A M E R I C A N C O N S E R V AT O R Y T H E AT E R
Carey Perloff, Artistic Director
Heather Kitchen, Executive Director
PRESENTS
Boleros for the
Disenchanted
by josé rivera
directed by carey perloff
american conservatory theater
may 7–may 31, 2009
WORDS ON PLAYS
prepared by
elizabeth brodersen
publications editor
michael paller
resident dramaturg
dan rubin
publications & literary associate
lesley gibson
publications intern
megan cohen
dramaturgy intern
deborah munro
artistic intern
a.c.t. is supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San
Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts,
and the donors of The Next Generation Campaign.
© 2009 American Conservatory Theater, a nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
table of contents
.
Characters, Cast, and Synopsis of Boleros for the Disenchanted
Boleros for the Disenchanted Meet and Greet / Design Presentation
Family Stories: An Interview with José Rivera
by Dan Rubin
A Brief History of Puerto Rico
by Megan Cohen
A Guide to Towns and Cities Seen or Mentioned in Boleros for the Disenchanted
A Boleros Miscellany and Glossary of Spanish Terms
by Megan Cohen
. Questions to Consider
. For Further Information . . .
OPPOSITE (L to R) José Rivera’s Uncle Wilfredo, maternal grandmother, Delfina, and mother, Maria, in Puerto Rico.
Photo courtesy José Rivera.
TOP Young couple in Barranquitas, Puerto Rico, 1944–47. Photo by H. Clair Amstutz.
BOTTOM Street in Cayey, Puerto Rico, early 1955. Photo by Allen Kanagy.
characters, cast, and synopsis of
BOLEROS FOR THE DISENCHANTED
Boleros for the Disenchanted premiered May at Yale Repertory Theatre in New
Haven, Connecticut.
characters and cast
don fermin/older eusebio
eusebio/priest
flora/eve
manuelo/oskar
doña milla/older flora
petra/monica
Robert Beltran
Drew Cortese
Lela Loren
Dion Mucciacito
Rachel Ticotin
Michele Vazquez
the setting
Miraflores and Santurce, Puerto Rico, –; then Daleville, Alabama, –.
synopsis
A
ct i, scene i. The front yard and porch of the Calderon family’s home in Miraflores,
Puerto RicoNight. Twenty-two-year-old Flora runs out of her family’s modest,
brightly painted house in tears as her mother, Doña Milla, follows. Doña Milla has just
broken the news that Flora’s fiancé, Manuelo, was seen kissing another woman on multiple occasions. Flora, devastated, refuses to accept this revelation, but as her mother lists
the witnesses’ names and the details of the sightings, Flora admits that the bad news is
probably true. Still, she insists that she loves Manuelo. God and destiny want them to be
together—but not until after she makes Manuelo suffer long and hard for hurting her.
Doña Milla tries to persuade her daughter to reevaluate her feelings for Manuelo. She
instructs her that the reality of marriage is decidedly unromantic, especially if the man—as
so many are—is unfaithful, or drinks, or takes his personal failures out on his wife. Her
own marriage, she confesses, has been a struggle, in spite of the fact that once, long ago,
she, like Flora, was a woman in love, swept off her feet by a seemingly wonderful man. She
tells her daughter to ask Manuelo the truth, look into his eyes, and trust her instincts.
A very drunk Don Fermin, Flora’s father, stumbles upon them. He demands to know
what his two women are doing out of the house at night and hurls forth a series of vitriolic
insults. When Flora stands up for her mother, he slaps her across the face, declares her
disrespectful, and wishes on her an abusive husband. He then calls his daughter a fool for
agreeing to marry Manuelo, whom, he says, the whole town knows is sleeping with half
the girls in Miraflores. He complains about how much better things were in his time, when
men were men and children were respectful, and weakens as he laments the fact that their
rich soil is being exploited by the United States and that the best young Puerto Ricans now
migrate up north to New York. The family reconciles.
scene ii. The front yard and porch of the Calderon home. A few days later. As Doña Milla
tends to the garden, Manuelo arrives looking for Flora. Doña Milla reminds him that
Flora is her only daughter and that her only son, Efrain, moved to the Bronx and has not
been heard from since. She tells him that Flora is a clean, pious virgin, and if Manuelo
breaks her heart Doña Milla will castrate him. Having made her point, she calls for her
daughter.
Flora comes to the door dressed in her best outfit. Doña Milla goes inside but remains
just behind the open door. Manuelo, fearing Don Fermin, suggests they take a walk, but
Flora assures him her father is not home. She asks him who he has been having an affair
with, asserting that if he is really a man he
will tell her. He admits that he “did it” with
Adriana Rodriguez. Flora bursts into tears
and asks him how he can be so cruel to admit
such a heinous crime when what she really
was asking him to do was convince her that
the gossip was untrue. She becomes hysterical and furious and shouts to the neighborhood that he is a coward and a cheat.
Manuelo attempts to defend himself.
Men and women are made differently, he
tells Flora, and men have needs that cannot
be denied. He insists that his love for her is
still powerful and strong, despite his need to
sin. He attempts to sweet-talk her into forgiving him, but she tells him that she expects
“complete, unquestioned, life-long fidelity.”
He agrees that once they are married he will
remain faithful, but she demands that his
fidelity begin immediately. He insists that,
José Rivera’s maternal grandparents, Delfina and Claudio.
given his nature, what she asks of him is Photo courtesy José Rivera.
impossible, as their wedding date is still a year away; he hurls a mouthful of insults at her.
Flora, in tears, calls to her mother, who comes out and banishes Manuelo.
scene iii. The front yard and porch of the Calderon home. Later that evening. An emotionally fragile Flora sits on the porch with her parents playing dominoes. Don Fermin and
Doña Milla suggest that they could have Manuelo killed with the help of a local witch.
Flora refuses their offer, saying that Manuelo is already dead to her. Her mother suggests
that the witch could instead put a spell on Manuelo that would make him love and stay
faithful to Flora forever. Flora replies that the strength of her love should be enough to
keep a man from straying, and if it is not then she will remain unmarried. She breaks down
in tears. Her parents suggest that she visit her cousin Petra in the town of Santurce to get
away from Miraflores for awhile. Flora joyously agrees.
scene iv. A street corner in the town of Santurce. Night. Several weeks later. In front of
Petra’s family’s apartment, Flora and Petra sit on a bench eating ice cream and dreaming
of the future. Petra announces that she is absolutely going to move to the United States;
she hates what Puerto Rico has become. Flora admits that when she looks at her mother’s
life she too flirts with the idea of leaving, but
she loves her homeland and has heard awful
things about the United States, with its guns,
racism, poverty, and drugs.
A handsome young National Guardsman,
Eusebio, appears on the street, carrying a
duffle bag. He puts a coin into the jukebox of a
nearby grocery store, and the bolero “Dolores”
begins to play. He notices the girls, smiles at
Flora, and begins speaking to the outgoing
Petra and her more careful cousin. He explains
that he missed his bus back to the barracks and
has to walk through Santurce to make curfew.
