. But honestly I hadn't thought that I'd write a play where the subject would become central to the storytelling until RIFT. So, my inspiration was Mark Wing-Davey, nine NYU graduate actors, three NYU graduate designers and my director. Initially.
What messages did you want to get across through this play?
I don't think plays should deliver messages. A theatre piece in and of itself is composed of many signs (visual, verbal, emotional, spatial, temporal). The "message" is the experience of witnessing the piece. However, as a dramatist, I do consider the possible effect and/or impact my work may have. For me, the play is about survival, heroic survival of human beings that have suffered physical, emotional, and un-natural (via war and its aftermath, necessary and/or forced displacement) abuse. All the characters in the interlocking storylines of the play have suffered, even the ones who are doing the damage. Some characters in the play make it through, find a place for healing and possible reconciliation, others are punished, others are lost, others carry on in a cycle of greed and profit. I ask the audience to take a journey in this play - sometimes darkly comic, sometimes quite brutal and visceral, sometimes tender - and enter, if they will, the beautiful and awful chaos of lives rent by conditions engendered by wars and also by the exploitation of one human being by another. I ask the audience to seek a place for peace.
How does this play compare to other work you have written?
RIFT, in many ways, sums up a series of plays that I've written in the last ten years. Starting with IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (a rave fable) through THRUSH and WRECKAGE (to name only three), I have been exploring to greater and lesser formal degrees not only stories that re-animate, re-envision ancient, classical texts for a new time, but also are epic in scope and design while locating a very intimate theatrical sensibility which characters must inhabit. The political/global world clashes and collides with the local lives in this series of plays, which, for lack of a better title, I call my "land and war" plays, even though they don't all deal with war and/or the blood memory of the earth. RIFT for me is a summing up, and a departure as well. When I was writing the play I could feel the veins of about ten plays written before coursing through me - a desire to synthesize elements and also find new ground as an artist. The comparison to other works is this: visceral, erotic, heightened, poetic, juxtaposition of high and low worlds and languages within a politicized socio-economic landscape, usually embedded within a critique of the condition of the post colonial being in the aftermath of colonialism and/or "colonized" invasions of territory and psyche.
Out of all the plays you have published, what do you consider to be your best work?
Never easy to play favourites, but of my published work I'm always happy to point people in the direction of IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (a rave fable), which is published by BackStage Books in the anthology DIVINE FIRE. There is at least one of my unpublished pieces which I consider my best work. Perhaps one day it will see the light of stage and/or print.
What does your company No Passport accomplish in the theatre world?
NoPassport is an unincorporated theatre alliance and press devoted to advocacy, action and publication of cross-cultural expressions of diversity and difference in theatre and performance. That's the byline, as it were. What do we do? We're a combination of artist kiosk, critical think tank and mobile salon, spoken word collective, and place for many artists to simply be without a passport to conversation and exchange. There's an emphasis, because of the nature of how the alliance began, on the exploration of the US Latina/o theatre voice. As a press, we publish new plays, translations and collected works that by and large are not published elsewhere. Sort of like an indie record label. Our authors include Octavio Solis, John Jesurun, Migdalia Cruz, Oliver Mayer, Saviana Stanescu, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Chiori Miyagawa and Karen Hartman. Our newest title print on demand is Kara Hartzler's No Roosters in the Desert, which opens at Borderlands Theater in Tucson this month.
Was it hard for you to establish yourself as a playwright? If so, do you believe that the process was harder because you are a female?
Yes and yes. I've been writing plays for twenty years and there are people in the industry who think of me as an "emerging" writer! Being "established" has as much to do with perception as it has to do with where the work is produced and the nature of hierarchies within a very conventional late capitalist system that designates the value of the Where synonymous with the Merit of the Artist. So, one of my first plays ANY PLACE BUT HERE premiered at INTAR in New York City. INTAR is one of the oldest theatres devoted to producing Latino/a new writing in the US. It's where Milcha Sanchez Scott, Cherrie Moraga, Eduardo Machado, Migdalia Cruz, Nilo Cruz were first seen/heard in some way (either in full production or in reading/workshop). It's where Maria Irene Fornes, with whom I trained for four years, led one of the most significant new writing laboratories in this country. But for many people, INTAR isn't necessarily on the "map." Another play of mine ALCHEMY OF DESIRE/DEAD-MAN'S BLUES premiered at Cincinnati Playhouse. For many people, that's seen as my first production. Even though it wasn't. Why? Because Cincinnati Playhouse is a "major" regional theatre.
For me, the work is the work. I've made amazing pieces with so-called alternative companies like 7 Stages in Atlanta, and with an adventurous yet mainstream venue like Denver Theatre Center. One makes work where there are homes for the work. Sometimes the home for a piece is not where you think it's going to be. Am I established? Well, I've been writing for a long time. But who's to say? Female dramatists in this country, esp Latina dramatists, do have a tougher time of it hitting their heads against the glass ceiling than others. It's a tough biz. I think at the end of the day, being a female writer is not something I can write against. I know that often people who don't know me and read my work think I'm a male writer. I find preconceptions about gendered approaches to writing fascinating. A writer's job, a writer's duty, is to the story being told. I'm conscious of my interest in putting women at the centre of my plays a lot of the time, because I still think so many stories about women's lives don't get told. Men's lives have been documented in the history of drama, esp. in Western drama, much more than women's! But as a writer I don't limit myself. The joy of writing is to write full out, dream big and take on as many voices, embrace as many lives as possible.
