Performance and art exhibit support art therapy for kid
(Mar 10, 2006)

Moments of power and creativity emerge quite often during art therapy sessions with our brave, inventive and determined young people at the Centro de Crecimiento. We catch a glimpse of 17-year-old Juan Manuel, afflicted with severe cerebral palsy, freely sponge-painting a coat of green onto his Christmas cat; before, he could not even hold a brush.

Suffering from hydrocephaly (water on the brain)-which leaves him dull, resistant and unhappy-18-year-old Fer motioned me to help him stick whiskers on his cat. These moments are precious!

I have been offering art psychotherapy and co-leading groups with the wonderful young psychologist Carolina Esquivel at the Centro, which is a treatment and educational facility directed by Lucha Maxwell, Adriana Pando and other caring staff and volunteers. Art therapy combines psychology and art, and is widely used in mental health agencies, hospitals, educational centers and private practices with all ages and populations. The training and licensure are rigorous.

Our clients are young men and women between 14 and 30; most do not speak and have mild to severe physical and mental disabilities that leave them isolated and helpless, without intervention. Our main objective is to help our clients experience the joy of the creative process through the materials and methods of art while also increasing their self-esteem and communication skills. We have painted, made collages, created landscapes and still lifes, celebrated national holidays and made papier mâché-all on an almost nonexistent budget!

The Frida Kahlo presentation at the Teatro Santa Ana on March 12 is a benefit performance to help us purchase art materials. It has been offered all over the United States, Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende with great success, and illustrates how Frida used the creative process to heal her own physical and emotional wounds. This one-woman performance combines slides of Frida and her work and her favorite music. Militza N. Loving directly quotes Frida and comments on her work from the point of a psychotherapist, exploring how and why Frida used her methods, materials and symbols to effect the process of transformation. 

On March 23 at 6pm, work by the young artists of the Centro de Crecimiento will be on exhibit, and for sale at Bellas Artes.

Frida Kahlo: Disability as Ability by Militza N. Loving
A benefit for the Centro de Crecimiento
Sunday, March 12, 6pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Reloj 50
80 pesos

Dear Diary: I'm mad

Gogol's fear of women, his romanticism and the melancholy that ruled his life are all evident in Madman's Diary. It records the suffering of his life, as seen through the eyes of the humorist who lived it. Gogol expresses his disdain of bureaucracy, of clerks and of department heads, probably acquired in his own years as a civil servant.

He tells of his frustration in his relationships with women and, finally, of the torture that life itself caused him.

Bruno Schwebel's acting and directing career encompasses a wide range of both amateur and professional productions. In the 1940s he worked with a German-language theater group in Mexico. From 1970 on he acted in various theater workshop productions in English such as Dracula, A Flea in Her Ear, Three-Penny Opera and many others.

Bruno Schwebel's masterful realization of Nicolai Gogol's Madman's Diary (using Eric Bentley's fine translation) is that rare thing: a Russian work that comes across with the feel and force of the original unimpaired. Articulating the whole range of that particularly Russian emotional intensity with the velvety softness of the Russian voice, this fascinating actor draws in a dramatic form the outer limits of human frustration.

Tickets are available starting Monday, March 7, after 4pm at the theater.

Dramatized reading of Gogol's "Madman's Diary"by Bruno Schwebel
Saturday, March 18, 8pm 
Sunday, March 19, 4pm
Santa Ana Theater, Reloj 50
100 pesos

Playreaders present comedy/thriller

Carol is being driven crazy by her monster of an ex-husband, Victor, and his new wife. Not only is he bullying Carol's son to death, but he is using every trick in the book to end Carol's thousand-dollar-a-week alimony. Meanwhile, Carol is having a passionate affair with Victor's attorney, Rick, who has his own ideas on how to resolve the situation … not to Victor's advantage. "Killjoy", a hilarious comedy/thriller written by Jerry Mayer, will be the next Playreaders production.

"Killjoy slays with laughs in this tight tale of deception and torment," said one reviewer. "Irrepressibly witty, Mayer's dialogue is crisp, clever and crunchy, sparkles with one-line zingers," said another. "Jerry Mayer has been having hit after hit, focusing on the humor and drama of marriage," commented a third.

If the house is full the play starts at once, so come early to ensure getting a seat. The doors open at 7pm.

San Miguel Playreaders present Killjoy
by Jerry Mayer
March 14, 15 & 16, 7:30pm
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Cardo 6
10 pesos