He tries to engage Flora in conversation.
Despite Petra’s help, Eusebio does not get far
with Flora. The song finishes, and Eusebio
says goodnight to the women and leaves. After
he has gone, Flora reprimands Petra for talking to a strange man; Petra rebukes Flora for
rejecting a handsome suitor in uniform.
Rivera’s parents, Maria and Herminio.
Photo courtesy José Rivera.
scene v. The street corner in Santurce. Night. Two weeks later. Flora sits alone on the
bench, waiting. She goes into her cousin’s apartment. Eusebio enters and goes into a
nearby store. Flora returns to the bench. Eusebio calls out from the store and enters, two
beers in hand, before Flora can escape back to the apartment. They make awkward small
talk and Flora nervously chats about Petra’s beauty and vibrant spirit. Eusebio explains
that Petra is not the reason he has purposefully missed his bus every night for the last two
weeks so that he had the excuse to come through Santurce. He comes closer, though she
initially protests, and offers her a beer, which she declines.
Eusebio tells Flora about the National Guard, that he is indifferent to it but thinks of
the ships as a metaphor for Puerto Rico, his floating island home. He again offers Flora a
beer, and she again refuses with a diatribe against the general decline of the moral fiber of
individuals in their society. Eusebio pours his beers out onto the sidewalk. She scolds him
for being wasteful. He argues that Flora’s obsession with avoiding sin also causes her to
miss out on the pleasures in life. He explains how he sees her: as a girl, desperately alone
and carrying a lot of sadness, who wants to be set free. He tells her about his own sadness
and manages to break down her defenses a bit. He then proclaims that he should meet her
parents, the next appropriate step if they are to spend more time together. Flora teases him,
saying that she is not sure that she wants to do that. Eusebio tells her to take her time, but
he is confident that they have a future together.
scene vi. The front yard and porch of the Calderon home. A month later. Flora’s parents
sit on the porch discussing their daughter as they wait to meet Eusebio for the first time.
Petra and Flora anxiously enter, asking whether Eusebio has arrived yet. Flora instructs
her father to behave himself, but she is interrupted when Manuelo shows up for an unannounced visit in an effort to win Flora back. Don Fermin flies into a rage and goes for a
machete. Manuelo, who is carrying a Bible, insists that he has become a new man, changed
by Flora’s words and ready to agree to her terms. As he and Flora argue, Don Fermin
returns with the machete raised. Manuelo pulls out a knife, declaring that he is ready
to fight for Flora’s love. As the women attempt to restrain Don Fermin, Eusebio arrives
unnoticed; he observes the chaos with amusement. When Flora sees him, all parties make
a panicked attempt to compose themselves. Manuelo, to Flora’s surprise and embarrassment, introduces himself as Flora’s fiancé and then requests an audience with Flora alone.
She refuses, but Eusebio tells her to respect the love she once had for Manuelo and hear
him out. He adds that he himself has no right to be there at all, unless he was to become
her fiancé. He then asks her to marry him.
scene vii. The front yard and porch of the Calderon home. A year later. Flora and Eusebio
have just been married and all are joyous. Eusebio then asks everyone to gather around.
He declares that their island is in trouble and that the prospects for a young man looking
for work are bleak. He announces that he and Flora have made the “painful, but necessary” decision to move to the United States. Flora’s parents are horrified. An enraged Don
Fermin shouts that they’ll be leaving the material poverty of Puerto Rico for the “spiritual
poverty” of America and curses Eusebio. As the family runs into the house, Eusebio holds
out his hand to his bride and, after a conflicted moment, she takes it.
A
ct ii, scene i. Flora and Eusebio’s home in Daleville, Alabama. . Flora and
Eusebio, now in their sixties, are spending a quiet evening in their humble Alabama
home. Flora is vibrant and in good health, but Eusebio is bedridden due to the effects of
advanced diabetes: a mild stroke and the amputation of both legs from the knees down.
They bicker like any couple that has been married almost years. Flora explains that she
is bored being stuck in the house as his nurse. Because there is a disturbing trend among
local couples of getting married much too young, she has decided to volunteer through
her church to counsel young people eager to wed. She informs Eusebio that they will be
educating these couples on the realities of marriage by inviting them into their home.
Eusebio is reluctant, but as he tries to dissuade his wife, there is a knock on the door.
The first couple, Oskar and Monica, has arrived: they met in a bar two months ago and
plan to marry in one week.
Oskar, a soldier, resents the
counseling, but is willing
to suffer through it to be
with Monica. The smitten Monica declares that
they have found “true love.”
Flora takes them into the
bedroom to meet Eusebio,
who is a sobering sight.
The two men quickly bond
over baseball as Flora walks
Monica through the everyday care of her invalid husband. Eusebio assures the
couple that the marriage
was not always so difficult,
but it was never easy. He Herminio and Maria, Alabama. Photo courtesy José Rivera.
decribes his life with Flora, recalling their arrival in America, when he was willing to slave
away at various low-wage jobs to support their growing family. They lived in a house on
Long Island and raised six of the nine children Flora bore (three died), two who went to
college and four who joined the military. Flora battled cancer and won; he has not been so
lucky in his fight against illness. They followed their son Pablo to Alabama after he was
stationed at Fort Rucker, but he was transferred to Germany. Now Flora and Eusebio are
stuck in the tiny, limited town of Daleville, far away from family.
Eusebio confesses that he suspects Flora’s father put a curse on him the night of their
wedding. But no matter how difficult things have become, he has always had Flora, a
wonderful wife, who now bathes him and wipes the excrement from his body. He warns
Monica and Oskar that if they aren’t up for the unromantic necessities of a shared life
then they aren’t ready for marriage. He is overcome with emotion as he recalls his youth in
Puerto Rico, and Flora ushers the young couple into the other room.
Now alone with Oskar, Monica panics. She insists that she has no trace of Flora’s selflessness and indestructibility. She doesn’t think that either of them would be able to care
for the other like Flora cares for Eusebio. After a moment of reflection, however, Oskar
responds that he would be able to give that much to Monica; he would do all of that and
more for her. Their trust in one another renewed, they embrace and look to the future.
scene ii. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Night. Eight months later, the week before Christmas.
Eusebio awakes from a nightmare and tells Flora that he dreamed that an angel came down
from the heavens and told him he would die two days before Christmas—this Saturday. An
agitated Flora insists that the angel was not real, but Eusebio hopes the prophecy is true:
he is ready to be free of his legless prison. He insists that they begin to plan his funeral at
once and that a priest come to administer last rites. Flora reluctantly agrees.
scene iii. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Two days later. Eve, Eusebio’s nurse, checks his
vitals; as she and Flora tend to him, Eusebio says he is glad to be dying, but sighs about
the various daily activities he will no longer be able to do the following week because he’ll
be gone. He describes to Eve his idyllic picture of heaven: Puerto Rico in the s. The
priest then arrives, confused that Eusebio is convinced that he is dying when he appears
to be quite robust. He reprimands the jovial Eusebio for the pain his blasé acceptance of
his imminent death is causing Flora. A much more somber Eusebio insists that he really is
dying and wants to be given last rites. The priest suggests that the women leave the room
for Eusebio’s confession, but Eusebio insists that they stay. The priest begins and Eusebio
confesses to the general wrongs of his life. Then he confesses that he should have loved
Flora better, and that he has strayed. When Flora reassures him that his infidelity is “old
news,” he sheepishly admits that he is not referring to the woman she already knows about,
but to another woman after the initial infidelity. Betrayed anew, Flora flies into a rage.
