UUFSMA: “The Unifying Power of Bilingual Theater”

UU Service

“The Unifying Power of Bilingual Theater”

Marcela Brondo and Fredric Dannen

Sunday, Jul. 28, 10:30 a.m.

by Jon Sievert

At this Sunday’s Unitarian Universalist Fellowship service, Marcela Brondo and Fredric Dannen discuss their mission to unite the city’s Mexican-born and expat communities with bilingual theater.

The playwright George Bernard Shaw supposedly once quipped that the United States and England were two countries divided by a common language. For years San Miguel’s two principle theater audiences have been divided by a language difference.

In 2016, Mexican theater professional Marcela Brondo and journalist/author Fredric Dannen decided to tackle the issue head on. They believed that live theater – “the place,” in Arthur Miller’s words, “where humanity confronts itself” – has more immediacy and power than any other art form to unite people of different cultures. The following year, they created the bilingual theater company La Troupe México and presented Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night to great acclaim in Spanish with English supertitles. “It was such a joy to see so many Mexicans at the production and to be able to invite two Mexican friends to share a theatrical experience,” one attendee wrote.

Last August La Troupe presented Stephanie Walker’s Las Madres, a play about a young woman’s abduction by the 1970s Argentinean military junta and the effect of her disappearance on her Buenos Aires family. In eight sold-out shows, the play was presented in Spanish with English supertitles to an audience evenly divided between Sanmiguelense Mexicans and expatriates. The subject matter, forced disappearance, had just played a central role in the Mexican presidential election, and the separation of parents and children was headline news in the United States. There was a palpable sense of emotional bonding in the bicultural audience. Many attendees wept.

Marcela Brondo, who directed Las Madres, comes from a performing arts family and was a child actor in Mexican television programs such as Nosotros los Gómez and Tú…a alguien le importas. She studied theater arts and dance at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes and has acted in numerous plays, including the Symmetry Theatre Company’s San Francisco production of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive.

Fredric Dannen is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and has written for film, television, and theater. Hit Men, his bestselling book about the record industry placed second on Billboard’s list of “The 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time” and is being developed as a television series. Guest musician for the service is pianist Enrique Prado.

For more information about the UUFSMA, including our Social Action outreach, weekly discussion groups, social activities, and Care Team, join us any Sunday at 10:30 a.m. at the Hotel La Aldea or visit our website at uufsma.org. Our Sunday morning Children’s Religious Education program is on summer break until September.

Our fellowship was born in 1987 when a small group of expatriate religious liberals came together to meet as Unitarian Universalists in San Miguel de Allende. The fellowship has been active and thriving ever since. Every UU church has it’s own flavor, and we are no exception. We are a combination of expats and visitors, each actively engaged and contributing to this wonderful Mexican community we love. Because there is a coming, going, and returning aspect, our spiritual community is extremely fluid.  There is a magic in San Miguel which draws us in and binds us together—both as members of the church and of the larger community. Our programming is led by visiting ministers, community leaders, and church members, so the variety is lively. We have opportunities to meet as UU’s each week at discussion groups, breakfasts, luncheons, and in various other ways. Depending on the season, attendance fluctuates between 40 and 140. Our primary focus is on funding social action within the surrounding community. We love good music, good discussion, good food, and having visitors. We invite you to join us any Sunday morning.

Members regularly post updates and information on this site. We also post meeting minutes and announcements there.

To join our Yahoo group site click on this link:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/UUFSMA/info

Click on “membership”and follow the directions.

Posting a notice on the Yahoo site is easy. Just go to your regular mail browser, type in the address line: uufsma@yahoogroups.com , type your message and hit send!

We encourage you to use this site to communicate with other local UUs.