In the play, there are points where the characters sing songs, how is this significant to the piece as a whole?
Songs are a huge part of my work as a whole. I started out as a musician and singer. I trained early on in voice, piano and guitar. I've been writing lyrics and melodies for a long time, way before I was writing plays. Songs find their way into my plays often, because some plays need moments where the human voice is lifted. You know, I'm a big Shakespeare and Brecht fan, and of course, the Greeks! I love plays where ALL the elements are at the dramatist's disposal. Song/Music is an element of sound. Sound is an element of theatre. Theatre is poetry. Poetry is song. The first actor on the Greek stage in Western drama was a singer. So, for me, song has to do with theatre's root. Ritual. Song in and of itself is a device to tell story, to open up a window into a character's heart, to shift the perception of the playing and aural space of the play. Of my over thirty plays, nearly half of them have songs. In RIFT, the songs for me are about the path of healing, allowing that space to be alive - and are also linked to memory. Ilona's song, which Martin teaches her, is a song of exile. It is what ultimately carries her forth but lets her signal his memory.
Do you believe that the content in RIFT, especially the fighting and sexuality drives the audience to get uncomfortable? If so, do you believe that the audience needs to witness this content in order to experience catharsis?
There are about seven physical fights in RIFT. I remember the fight call at NYU took about 45 minutes before the show every night! The representation of violence on stage is something with which I've always wrestled. Some plays need to go there because the world they depict is stark and brutal and there's no other way. Think THE BACCHAE. Think KING LEAR. In a post neo-Jacobean theatrical era in Western English-language drama (after Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, Anthony Neilson, and Sarah Kane), the representation of violence has moved more and more to film and television and gaming, where there are several thousand more fictional characters killed every week. The plastic arts have become violence's domain. FX crews have a field day. In theatre, because it's more difficult, because it's 3-D and live, the representation of violence takes on a very different quality for an audience. In a shock and awe culture, what can theatre do that the plastic arts do thousand times more effectively and more "realistically?" Ultimately, for me, it has to do with the presence of the actor - this body feels, this body on stage goes through something, even if it's a construction, and a safe one. The audience is witness. in RIFT, yes, I think the situations and moments depicted may indeed be uncomfortable. Why should one be comfortable with violence? With damage? Inhumanity? Brutality? We are all implicated when witness. We are all in this mess of a world together. Yes, I hope for catharsis, and yes, I hope too for the possibility of grace in the everyday world.
You like to travel. Do you believe that any of the actions within Rift could take place at anywhere at any time? If so, is this a strong driving force and one of the themes of Rift?
What happens in RIFT happens when a society is torn apart. 5th century Troy, 2010 San Francisco. At root, the central actions depicted in the play have occurred and will (sadly) continue to occur for centuries. I don't think however that RIFT could happen at anytime. Only when a social order is broken in a devastating manner. The characters in the play are born and behave out of that condition.
Why did you choose to focus on a young girl in RIFT?
The number of woman and girls trafficked all over the world is astonishing and sad. Although it's the 21st century, the fact that women continue to be bought and sold, enslaved, abused and dehumanized continues to be a crime that remains constant. In the US alone, cities such as Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas and San Francisco are centers for transport and relocation of women and girls' bodies. The girl (Ilona) in RIFT could be in some person's mind in Lebanon or Iraq or Mexico, but she's also here. This girls' body carries the history and memory of the gone before and the what's to come. The enactment of her trauma and recovery is one we all share if as witness and participants in society we choose to regard, listen and record in our hearts and minds.
What are you working on now?
My stage evocation of Isabel Allende's THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is currently running in my English version at Denver Theatre Center until 23 October; it opens in a separate producion, in my bilingual version, at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis on 22 October and runs til 14 November. I'm also working on three new plays: A LITTLE STORY (which actually is a companion piece of sorts to RIFT), FOR LOVE, a dance-music-theatre piece very freely inspired by Euripides' Alcestis, and IN YOUR ARMS, a contemporary love story. I'm also working on a stage evocation of Julia Alvarez's novel IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES, which premieres in my Spanish version at Repertorio Espanol in New York City in February 2011. On the editorial front: a book I've edited on theatre and censorship OUT OF SILENCE is in early proof stage and will be published by Manchester University Press in the UK next year.
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RIFT by Caridad Svich opens October 21st at the Studio Theater on Lone Mountain. All shows are at 8pm.
ONLY SEVEN PERFORMANCES!:
Oct. 21 thru 24 & Oct. 28 thru 30, 8pm
At the Studio Theater on USF's Lone Mountain campus, 2800 Turk St., San Francisco (directions available here)
Directed by Roberto Varea
Featuring: Shoresh Alaudini, Tess Bellomo, Ilyse Liffreing
Daniel Martinez, Dana Robie, Melelani Satsuma, Sara Stalkfleet
Michael Tan and Jessika Zijdemans.
$10.00 general admission
$5.00 with USF ID
To RSVP or for more information, click here.