Facing his wife’s anger, Eusebio worries: “Shit, maybe that angel was just a dream.”
scene iv. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Later that night. Eusebio sleeps as Flora prays. Eve
returns to check on Eusebio and brings Flora the mail, which includes a Christmas card
from Puerto Rico. Eve opens the card and reads a short greeting from Petra, now a grandmother, who never left the island after all. Flora notes the irony: Petra was the one who
wanted to live in the American countryside, but she stayed and instead Flora is stuck in
Alabama.
Flora describes to Eve the long, torturous process she went through to forgive Eusebio
after she found out about his initial infidelity, and how it seemed like forever before she
could laugh again. She laments how alone she feels and that her children are spread across
the world. Eve suggests that Flora needs a vacation: on the beach in Eve’s hometown in
Spain, watching sexy young studs stroll by. Flora tells her, “Don’t tempt me.”
scene v. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Saturday morning. Flora awakens and goes to Eusebio.
She gently attempts to wake him, but he doesn’t stir. She shakes him hard and he jolts
awake. It is Saturday, and he is alive and well and still in Daleville. Eusebio is confused and
horrified. Relieved that her husband did not die, but still angry at his infidelity and secrecy,
Flora unleashes her rage and verbally assaults him for his betrayal. He begs Flora to stop,
frustrated that he has nothing left—no legs, no freedom, no hope, nothing. Suddenly, he
has a stroke. Flora frantically calls Eve for help.
scene vi. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Night. Two months later. Flora watches over Eusebio,
again praying as he sleeps. There is a knock on the door: a happily married Oskar and
Monica have stopped by before shipping out to Germany to show Flora their baby. They
tell her they are sorry about Eusebio, who has lost most of his ability to speak. Flora hopes
that he may, in a few years, be able to talk and flirt again and insists that she herself is fine.
The couple says their goodbyes and thanks Flora, whom they credit for both their marriage
and their baby. They promise to track down Pablo in Germany.
scene vii. Flora and Eusebio’s home. Night. Two months later. Eusebio watches the Mets
season opener as Flora stands behind him giving him a shave. Flora engages him in light
conversation about the game: he can answer only in slurred monosyllabic words. After she
finishes the shave she turns off the tv and tells him that Eve gave her a bottle of pills as “a
way to grant the angel’s promise.” She acknowledges that Eusebio has long desired a way
out of his misery, and she asks if he would like to take them, telling him that she could
take them, too, and go with him. He refuses. She asks why he wants to stay. He responds,
“With you.” Moved, she crawls into bed with him and they turn the tv on to watch the
remainder of the game.
BOLEROS FOR THE DISENCHANTED meet
and greet/
design presentation
Excerpts from Remarks Made to a.c.t. Cast and Staff April D
uring the first week of rehearsal of each production, a.c.t. staff members and the
show’s cast and creative team gather in a studio to meet, mingle, and get to know
each other. After personal introductions are made, the director and designers present to
the assembled group their vision for the design of the production, which is typically the
culmination of months of research, discussion, and textual analysis. This introduction is
a kind of “snapshot” of the creative team’s understanding of the world of the play at the
moment they step into the room with the actors, an understanding that will evolve and
grow and perhaps change in significant ways as the cast brings life and breath and physical
action to the playwright’s words over the following four weeks of rehearsal.
Below are excerpts from remarks made at an early rehearsal of Boleros for the Disenchanted
at a.c.t., a glimpse into the initial impulses behind the look and feel of the upcoming
production.
director carey perloff
We’re thrilled to have José Rivera back with us for our second outing with him in two years.
Boleros, which he gave to us while we were working on Brainpeople at Zeum last season, is
an incredibly beautiful play. It begins with Flora, whose first boyfriend doesn’t treat her so
well. She falls in love with another man, who, at the end of the first act of the play, takes
her away from Puerto Rico to the United States. The last moment of the first act is this
departure, and then years later, after having met these two actors [Robert Beltran and
Rachel Ticotin] as the parents of Flora in the first act, we meet them again playing their
own children. It’s a great acting exercise; everybody in the cast plays two radically different
roles, which is an amazing pleasure to watch.
I had no idea how close this is to José’s own life until he gave us the first chapter of his
new novel, which is also about his life, and amazing. This is also an incredibly magical play
that slightly operates by its own rules. It asks a lot of questions it doesn’t answer about the
nature of love: whether there is fate involved in long-lasting love, how much of it is will,
where your will intersects with what is fated for you, and how much you can actually rail
against the cards that you’ve been dealt.
It’s also very much about how people see themselves when they’re transplanted. I look
around this room and I see [points to various staff members] Turkish, Egyptian, Cambodian,
Italian . . . Every single person in this room, whether it’s this generation or two generations
back, or more, is the descendant of immigrants. There’s that strange thing that happens in
a family, where you’re straddling two cultures and you either decide to leave your language
behind—as José has said, he talked to his mother in English and she talked back to him in
Spanish—or you might be the third generation and decide that your identity is connected
to your ancestors, so you relearn the language that your parents have forgotten. That happens a lot in this country.
The question of how people change after they arrive in this country is really interesting, particularly in this play. The Puerto Rico situation is unusual, in that these characters
weren’t exactly immigrating, because they were already citizens, so in that sense it’s very
different from the situation of people who have to come here either underground or on
difficult visas or whatever. Yet they weren’t really North Americans when they arrived—
because of the language, but also in the sense of who they were. There is this beautiful
moment in the play where Flora says about her children—she and Eusebio go to Long
Island, of all places, right away, instead of going to the Bronx or Paterson[, New Jersey,]
or Bayonne[, New Jersey], like most of their fellow Puerto Ricans—that she thinks there’s
something about the winters in the snow that infused them with coldness, a coldness that
got inside them in a way that she doesn’t remember from Puerto Rico.
So I’m just going to go over what the production looks like for a minute. The divine
[scenic designer] Ralph Funicello isn’t here today, but he did such a great job. While we
were doing Rock ’n’ Roll [at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston], I went to this
amazing exhibition of the work of Rachel Whiteread, a British sculptor. I have always
wanted to do a set inspired by her work. She generated a lot of controversy in the early
s when she cast the interior space of an entire Victorian house in concrete; the concrete remained at the house’s original location after the façade was torn down. It sounds
ridiculous, but it was so beautiful [and made her the first woman to win the prestigious
Turner Prize]. She also builds things out of cardboard boxes. The Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston was showing her most recent work, Place (Village): you walked in and found yourself in a dark room; she had taken every size cardboard box and put empty doll’s houses on
them, gutted doll’s houses, and lit them up from the inside. You could sit in the middle of
the room, and it was like being on the coast of Puerto Rico or Greece, or any place that
has that kind of coastline, and seeing all those little houses on the hill. It was so beautiful,
I called Ralph up and said, “Let’s make the Boleros set out of cardboard boxes,” [laughter]
which is not entirely what we did, but that was the idea.
