Theater fans will have a rare opportunity to help playwrights hone their craft during three events in November and December.
The Teatro Salon series at the Guadalupe Bookstore will present table readings of new plays by Amalia Ortiz, Irene Chavez and Patricia Zamora. Amalia Ortiz’s Pass It On will be performed Saturday, Las Comadres de Morales Street by Irene Chavez will be read Wednesday evening, and Zamora’s El Monstro: A Play with Music will take place on Dec. 21.
The table reading of a play is an informal performance wherein cast members read from their scripts, with a director leading and an assistant director reading out the playwright’s directives. The process allows unusual insight into how a play is produced and performed.
Opportunity for feedback
Jorge Piña, theater arts director for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, said the Teatro Salon series is not only an opportunity to enjoy new plays by local playwrights but “also the patron has the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the play.”
Audience members can weigh in on what they liked and didn’t like and identify characters or moments in the play they found confusing, he said, insight which can help the playwright polish their script for a fully staged production.
Amalia Ortiz has been working on her Pass It On script since 2015, when it was first written for a graduate school assignment. Spurred on by a teacher, she eventually wrote three different versions, including a horror-genre take on what had been conceived of as a lighthearted comedy.
All three versions have been joined to produce the final script, Ortiz said, with the horror scene as the play’s first act, “where it’s this opening story that the grandmother character is telling her granddaughter.”
The story explains the family’s superstitions about chain letters, which the play’s intergenerational scenario hinges on.
Westside story
Wednesday evening, Chavez watched as six actors performed her script in the bookstore, surrounded by ornate ofrendas still on display from a Día de los Muertos exhibition.
Longtime San Antonio actor Lisa Suarez read the role of Doña Juana Vasquez, opening Las Comadres de Morales Street dancing with her best friend Doña Carmen Chavez, played by Cindy Martinez.
The two reminisce about dancing to Sunny and the Sunliners and the Royal Jesters at the old Lerma’s nightclub, firmly situating the play on San Antonio’s West Side.
Chavez said she’d be listening closely for how the actors embody their characters, attentive to chemistry, playfulness and if the language works. Also, “if the jokes hit,” Chavez said, at one point laughing aloud with the actors at the comadres’ remarks on a neighbor passing by.
A particular actor’s talents can alter a character, Chavez said. Xavier Lopez will portray Richard Garcia, the friend of Doña Carmen’s 70-year-old boyfriend, who might or not be a ghost.
Lopez is “such a good actor and has more depth, that I added more to that character to give him more to work with,” Chavez said. “Xavier is taking it to the next level.”
Three local Tejanas
Chavez has been working on her script for a decade, staging various iterations in readings and small productions with Jump-Start Performance Co., Teatro Audaz and the Seniors In Play nonprofit organization.
What started as her first Teatro Salon one-act play Las Cochinas Christmas 10 years ago has evolved to become her first full-length play, she said.
The table reading process has been “super helpful,” she said, because you get in front of an audience, you get to workshop it a little bit. And so now I feel like it’s as good as it can be.”
But, Chavez said, attentive to the play unfolding before her during rehearsal, “we can tweak and keep working it to see what sticks.”
Piña said he is particularly proud to have selected three local Tejana playwrights from among a dozen scripts submitted during the Teatro Salon open call.
“I really like these three stories, because they’re very much involved in the community, involving the West Side,” he said.
All three Teatro Salon table readings will take place in the annex of the Guadalupe Bookstore. Pass It On will be read Saturday at 3 p.m., Las Comadres de Morales Street will be read at 7 p.m. on Nov. 20, and Zamora’s play El Monstro: A Play with Music will be read Dec. 21. Attendance is free.
