Grown-ups call it acting
By Ana Maria Muñoz
November 7, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Workshop 
The Pleasure of Acting
Tue & Thu, Nov 11–Dec 4, 11am–2pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25

Playing fiction expands imagination and creativity because when we interact with someone else, we don’t expect a given result. We don’t judge whether it’s “true;” we just have lots of fun. Children live through playing, are open to experience and easily follow whatever story they are creating. Everybody can recall the fun of making up stories we played out with friends. We believed in being the Lion or Pussycat; the King or Queen; Monsters, Witches or Cowboys.

Grown-ups do the same thing and call it acting. We can learn to play within frames, using proven tools so we can believe in and enjoy our play.

Acting enhances life skills, stretches the imagination and helps us discover new aspects of ourselves. Acting is also an alchemy through which we transform life and our concerns by representing them.

“The Pleasure of Acting” workshops explore new possibilities of self through acting. Everyone plays out fictional scenes about life, made up then and there on stage. Scenes come up spontaneously from personal experience and the organic acting method increases awareness of thoughts, feelings and memories. Exercises at the beginning of the class prepare body and mind for playing fictional situations with improvised props and costumes.

Anyone who likes to play is invited to explore acting without having to learn scripts. Past students come back because they have lots of fun and it’s always new. Contact ambodyart@gmail.com  for information and registration.  Ana Marìa Muñoz coached professional actors in Chile and Mexico for 22 years and taught at the National Center of Arts’ Acting School in Mexico City for 11 years. Her movement/voice coaching for actors is based on Eutony, Gerda Alexander’s method.

Fighting with Pancho Villa
By Fran Rowe Robbins

Theater
I Fought with Pancho Villa
Wed, Nov 19–Sat, Nov 22, 7:30pm
Sun, Nov 23, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

On Thursday, November 20, Mexico celebrates El Dia de la Revolución. In honor of Mexican Revolution Day, Narissa Ferrer presents the play I Fought With Pancho Villa. Ferrer wrote the book, music and lyrics for the musical Pancho, the Musical, which was performed at the Ángela Peralta Theater in 1998. There were 40 people in the cast, and Ferrer said it took 20 years off her life.

For instance, in the show one of the female soldiers (soldaderas) had her baby killed by the federales, who used the corpse for target practice. Just as the soldadera sang, “No one can touch you now…,” a live baby in the Peralta Theater cried out loud and clear. The romantic lead was gored by a bull in the Sanmiguelada three days before opening and could barely move, no less make love. Two gals from the brothel were supposed to do a sexy dance, but the young Mexican girls, who were not enculturated in “sexy” dancing, looked like they were in a prim girls’ school instead of a whorehouse. The logistics of moving 40 people on the stage at one time was quite a challenge. She had a train built, with the Ballet Folklórico dancers doing steps that sounded like a chugging train. The large Aztec pyramid that the dancers emerged from was still under construction when the show opened. Henry Vermillion executed those crazy ideas and all of the scenery—it was like something you might see in the Ziegfeld Follies. Ten years later, Ferrer has decided to relate the story of the Revolution with a cast of one: Katherine Oaks.

Oaks was an American lieutenant who fought side by side with Pancho and his army. She will introduce various characters from the Revolution: Pancho Villa; his confidant, Rodolfo; Madame Rene, owner of a popular brothel; a young soldadera who gave her life; and General Carranza, General Pershing and others. The story of why Pancho became a revolutionary and how the revolution evolved will be told through these voices. 

Tickets are on sale at the Teatro Santa Ana box office now.