The first act of the play feels to me like a memory, and the present tense in the play is
the second act, which is sort of the reverse of The Wizard of Oz, which goes from black
Photo of the set model for Act I of Boleros for the Disenchanted by scenic designer Ralph Funicello
and white to color [laughs]. So the play starts from a memory of something that was, in
the way José describes the landscape, generous and fecund and fertile and green—it’s like
an envelope, the thing that they remember, a period when everything grew.
What I didn’t want was for everything to be very realistic. The set has these tiny houses
that are lit from within, of all different colors, hanging on filaments—I wanted Ralph to
design it so you can see the strings, so you’re not imagining that you don’t, it’s just sort of
the whole village suspended in their minds. And in front is one little house. There’s this
fantastic website that [costume designer] Sandra [Woodall] discovered, which has a thousand photographs that missionaries took in Puerto Rico in the ’s and ’s; now, decades
later, some of the people in the photographs have written comments saying, “That was
me.” It’s the most amazing thing to look at, because it’s the whole history of a displaced
people, who now have gone back and found themselves. And one of the houses in the
photographs looks like this [points to the Calderon home on the set model]. It has no molding
and no décor and it probably had no plumbing and no electricity.
It’s a weird period, ; we think of the postwar period in the United States as a time
of suburban plenty, with the g.i. Bill and money flowing back into the economy, but that
wasn’t the case in Puerto Rico. One of the things that amazed us in doing the research and
looking at pictures of José’s mother is that the malnutrition was unbelievable. One thinks
of Puerto Rico as a place that grows its own food, but there were few fresh vegetables
Photo of the set model for Act II of Boleros for the Disenchanted by scenic designer Ralph Funicello
available and rickets was prevalent. This is a period when American corporations were
taking over, Domino Sugar was moving in, so all of the things that one felt were one’s
own in Puerto Rico were being shipped off somewhere else, canned and bottled, and then
brought back to be purchased by people who had very little money. There’s a great sense
of dislocation.
In the middle of the first act we go to Santurce, the town where Petra lives outside of
San Juan. A scrim falls in, and there’s a little jukebox and a bench tracks out, and we are
in this scene where she and Flora are eating ice cream. That’s where the bolero plays out
of the jukebox, the song called “Dolores,” Flora’s middle name, which is how Eusebio falls
in love with her. And through the scrim we see the little city lit up behind, so we’re always
aware of these hanging houses, that image of the town and the universe. Then they go back
at the end of the act [to Miraflores], and there is a wedding and it feels very joyful, and
then at the last minute we find out that Flora and Eusebio are emigrating.
In the second act we go from this very beautiful, colorful world to Daleville, Alabama,
which is right outside Fort Rucker. The description in José’s novel of this town is truly
terrifying. I don’t even know if we’ve made it awful enough, given the description. The
little houses fly out, and this grey sky falls in, and there’s a chain-link fence behind, which
we assume is the base. The house has this extreme grey wall bisecting the floor. By this
time Eusebio is altered—he’s lost his legs and he’s in a hospital bed in this very desiccated
landscape—but there are still little plants in tins that Flora is talking to and trying to
liven up. There are these sad little details: a sad little Christmas tree, and a sad little Mylar
Valentine’s Day balloon that deflates, like when you go to somebody’s hospital room a
week later and the flowers are kind of droopy. And then the very last image is an incredibly
beautiful moment when they recommit to each other, Eusebio and Flora, and behind them
you see the young Eusebio and Flora of their memory and those houses fly in again and
you see them as they were in Puerto Rico and everything comes full circle.
A lot of it is stitched together with music, obviously music is really important to the
play. The composer is Fabian Obispo, with whom we’ve worked a lot. He’s taken the original “Dolores,” the bolero of the period that comes out of the jukebox, and he’s writing a
lot of the music himself.
playwright josé rivera
First of all I’m really happy to be back at A.C.T. I had a great experience with great people
last year, so I was very excited that you decided to do Boleros this season.
My mother would tell me stories about how she was engaged and how her old boyfriend
cheated on her and how there was a witch in town who wanted to put a spell on the boy to
make him faithful to my mother—the line in the play is directly out of something she said,
“If my love isn’t magic enough I don’t want him through witchcraft.” I always loved these
stories my mother told me. My dad passed away in , and for a long time I’d wanted
to write something about my parents’ marriage, because I found it very beautiful and they
had stayed together until the end.
The thing that fascinates me more than almost anything is the beginning of things and
the end of things. I love reading the first chapter of a novel; oftentimes I don’t get any
further than that. And I think the act of arresting an audience’s attention at the beginning
of something is so hard to do. I was very interested in the beginning of this relationship
and with the end of this relationship—the years in between, well, whatever. [Laughter]
It’s like Tolstoy wrote: “All happy families are the same.” [More laughter] I’ve already written that play, anyway [The House of Ramon Iglesia]. So the idea of doing those two halves
really was exciting to me; when I was younger I read a Eugene O’Neill play where he did
the same thing—he jumped years and I thought, “I’m going to do the same thing.” So
that’s really where a lot of this came from.
I took about ten years to think about the play, because some of it is so personal I didn’t
know how to handle it, especially Act ii. The Act i events, obviously I wasn’t around for,
and there is a fablelike quality to it simply because it’s my interpretation of my mother’s
memories, which are, as memories are, vague and wonderful and change all the time, so
there is a less-than-real quality to Act i. In Act ii, I was in that room and saw what happened to my father, so there is more of a journalistic quality to the writing on my part. So
it took ten years of thinking about it and then finally in a spasm of something I wrote the
play in about three weeks and had a living room reading with some friends at my home.
We did a workshop at South Coast Rep, and the play has had a great life since then.
It premiered at Yale Rep, and my mother came to rehearsal and cried; she came to the
play and cried; and then she saw it at the Huntington and she cried after that. I actually
thought to myself, “I can’t do this to her again.” It felt like mom abuse. It was so, so much
emotion for her to see the reenactment of her courtship with my father, and then to see
Act ii. And it broke my heart. There was one time in the rehearsal room when they were
wheeling out the hospital bed, and she turned to me and said, “He doesn’t die in the play,
does he?” And I said, “Mom, no, I didn’t kill Dad in the play, don’t worry.” It was very moving for her. The first time she saw the actor playing young Eusebio come out in his army
uniform she was just absolutely devastated. So no more of that for my poor mom.
