INTERVIEW: New performance piece finds actor becoming factory worker in Tijuana
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is bringing art and artists from Latin America and around the United States to many areas in the Los Angeles area. This celebration and exploration is keeping the museums, theaters and performing arts venues busy with content that offers many varying viewpoints on issues, identities, histories and communities.
One of the most anticipated events is the Pacific Standard Time Live Art: LA/LA festival organized by REDCAT, CalArts’ Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts. One of the festival’s key events is a two-night run of Tijuana at the Skirball Cultural Center on North Sepulveda Boulevard.
In the show, which comes from Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, actor Gabino Rodríguez remembers the time when he assumed the identity of Santiago Ramírez and traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, to become a minimum-wage factory worker for six months. The theater company bills the performance as a social artistic experiment, and audience members will have a chance to experience the results. Tijuana was inspired by the work of journalists Andrés Solano and Gunter Walraff. They both lived as factory workers for six months.
It’s part of a larger project called Democracy in Mexico 1965-2015, which will eventually have 32 parts (one for each state in Mexico.) Tijuana and Veracruz are the first two parts.
Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol has been in existence since 2003, thanks to Rodríguez and Luisa Pardo. Their goal is to erase borders and provide meaning, articulate, dislocate and unravel what everyday practice fuses and overlooks.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Rodríguez about the performance. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audience members expect at Tijuana?
Tijuana is a performance about representation. How and who are we able to represent? For six months Santiago Ramírez (a character created by Gabino Rodríguez) lived in Tijuana earning the minimum wage.
Where did the inspiration for the piece come from?
The piece was inspired by the work of Andrés Solano and Gunter Walraff (journalists). Everything starts with a very basic question: what [it] means to be another. What happened when a usual procedure of the theater is translated to the ‘real.’
What do you hope is in the mind of people as they leave a performance of Tijuana?
I hope in the mind of the people will be something that I don’t even know.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Tijuana will be presented Jan. 11 and 12 at the Skirball Cultural Center at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles. The performances are presented as part of Pacific Standard Time Live Arts: LA/LA, organized by REDCAT. Click here for more information and tickets.
