There’s a small miracle on the Borderlands Theater stage.
No. A big one.
The world premiere of the company’s season opener, “Nogales: Story Tellers in Cartel Country,” is funny, tragic, transformative.
Southern Arizona gave birth to this sprawling story that feels so intimate. And so very real.
At the heart of “Nogales” is the 2012 killing of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez.
His family says he had been walking home in Nogales, Mexico on a route that took him past the fence along the border.
He was shot about 10 times, mostly in the back, by a Border Patrol agent on Arizona’s side of the fence.
Playwright Richard Montoya, with the Los Angeles-based performance group Culture Clash, sensed that this didn’t happen in a vacuum.
So Montoya panned out and drew in the seemingly disparate elements around the state that can feed an environment that allows a death like this to happen.
The dismissal of street kids. The policies of Joe Arpaio and other politicians. The blind eye toward the mistreatment of the Tohono O’Odham people. The damning of border crossers who hope for better lives but die in the desert instead.
Montoya’s deep research, extensive interviews and prodigious talents went into the creation of this 90-minute play that offers deep laughter and even deeper grief. But most of all, it offers an insight into the life we Tucsonans live with daily, but too often ignore.
While “Nogales” does all this, it never preaches, never wags its finger at us and admonishes us for doing too little for our brothers and sisters on both sides of the border. Still, it has the power to knock the passivity right out of us.
In the process, it made this Arizona-centric story universal.
“Nogales,” directed by Sean San José, shows us that a desert that is foreboding, dangerous, cruel, can also burst with hope and love and beauty.
The script is a powerful piece by itself. But all the other elements of this production — music, masks, photographs and videos, and a diorama of Nogales that puts the audience in the center of the town where hope and death grip hands — contributed to making this a memorable piece of art.
Montoya took on the role of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose own words are used to help shape this story. Arpaio can very easily be made into a caricature, a man with no soul. Montoya would have none of that; he gave him a humanity that was surprising but never let him off the hook for the role he plays in how immigrants are seen, treated and too harshly dismissed.
In addition to directing with a sure and clear hand, San José played a priest and Arpaio’s inquisitor. He practically vibrated with righteous passion in his roles. The whole ensemble switched characters with an ease, giving deep roots to each. This is a group of actors who listened, reacted, with an honesty and intensity that was palpable. They are Juan Amador, Perla Vanesa Barraza, Rosanne Cousten, Sarah Haro (10 years old and quite polished), Angelica R. Maddock, Stephen Narcho (as the murdered José, he never said a word, but we sensed the rivers running under the surface) and Marc David Pinate.
Joan Osato’s photography and videos, including excerpts of the actual interviews that informed this play, underscored the story and added a visual element that contributed to the emotional and intellectual heft of the piece. Tanya Orellana’s set design and her detailed diorama of Nogales made the small stage seem larger and helped the story come alive.
If “Nogales” has rough edges — and what new play first on its feet doesn’t? — they were not evident opening night.
The only thing evident is that what was unfolding in front of the audience was true and important. This is art that has the power to move hearts and minds.
And that is miraculous.