There is a lot of fact and truth in the play, and also a lot of invention. It’s a blend. For
example, in Act ii, older Eusebio has a dream that an angel visits him and says that he is
going to die by Saturday. This actually happened: My father had this dream and insisted
on having last rites with a priest, and during last rites my father really did confess that he
had had an affair my mom didn’t know about. As luck would have it, my father didn’t die;
he lived several more years in absolute torment from my mom. I mean, she really was not
a happy girl. My mom, who would always literally run into the room whenever he needed
something [before the confession]—he’d be bellowing for something and she’d be watching her soaps, like [mimes changing the channels on a television remote], “Too bad for you.”
[Boisterous laughter] So that’s all true.
costume designer sandra woodall
We all probably have those experiences, of our family half here and half there; I too have
it. And so it was interesting, the idea that we would have this poetic, magical realist, not
totally real environment. The play is just these little snapshots of a moment, so I thought
it would be nice for the characters to be clothed as realistically as possible, as much as
possible have the real vintage clothes of the time. There’s something about the quality
the clothes have in these photographs—they almost add a poetic quality to a person. So I
am very interested in the -year difference; I see that going back to my own village and
knowing my aunts, who didn’t go back to the village. I’m more of a third generation that
wants to know more, interested in seeing that contrast between people who came and who
didn’t come.
family stories
An Interview with José Rivera
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J
osé Rivera encourages every playwright to create his or her own genre.
This may be why his own dramaturgy
is difficult to define. Variously referred
to as magical realism, surrealism, “mad
realism,” and the theater of “more so,”
the style of Rivera expands and contorts
the ordinary into something beyond the
conventionally “real,” yet still familiar. As
a.c.t. audiences saw in last season’s production of Rivera’s Brainpeople, a simpleenough dinner party can quickly unravel Playwright José Rivera. Photo by Evren Odcikin.
into a psychological circus in which anyone—be it any of one character’s multiple
personalities or the spirits of the hostess’s deceased parents—can unexpectedly grab the
highest trapeze and launch themselves into metaphysical space. When asked to describe
his writing, Rivera explains that he creates theater that “lives in the intersection of real and
unreal and freely jumps that border in a theatrical way. The plays seek to examine some
aspect of society in a way that the artist is given the permission to wander into the world
of the unreal or the dreamlike.”
Rivera caught his first break on February —a day he celebrates as an anniversary—when The House of Ramon Iglesia, a play about his parents returning to Puerto Rico
after living on Long Island for almost two decades, won a cbs–sponsored playwriting
contest. He quit his day job immediately. He had no formal playwriting training, but he
had been writing plays since high school, and in college he wrote, produced, and directed
a play a year. Since he has become one of America’s most respected playwrights, earning obie awards for Marisol and References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot and an Academy
Award nomination for his film adaptation of The Motorcycle Diaries, while consistently
pushing the boundaries of theatricality. In Boleros for the Disenchanted, however, Rivera
takes a sabbatical from his exploration of unreality in order to pay homage to the simpler,
yet no less dramatic, story of his parents’ marriage.
Puerto Rico in the s still suffered profoundly from the economic repercussions of
the Great Depression. At the same time, the cost of air travel between San Juan (Puerto
Rico’s capital) and New York City dropped significantly. The outcome was a massive
emigration from Puerto Rico to the u.s. mainland. Of the many pilgrims who fled poverty for the American promise were four-year-old José Rivera and his parents, Maria and
Herminio. In , the family settled on Long Island, where they joined the local workingclass community of Italian and Irish Americans. They were not welcomed warmly: José’s
parents were cursed at, firecrackers and rocks were hurled through their windows, and José
was beaten and bullied at school until he found sanctuary in sports and theater. Growing
up in this atmosphere, he remembers, “forced me to be in my head rather than the real
world. The real world wasn’t very pleasant at times.”
José’s father worked various odd jobs, supporting his family but never realizing the
American ideal of prosperity and security. After years spent raising six children, José’s
parents returned to Puerto Rico with his three youngest siblings in the late s. They
came back to the States when José’s father’s health declined. They remained nomadic for
a while, living near their children in Ohio, then Georgia, and eventually settling near the
Fort Rucker Army Base in Alabama where we catch up with them in Act ii of Boleros.
Though Ramon Iglesia and Boleros are the most obvious examples, Rivera often adopts
elements of his family’s personal stories for his work. Rivera explains: “My parents came
over in the ’s and they struggled, and nobody in my family went to college except for my
sister and I. It feels like if I don’t write these stories, then nobody would know them. These
are not people who get written about. Since I am lucky enough to have this ability, this is
one way that this kind of person, this kind of family, will not be forgotten. They will live
somewhere in the literary memory of this country.”
The week before rehearsals began for a.c.t.’s production of Boleros for the Disenchanted,
Rivera spoke to us about what it was like to recreate his parents’ lifelong love story for the
stage.
how did the process of creatin g BOLEROS begin for you?
The events of the first act are stories my mom told me over the years—how she met my
father and the circumstances of her life in Puerto Rico in the s. The Act ii events I
witnessed myself when my parents were living in Alabama. I had wanted to write a play
about them for years, but it wasn’t until I put the two acts together in my mind that I knew
what the play should be. Once that happened, the writing process happened very fast.
how was the experience
of writing BOLEROS different from writing
THE HOUSE OF RAMON IGLESIA ,
which is also about your
parents?
The plays are separated by years of life and writing experience. When I was writing House
of Ramon Iglesia, I was very aware
of the great plays I wanted to
Herminio as a young man. Photo courtesy José Rivera.
emulate. I was reading a lot of
Chekhov and O’Neill. Ramon Iglesia took a long time because I was just learning the craft
of playwriting and I was very self-conscious of what I was doing. Whereas by the time I
wrote Boleros, that craft was already innate to me, part of my unconscious process. I didn’t
feel like I needed to search for form. So in that way, this play was a lot easier to write, even
though emotionally the events of Boleros were much harder to deal with.
why was that?
Well Act i wasn’t, but Act ii—with the decline of my parents and seeing the situation my
father was in—was more difficult, and because my mom is still living I knew she would
see the play, so I wanted to be respectful of her yet I wanted to be honest about what really
happened. I stressed a lot about what she would think about it.
did she enjoy it?
Yes, she did. I had sent it to her first to read, and then I took her to a rehearsal and the
opening at Yale [Repertory Theatre] and the opening in Boston [at the Huntington
Theatre Company]. I really wanted to get her prepared. It was tough: she was literally
shaking with emotion at one point in rehearsal, especially the scene where the young soldier appears on the street corner and plays the jukebox, which is the same music my father
played for her. It was just a lot of emotion to deal with. And of course Act ii is really hard
for her to watch. But ultimately the play is a celebration of her, her strength and her commitment to being with my father.
did she ever give you notes correcting you on the way things
really happened?
She did give me one note. I couldn’t believe it: she didn’t like the name “Flora” for her character. [Laughter] She doesn’t like that name for some reason. So I asked her, “What would
you call her?” And she said, “Nancy.” I said, “Nancy doesn’t sound very Puerto Rican!” I
don’t know where she got Nancy, but she liked that name better than Flora. I like Flora.
