Back on the Rails

Now that the temperature's hitting 100 degrees or so, what better time to contemplate the coolness of fall, the crisp wind and drying leaves that circle around Dia de Muertos?

Met with artist Analee Fuentes last week, who brought with her a beautiful book of photos by Arthur Rothstein entitled "The Depression Years" (Dover Pub., 1978). Alejandra Gonzales is putting the final touches on our Study Guide as she translates it into Spanish. One startling fact: The Great Depression featured 25% unemployment nationwide. Talk about a call for resilience and ingenuity.

I see one of our biggest challenges with this production is, how to balance the inherent dire circumstances of the era with the traditional irreverance and comedy of Dia de muertos (a good question for Philip Cuomo, who had to balance the WWII-era in the same way). Philip?

My thoughts are, bring on the dancing girls! The glamorous chorines of Busby Berkeley music fame! Rebecca Martinez provided a similar balance with the 'Angel' character in Noche Eterna ~ but she was an otherworldly (del otro lado) personage, surrounded by similar clowns. Will our BB chorine be a figment of our imagination, or a star-struck migrant who's gone a bit west off Broadway?

Employment & Gender

A tidbit from family members who lived through the Depression in Oregon:

Teaching was one of the most common and respectable professions for a woman in those times, but during the Great Depression a law was passed in order to stimulate employment. If a female teacher got married, she had to give up her job. The reasoning was that it would be of benefit for her job to go to someone else, instead of her two-job family. I wonder, what if she married someone who was unemployed?