Muertos Launched

Welcome to the blog that discusses the making of Miracle's Muertos 2009: Canta y no llores. We'll chronicle the brainstorming that happens around the office, in our production meetings and throughout the rehearsal process.

Canta y no llores will reflect upon the Great Depression in Oregon in the 1930s, and migration from other parts of the country (the Dust Bowl) and from Mexico, to express dia de muertos. When all is lost, what remains? What's truly valuable in life? And, in the irreverant spirit of muertos ~ what are you laughing at?

So far, we've talked about old-time music, and learned that Woody Guthrie was invited by the Bonneville Water Project to write songs about Oregon. We've talked about migrant workers, and learned that they came from all over, that the migrant camps of the 1930s were very diverse communities. And I started looking at Busby Berkeley music videos (or rather, movie excerpts on YouTube! We're in the money!

In closing this inaugural post, I offer an excerpt from "Oregon: End of the Trail" compiled by Oregon's Workers of the Writers' Program of the WPA, published in 1940:

"At once the hero and the villain of the early Oregon piece, the Cascade Range still imposes a dozen divergent viewpoints upon the modern state: and it is therefore unlikely, if not impossible, that there may be any such thing as a typical Oregonian."

Up until this point I'd been thinking of the set for the production in terms of a migrant shack, but now I'm imagining mountains...