It’s a perfect name for that character.
the form of BOLEROS is, ironically, experimental for you,
in that it is more grounded
in the rules of realism than
your other plays. what was
the experience like creating a
more “conventional” play?
I guess you could say it has a traditional
well-made-play structure, and I’ve always
shied away from that form because it
never seemed challenging enough. I’ve
always thought that contemporary theater should be more theatrical than we
normally experience it. But I found while
working on it that it is much more challenging than it looks. Its simplicity is a
challenge. Being able to write with more
subtext and to have every moment be
psychologically plausible and emotionally
honest—that’s not easy to get to.
Maria as a young woman. Photo courtesy José Rivera.
were you ever tempted to
allow the world to become fantastical?
Not really, but I did allow, at least in some passages, the language itself to be rich and lovely
and magical. There are a few (not many) passages where I just let the characters go, and
they speak in a way that you wouldn’t hear in real life.
you encourage playwrights to write from all of the senses, not
just the brain. when does the brain come into your process?
It’s early. I do feel I need a philosophical underpinning to the work so that I am not just
writing theater but I am also presenting a thesis or some kind of point of view on life. Then
that gets abandoned and I write from the other senses to make it as visual as possible, to
make the language sing as much as possible, to make it an experience for the gut and the
heart. Early in the process is where I do most of my “thinking,” and then that gets abandoned for something else. When we’re in rehearsal during table work, a lot of the ideas in
the play get expressed because the actors and directors ask about them. It’s funny because
I’m forced to reexamine some of the ideas I had forgotten about.
when you created puerto rico in act i, were you working from your
own memories or were you working largely off the stories from
your family?
The truth is, those little towns don’t change a lot. I was in Puerto Rico during the rehearsal
period of the New Haven production, and I went back to the little town where my mom
lived, and it still feels the same from my memory of being [there when I was] four years
old. Certain things change: the houses are bigger and people are better fed, but kids who
don’t have cars ride horses wherever they need to go, bareback; people still have animals—goats, horses, chickens, cows—and pluck mangoes out of the trees. So there are a
lot of similarities. The play is a mixture of my memories, my mother’s memories, and some
fiction, some invention on my part. The dialogue of was invented; obviously I wasn’t
there. My mom was very loquacious, but my dad wasn’t, so the young soldier in Act i is
much more of a speaker than my father ever was.
you consistently write about the puerto rican experience in
north america. where does BOLEROS fall into that conversation?
A lot of plays deal with the postmigration experience in the United States and what that
did to Puerto Ricans who lived here: the promise of the New World, the myth of America,
and what people did to provide for their families. Act ii is the crushing reality of what that
myth ended up becoming. It is a migration story.
In a lot of my plays the central characters are yearning for home and yearning to belong.
A lot of characters are without family, rootless, disconnected. I find that very theatrically
interesting and [that it] reflects the Puerto Rican experience, because we are from a country that is not a country: it is a territory of the United States without sovereignty. We are
a people without a country.
your plays often deal with violence: physical, psychological,
and environmental. has how you approach violence in your work
changed over time?
I’m learning to be more subtle and less direct with it. I don’t believe that we are any less
violent as a people. Massacre [] opens with a murder that happens offstage and seven
characters walk onstage dripping with the blood of the victim. So it begins with very powerful violence. But it is becoming more underground as a kind of vibration under the story
rather than an in-your-face kind of way.
are you finding that you are implementing this as you write your
film adaptation of jack kerouac’s ON THE ROAD ?
In On the Road the violence is the danger of the unknown. It’s an era before gps and before
seatbelts and before texting. It was a time when you could really get lost in America, which
seemed vaster and stranger than it does now. The thing that is so interesting to me, as I
reread the book and a lot of Kerouac’s other work, is how lawless a lot of America seemed.
Almost every few pages they pick up a hitchhiker whose aunt killed their uncle or who
just got out of jail. That blend of normal citizens and crime seems much closer than it does
now. Now you think of people who commit crimes as another species, and the vast middle
class lives in relative tranquility.
I love movies. They have their own amazing aesthetic beauty. They are like dreams
someone else imagined for you. But I miss having the flesh and blood person in front of
you.
during these difficult economic times, what do you think the
priorities of theater need to be?
I think it’s the old cliché from Hamlet about holding up a mirror to nature. It is more
urgent than ever to be socially responsible and to talk about the important issues of the
period. I would hate to see the theater use this as an excuse to get safer and more escapist.
I think it is a time to be bold and bring audiences into an experience they are not going to
get elsewhere. There is no substitute for the live event. There is that feeling that—even if
you know the play, and even though you know it’s scripted—maybe this is really happening
in front of us. It has never happened before. There is no way to predict the next moment.
When theater is working on all cylinders, there is a thrill of going into the unknown with
a group of people.
a brief history of puerto rico
by megan cohen
B
y the time that Christopher Columbus “found” Puerto Rico in , the native population, whom the Spanish colonizers would name Taíno, had developed a complex society, complete with written language in the form of petroglyphs, a functioning agricultural
system, a cosmology of deities, and a series of villages, each built around a batey, or ball
court, where they played to resolve conflicts. The Spanish named the island Borínquen—
the land of the brave lord. They established a permanent foothold in , on the arrival of
Juan Ponce de León. Despite native rebellions, and although England and France coveted
the colony and staged frequent raids, the strategically placed island (its position as the “key
to the Indies” made it a valuable military hub for controlling trade routes) remained under
Spain’s power. The islanders began to assimilate into Spanish culture, taking on its laws
and institutions, including Catholicism and slavery. In the th century, when its control
had stabilized, the Spanish crown pursued economic development of the island, boosting
agricultural production, building a commercial infrastructure, establishing local government and education, and investing in new roads, bridges, and towns, leading to population growth. Throughout the century, there was pressure from inhabitants to become an
autonomous part of Spain, a request granted by the Spanish government in . In ,
however, American forces landed and claimed Puerto Rico for the United States.
While some Puerto Ricans welcomed the Americans as liberators and sympathetic protectors, the separatists who had pushed for independence continued to protest, hoping to
shake off American control and gain true autonomy for the island. American rule was not
tremendously different from life under Spanish power. Congress made a few small adjustments to the island’s infrastructure, and then opted for what historian Arturo Morales
Carrión, in Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History, calls a period of “benign neglect.”
However, the neglect was not entirely harmless, as u.s. sugar companies took hold in
Puerto Rico, enjoying freedom from authorities that might otherwise keep them in check.
The agricultural industry, primarily based on sugar (and a few other crops, including coffee), supported a growing population for some decades, but the economic stamina of the
monopoly-driven agrarian system eventually began to flag. According to Time magazine,
by “a few big u.s. companies had converted Puerto Rico into a sugar barony whose
cane cutters, paid ¢ an hour, gladly sold their votes for $ to elect company
lawyers to the island legislature.” The sugar industry was so dominant that in , %
of all workers on the island worked in sugar fields and factories. Even as they gained politi-
cal power and operations became more efficient due to new technology, these same sugar
companies hemorrhaged workers and contributed to growing national unemployment.
