Hispanic theater performs

The Hispanic Theater class taught by retired professor Ray Horst performed a series of Spanish plays and sketches on Nov. 17 in the Studio Theatre. Horst's students include Carissa Bazzle, Emily Benner, Sarah Buller, Sarah Dick, Jennifer Hartwig, Andrew Intagliata, and John Neiswander. Although not part of the class, students Kevin Beachy and Jesse Yoder volunteered to fill in needed roles. The event also featured a discussion on Hispanic immigration, led by Tonya Osinosky and one student actor from the bilingual theatrical troupe Teatro Chirmol.

Commencing the production was a skit titled "El País Libre," or "Free Country" in English, focusing on the comical side of common miscommunication. "La Fuerza de la Debilidad," or "The Strength of Weakness," exposed a nagging wife's use of reverse psychology to get her weak-willed husband to give his blessing to their dauther's engagement to a young suitor.

Concluding the production was "El Censo," or "The Census," in which a frumpy, emotionally unstable, middle-aged woman, (Hartwig), and her conniving spinster sister (Dick), run an unregistered dressmaker's shop.

Business is great until an underpaid government official (Neiswander) knocks at the door to take a census of the supposedly non-existent income figures. He is encouraged in his somewhat detective-like strategies to reveal the truth of the illegal shop by the Cinderella figure, junior Sarah Buller. However, a charmingly drunken older brother and shop-owner (Intagliata) staunchly refuses to release any information concerning his accounts. In the end, Neiswander has a cigarette, Intagliata has a beer, Hartwig has a good cry, and everybody consents to sit down and, as a group effort, fabricate all the facts the official needs.

The most powerful part of the event was Teatro Chirmol's contribution in raising awareness about Latino immigrants, especially those who are "undocumented." Osinosky points out that the term "undocumented" is much less degrading than the common "illegal alien," which is representative of the negative attitude a large group of Americans have concerning Latinos in the United States. Osinosky also discussed the American tendency to label all Latinos as "Mexican," the poverty level of Latinos, especially Mexicans, and the grueling process of immigration, both legal and undocumented, for Hispanics.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with not only the acting skills of the students, but also their ability to speak their lines without missing a beat. Hartwig, a junior Spanish/Elementary Education double major, said the memorization process of Spanish was more difficult than in English: "It didn't make as much sense. You had to memorize more individual words."

However, memorization was not the only challenging aspect of a second-language production. The student actors had many practices working on intonation alone, studying how to ask questions realistically and learning which words to emphasize.

As a Spanish major, I was thrilled at such an effort not only to challenge EMU students' language skills, but also to include our large Harrisonburg Latino community in EMU activities. Judging by the full house audience, many other people were also enthusiastic about this endeavor.

With much embarrassment, however, I admit that at several points, my Spanish comprehension simply was not adequate. Although I was able to grasp the overall concepts of the scenes, I completely missed the humor or irony of many individual lines. The language barrier proved even stronger for students who had very little or no Spanish background.

One such junior, Sara Heatwole, commented that, "To be honest, I was jealous! I want to speak Spanish as fluently as those students do. I was both impressed by their acting and a little left behind by the plot. But even though I may not have understood everything thy said, I believe the Spanish theater was a great event for the community. This was just one more expression of the open arms that EMU has toward the community and the world. Bravo!"