My overall impression
Theater of Note is such a great Space. I had heard of it many times before I had ever performed here recently and am glad to be a part of its history.
The show opens with good use of the theaters projection screen. After a blackout we hear a beautiful voice and a woman sitting on a trash can appears, setting the tone. Its quite lovely.
The set is minimal so you know props are “as needed” and the rest lay in the hands of the actress.
The opening lines I took note of were “She lives in brownsville and she wanted to be black” Also that she didnt know her brothers and sisters had different parents until she got to school and found out they all had different last names. But shes not complaining. Welcome to Brownsville!
Del Valle uses her space very well, uses all of it while keeping it central. She is never off center long she understands how to balance the space. She creates stage magic with her ability to make the space entirely believable as the location she chooses it to be. When she is at the pool she really is- the Run DMC concert she is there. When she is being attacked she really is being dragged into the subway, the train is coming and the backpack is half a block away. (her attack scene by herself is mastery of this art.) Why? because she has a gifted imagination the leaves nothing unexplored. She acts out of an intuitive place and locks it in. She is intuitive about every possible choice. This happens when one has developed the art into something from outside of herself. She doesn’t let intellect destroy the living that is conjured up in her. Thus the humor is entirely out of the whole not a gratuitous by-product to get a laugh, we laugh by the truth of it. When she is performing she is in the emotional state in the time and place. The people she is talking too are really there. She loves everyone of them. And she honors them, she forgives them and understands. They have all given her something that made her succeed. And in a way – its for them too, for humanity, for all of us. She does not blame or seek pity she accepts herself as a part of life. She is so believable that it is possible to forget she is acting. At one point I started to get out of my chair to give her a hug as I had forgotten she was on a stage performing I thought for a split second we were communicating on a personal level.
The beautiful thing about her performance which I found so awesome was that as she lives this life for us at different stages she actually transforms in character through the experience she is having while acting. Not out of language, but out of an interesting evolution through performance that enthralled me.
She wrapped it up with a monologue telling us how everything worked out. She had no choice its the fringe and has limitations. You could say well, she could cut here and add there, But I would rather hope she has a part two somewhere because though most of what we saw was based on childhood and adolescence her tranformations to the mother character were solid and beautiful. Acting ability is as good as it gets. The audience applauded for a second bow and didnt want to leave.