Diversification and industrialization became necessary for higher quality of life, and by
the Popular Democratic Party of Luis Muñoz Marín, an emerging spokesman for the
working class, took a strong antisugar platform.
Faced with an impoverished present and a bleak future for a country that he felt did
not have the power or finances to support itself, Marín moved the national debate away
from the question of independence and towards labor laws and land reform, announcing
that “status is not the issue” most relevant to the island’s survival. With local and u.s. support, he was elected governor of Puerto Rico. In the s and ’s, Marín implemented a
pair of programs, economic (“Operation Bootstrap”) and cultural (“Operation Serenity”),
designed to promote Puerto Rican productivity, stability, and what he described as general
happiness for the island’s residents. “Bootstrap” strengthened the colonial presence, introducing strong incentives, mostly in the form of tax breaks, aimed at attracting a diversity
of u.s. businesses to Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, “Serenity” set aside funds for the repair of
local community institutions, such as churches, and for the support of socially beneficial
projects, such as the rediscovery of folkloric music, in an attempt to maintain Puerto
Rican culture. “Serenity” caused no major ripples, but “Bootstrap” brought an influx of
manufacturing jobs to the island’s urban centers, offering a tremendous jump in available
low-skilled employment in textiles, plastics, metals, and electronics. While the numbers on
paper tell a story of some success (reduction in extreme poverty; rise in social mobility), the
reality was more tumultuous. Carrión describes this moment in Puerto Rico as “a period of
perplexity, polarization, and confusion.”
Through “Bootstrap” Marín cemented Puerto Rican dependence on foreign interests.
Meanwhile, separatists like Pedro Albizu Campos continued to champion self-government and autonomy. Marín reached for a compromise on the status issue, collaborating
with the u.s. Congress on a bill that invented the concept of a “free but associated state.”
The legislation, which passed in , authorized Puerto Rico to write itself a constitution
for complete local self-government, but maintained a relationship with the United States.
In this new alliance, Congress no longer had the power to overrule island law, but u.s.
federal laws, such as the draft, still applied to Puerto Rican citizens. Puerto Ricans could
not vote in u.s. elections and paid no u.s. taxes, but legislative disputes that couldn’t be
settled on the island still went to the Supreme Court in Washington, d.c., for final ruling. Although Puerto Rico gained independence in terms of its functional daily reality, it
remained deeply, perhaps permanently, enmeshed with its overseeing country, and those
who hoped for autonomy for the island were marginalized.
• Arecibo
• Miraflores
• Daleville
• Mayagüez
• Utuado
• Adjuntas
SAN JUAN
• Santurce
• Caguas
• Ponce
PUERTO RICO
“Bootstrap” brought Puerto Rico into a new era of industrialization, but even with the
increased u.s. trade, jobs were far from abundant. An average rate of % unemployment
persisted throughout the ’s, and those workers who did find jobs weren’t exactly living
in utopia. The rural workers who flocked from small towns like Miraflores to cities like
Arecibo to work long hours in low-paying factory jobs during the ’s and ’s were able
to survive, but they encountered a culture that was new, foreign, and largely unpleasant. Chances for advancement were slim, population density was high, and poverty was
rampant. The combination of crumbling rural communities and rapid but unsatisfying
urbanization helped prompt a massive mid-century migration of Puerto Rican residents
to the u.s. mainland.
Between and , emigrants left Puerto Rico for the u.s. mainland. During
the period from to , the number skyrocketed to more than . In alone,
left. Altogether, in the postwar migration period between and , more than
half a million Puerto Ricans emigrated from their homeland. It’s not known exactly how
many of these travelers made New York their destination, or how many remained in the
United States permanently. In , New Yorker journalist Christopher Rand used airline
ticket sales figures to estimate that five out of every six Puerto Ricans who headed for New
York returned home, while only one stayed on the mainland.
a guide to towns and cities seen or
mentioned in BOLEROS FOR THE DISENCHANTED
arecibo
The mid-size city of Arecibo, nine miles from Miraflores, was ten times the size of that
tiny town, with a population of . The major city of its municipality, at square miles
in size Arecibo is geographically the largest city in Puerto Rico. In , the labor force
was % male, and the median annual income was $, substantially above the national
average of $. Its economy started out based on agriculture and freshwater fishing, and
sugarcane was its principal source of income for the first half of the th century.
daleville, alabama, and the fort rucker army base
About miles south of Birmingham, Alabama, and miles northwest of Tallahassee,
Florida, the Fort Rucker u.s. Army base and the adjacent town of Daleville are situated
in the southeast corner of Alabama, amid a rural, agricultural landscape best known as the
country’s largest peanut-growing region. Fort Rucker, home of the u.s. Army Aviation
Center for Excellence, is the Army’s primary aviation training location; in the mid s
the population on the base itself was around % of whom were under the age of and % of whom were white, with an African-American population around %, and %
of the population identifying as Hispanic or Latino. Nearly % of base households had
children under living with them. Prior to September , Fort Rucker was an open
base with unguarded gates, and civilians could freely drive around its grounds.
In the neighboring town of Daleville, the population in the H hovered around .
Located in a region with a humid subtropical climate, a low cost of living, and low incomes
(median family income in the s was around $, with % of the population living
below the poverty line), the town itself appears to be a sleepy sidekick to its looming military neighbor. The home of the u.s. Army Aviation Museum, Daleville is the self-branded
“Gateway to Fort Rucker,” and a glance at local clubs and organizations reveals a town
socially dominated by military, patriotic, religious, and fraternal organizations. A trip to
the nearby town of Dothan, about a -minute drive, offered Daleville and Fort Rucker
residents access to a bounty of shops and cultural amenities otherwise unavailable in their
immediate area.
Though the Latino population on the base was around % in the mid s, in the
town of Daleville (which was more balanced in terms of the age range of residents) it was
only around %, while % of the total population was white.
la perla and san juan
Forty-eight miles east of Miraflores and miles north of Santurce, La Perla is a ghetto
neighborhood in the capital city of San Juan. San Juan was, and is, the seat of all government, church, and military institutions in Puerto Rico. In , San Juan’s median income
was more than double the national average, and of Puerto Rico’s total taxis were
found in the six square miles of its dense urban area. To some extent, San Juan is culturally isolated from the rest of Puerto Rico; residents of the city often describe their trips to
elsewhere in the country as “traveling to the island.”
mayagüez
On the west coast, miles from Miraflores, this small, crowded city ( square miles in
size, with a population more than double that of Arecibo) is a center of trade and began
industrializing before many other parts of Puerto Rico.
miraflores ( Home of Flora, Doña Milla, Don Fermin, and Manuelo )
Miraflores, about six square miles in size, is one of sectors of the Arecibo municipality,
located southeast of the city of Arecibo. In , it had a population of and was very
rural; approximately half the working men had agricultural jobs, mostly in sugar. Miraflores
was, as small country towns tend to be, fairly isolated. Residents of Miraflores, which was
located near the road that would become Route (Ponce to Arecibo), could have traveled
to Arecibo without tremendous difficulty, but the journey would have been a rough
one on rural roads, and buses
and taxis from the hamlet to
the nearest metropolitan hub
were limited.
ponce (Home of Eusebio)
Located miles south of
Miraflores, with a population
of (circa ), Ponce
was the third-largest city in Man on motorized tricycle, Puerto Rico, 1943–46.
