Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Provocative and challenging Cell has a socially-conscious pulse
Mo`olelo Performing Arts explores immigration detention and its attendant horrors for the captors and captured
Cell at Mo'olelo
Cell
- Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 Tenth Avenue, East Village
As we enter the Tenth Avenue Theatre space, tall, barbed-wire fences flank both sides. Ushers don black vests with bold white letters across the back: THURSTON. A soundscape rumbles in the background.
We are in Rene’s (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson) home. She enters holding a baked cake and a balloon with the words “Welcome Back” on it. She’s celebrating the arrival of her sister Cerise (Monique Gaffney) and Cerise’s daughter, Gwen (Andrea Agosto), the latter two previously homeless and penniless. All are African-Americans.
In addition to providing her sister and niece a place to stay, Rene has secured jobs for them at Thurston Corrections Corporation. Young Gwen narrates and records the excitement on her cell phone.
Thurston is euphemistically dubbed “residence for immigrants to stay until they are returned to their countries.” Who are these detainees? Women, men, and, children caught in their attempts to enter the U.S. illegally.
Gwen becomes acquainted with the inmates in Cell #293: a Haitian woman named Marie Luiz, and her baby Beatriz. A tragic event deepens the bond and prompts one character to say, “We browns and blacks locking up browns and blacks.”
We meet Leon (Vimel Sephus), a 35-year-old African American guard, whose speech is laced with obscenity. Leon and Gwen become lovers. When they go outside on a date, the scene is marvelously realized by the moveable set: one moment we are in Rene’s kitchen, the next, within Thurston’s American flag-draped, institutional walls.
Revelations occur: surveillance cameras film terribly unsettling things done to the woman detainees in their cells.
One of San Diego’s foremost actors, Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson overshadows the rest of the quartet as Rene. Wearing a gorgeously huge bundle of dreads, her best moments come when Rene becomes catatonic.
Cassandra Medley’s drama raises large questions, but assumes prior knowledge of America’s criminalization of undocumented immigrants. And though the African-American argot is crucial for the piece, at times it is hard to make out some of the dialogue.
Overall, the acting is a bit uneven. There is no subtlety in the range of emotions, only extremes of joy and despondence.
That said, this is theater with a socially-conscious pulse. Provocative and challenging, Cell is a nexus of politics and the arts. How can we remain artful while having what Czeslaw Milosz terms “a moral compulsion to be politically committed?”
In the final scene, Gwen is at a new job. “Price check” is heard on the sound system. But what is to be paid in exchange for citizenship of a nation founded on the values of liberty, or justice?
Here's something you might be interested in.
Provocative and challenging Cell has a socially-conscious pulse
Mo`olelo Performing Arts explores immigration detention and its attendant horrors for the captors and captured
Provocative and challenging Cell has a socially-conscious pulse
Mo`olelo Performing Arts explores immigration detention and its attendant horrors for the captors and captured
Cell at Mo'olelo
Cell
- Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 Tenth Avenue, East Village
As we enter the Tenth Avenue Theatre space, tall, barbed-wire fences flank both sides. Ushers don black vests with bold white letters across the back: THURSTON. A soundscape rumbles in the background.
We are in Rene’s (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson) home. She enters holding a baked cake and a balloon with the words “Welcome Back” on it. She’s celebrating the arrival of her sister Cerise (Monique Gaffney) and Cerise’s daughter, Gwen (Andrea Agosto), the latter two previously homeless and penniless. All are African-Americans.
In addition to providing her sister and niece a place to stay, Rene has secured jobs for them at Thurston Corrections Corporation. Young Gwen narrates and records the excitement on her cell phone.
Thurston is euphemistically dubbed “residence for immigrants to stay until they are returned to their countries.” Who are these detainees? Women, men, and, children caught in their attempts to enter the U.S. illegally.
Gwen becomes acquainted with the inmates in Cell #293: a Haitian woman named Marie Luiz, and her baby Beatriz. A tragic event deepens the bond and prompts one character to say, “We browns and blacks locking up browns and blacks.”
We meet Leon (Vimel Sephus), a 35-year-old African American guard, whose speech is laced with obscenity. Leon and Gwen become lovers. When they go outside on a date, the scene is marvelously realized by the moveable set: one moment we are in Rene’s kitchen, the next, within Thurston’s American flag-draped, institutional walls.
Revelations occur: surveillance cameras film terribly unsettling things done to the woman detainees in their cells.
One of San Diego’s foremost actors, Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson overshadows the rest of the quartet as Rene. Wearing a gorgeously huge bundle of dreads, her best moments come when Rene becomes catatonic.
Cassandra Medley’s drama raises large questions, but assumes prior knowledge of America’s criminalization of undocumented immigrants. And though the African-American argot is crucial for the piece, at times it is hard to make out some of the dialogue.
Overall, the acting is a bit uneven. There is no subtlety in the range of emotions, only extremes of joy and despondence.
That said, this is theater with a socially-conscious pulse. Provocative and challenging, Cell is a nexus of politics and the arts. How can we remain artful while having what Czeslaw Milosz terms “a moral compulsion to be politically committed?”
In the final scene, Gwen is at a new job. “Price check” is heard on the sound system. But what is to be paid in exchange for citizenship of a nation founded on the values of liberty, or justice?
Comments