Photo by Delbert Preheim.
Puerto Rico and the urban
hub of the island’s southern coast. Considered Puerto Rico’s “second city” after San Juan,
Ponce had a reputation for hospitality, but also for rowdiness, an idea reinforced by the
fact that the city was home to the distillery for Don Q, one of the most popular rums in
Puerto Rico and abroad. By the middle of the century, Ponce also boasted a widely recognized museum of fine arts. The municipality and city are much poorer than San Juan,
but also a little drier and hotter, making it a rich agricultural area. Most men in Ponce in
worked in agriculture on sugar and coffee farms, as well as in jobs in manufacturing
and transportation. Women primarily worked in manufacturing or in private households,
although a notable percentage also had jobs in medicine and education. Ponce was well
connected to the other urban hubs on the island, especially San Juan.
santurce (Home of Petra)
Located miles east of Miraflores, in the town of Santurce was at its economic
height. It was a draw for locals from the surrounding area, as well as for tourists, but people
didn’t just visit Santurce—they moved there. In , the town boasted population growth
of more than %, the greatest on the island. It offered a high concentration of schools,
from kindergarten through college, and a notable diversity of jobs in the manufacturing of
goods that were distinctly modern in character: girdles, mirrors, and diamond points for
phonograph needles were among local products in the ’s and ’s.
New Yorker writer Christopher Rand wrote in : “The th century has expressed
itself less in the city [San Juan] proper than in a suburb, Santurce, which has been built
almost entirely since . This has much in common with Los Angeles, or with cities in
Florida, or even with the newest suburbs of the big Asian cities—it has wide streets, that
is, heavy traffic, white or near-white stucco buildings—some of them quite tall—and a
welter of modern signs, modern shop windows, and other visual clamor of the advertising
age. ‘Santurce is a tropical suburb of New York,’ one Puerto Rican told me, and this seems
a fair statement. The New York influence, one might say, leap-frogged the old city and
landed on Santurce instead.”
utuado and adjuntas
Utuado, the small flagship city of the municipality of the same name, is located miles
south of Miraflores. In , of Utuado’s employed males, more than three-quarters
worked in agriculture, mainly on coffee farms. Adjuntas was another agriculturally driven
municipality supported by coffee and sugar. Its biggest city was located miles sourth of
Miraflores. This interior region of the island is home to verdant hills and valleys, but its
roads were less fully developed in the s than those between Puerto Rico’s wealthier
coastal areas.
a BOLEROS miscellany and glossary of spanish
terms
by megan cohen
ABUELO
Grandfather.
bantam chicken The bantam variety of chicken is known for its small size coupled with
an aggressive disposition.
BOBA
Silly, stupid. Fool, idiot, clown.
bolero A Spanish popular dance or song. The term likely comes from the verb volar (“to
fly”) and from the name boleras, given to the Gypsy women who were the first to dance it.
The bolero originated in Spain during the last third of the th century. In the Diccionario
de la Lengua Castellana (), bolero dancing is defined as “requiring much grace and
elegance” and usually performed by a couple. Musically, the tempo of a bolero is slow or
moderate, often in ¾ time. The songs are sentimental and romantic, with long, flowing
melodies and bittersweet lyrics.
Can be translated as witch, hag, crone, bitch, shrew, or (according to a slang dictionary) mother-in-law.
BRUJA
All-purpose profanity exclamation. Often used specifically as a slang noun for
female genitalia, but can also be an interjection equivalent to “shit” or “hell.”
COÑO
Small frogs native to Puerto Rico. Named after their distinctive dusk-to-dawn
croaking, which sounds like “ko-kee!”
COQUIS
JÍBAROS
Peasants, rustic farm laborers, members of the illiterate underclass.
A pre-Spanish, Incan word that is sometimes translated as “working for the community.”
MITA
NOVIA
Can refer to a bride, fiancée, or serious girlfriend.
Elaborate savory pies, traditionally made on special occasions such as Christmas.
The dough (masa) is made from grated starchy vegetables and green bananas, with some
recipes calling for as many as six different types of tubers and plantains. The dough is
stuffed with stewed pork (relleno), wrapped in oiled banana leaves, folded in parchment
paper, tied with string, and then boiled. Because the process of wrapping and tying each
PASTELES
individual pie is so elaborate, pasteles are often made by a group of people in a preholiday
party, rather than by a single cook.
PENDEJO
PITO
A coward, a jerk.
This nickname means “whistle.”
PRIMA
Cousin.
“taíno ball courts in ponce” The ball court, or batey, was a rectangular area, edged with
carved stones, around which Puerto Rico’s native Taíno population built a settlement. It
was home to the batu ceremony, which historians understand as a kind of game through
which judicial differences were resolved within a tribe or between neighboring tribes.
television in puerto rico In , the United States granted a permit for the construction of a commercial television station on the island, after a freeze in the licensing process
that had lasted four years. The first Puerto Rican television transmissions were sent in
January .
Picking pineapples near the northern coast of Puerto Rico, late 1940s. Photo by Maynard Good.
questions to consider
i. What contributes to Flora’s decision to move to the United States mainland at the end
of Act i?
. How would you define the -year marriage between Flora and Eusebio? How does it
compare to the marriage between Doña Milla and Don Fermin?
. What is the effect of seeing the same actress play Doña Milla and Older Flora? How
would your understanding of the play be different if the actors who play Flora and Eusebio
in Act also played their older selves in Act ? All of the actors play a pair of roles; what,
if any, connections are there between the two characters in each pair?
. José Rivera’s style has often been called “magical realism,” yet Rivera explains that Boleros
is a more conventional drama. What moments feel “magical” in this play?
. How is Boleros a commentary on the migration experience of Puerto Ricans in the
United States?
for further information
Ayala, César J. and Rafael Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since
. Chapel Hill, nc: The University of North Carolina Press, .
Carrión, Arturo Morales. Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History. New York:
w.w. Norton & Company, Inc., .
Fernandez, Ronald. The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the
Twentieth Century. New York: Praeger, .
Lehman, Tom. “Puerto Rico, s–s.” Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlehman/
collections//.
Perloff, Harvey S. Puerto Rico’s Economic Future: A Study in Planned Development. Chicago,
il: The University of Chicago Press, .
Rivera, José. Marisol and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc.,
.
———. References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot and Other Plays. New York: Theatre
Communications Group, Inc., .
———. The House of Ramon Iglesia. New York: Samuel French, Inc., .