Idealistic Nayeli (center, Michelle Escobar), teams up with her best friend Vampi (left, Michelle Caughlin), with moral support from her aunt Irma (right, Bunny Rivera) for a mission to save their small town.
Russell J. Young / Courtesy of Milagro Theatre
This month, Milagro Theatre premiered Karen Zacarías' adaptation of Luís Alberto Urrea's freewheeling road novel, "Into The Beautiful North."
Zacarías' work has appeared onstage in Portland before. Milagro has staged productions of her plays "Mariela in the Desert" and "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents."
Zacarías is working on an adaptation of Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" for The Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Beverlie Lord / Snotherly Pictures
The show reframes the immigrant story. There's a generation as familiar with Johnny Depp and Finnish goth rock as with Pedro Infante — they're at the center of this story.
Zacarías spoke with us about adapting a book with such a wide range of characters and settings, as well as the beauty she found beneath the story's surface.
On adapting 'Into the Beautiful North' for the stage:
"Plays are literature in three dimensions. The idea of taking a fabulous 400 page book and making it into a 2 hour play, you already know there are things you need to cut from the beginning. ... How do you make a very cinematic book into a piece of theater? The way you do it is you activate the audience's imagination as much as possible. You create the images in the story using your actors more than anything else. My decision was to go as theatrical as possible, so the stage is very bare. Wherever the actor is, that's where we are. If they say we're in a lagoon, then you feel you're in a lagoon. We're using some projections which are very beautiful and evocative, but the idea was that I was not going to get in the way of the story."
On subverting the 'Immigrant Story':
"What I think is beautiful about Luís Alberto's novel and his characters is that so many times the immigrant story becomes just the idea of an immigrant with a certain kind of look; someone crossing the border and all the stories seem to look and sound the same. The fact is he undermines that kind of myth by giving these Mexicans very human and individual stories that a lot of people would not pause long enough to focus on."
"There are a lot of things to celebrate in this journey and this particular story that I chose to emphasize. Also, the absurdity of some of it. We have an appearance by Jack Sparrow as played by Anthony Lamb as played by Johnny Depp. The whole idea of pop culture and international culture having an influence on everybody. ... I found that all very interesting. I was very informed and I think part of the reason I was picked for this project was because of my own personal background with the topic and with this story. What are the things I felt were important to the story or spoke to me? That's a way how the play becomes my play based on Luís Alberto's fabulous story."
Atomiko (second from left, Anthony Lam) becomes Nayeli's unexpected ally through the course of the show.
Russell J. Young / Courtesy of Milagro Theatre
On turning the book into a woman's play:
"Luís Alberto, just by creating these very strong female characters, by creating a book centered on a young woman that's the protagonist, he's already done something very subversive. A lot of it was there, but by taking away a lot of the story telling and the other adventures, it really allows the idea of it being a woman's play to come out. The fact that it starts with three women that are about to tell the story — that was done on purpose. It is a story that is spearheaded by the needs of the women of this small town. In particular by this young girl who has an idea. The idea is that they need to be working with other people to save their town. [The women in the story] are both the visionaries and the warriors at the same time."
Challenges of adapting 'Into The Beautiful North':
"It's challenging to go on a road trip. It's challenging to write a play about people who are in a car for 10 days and to find a way to find the tension. ... She's chasing after a character that we never get to see. He's an off-stage character. So creating the importance of that was fairly interesting. Really the idea of people changing roles and [the audience] knowing who these people are. I think Tony plays seven or eight different characters and for each actor to give each one of those characters who might be on for two minutes their own personality and own reason for being there I think was challenging. As you're writing it you hope they can pull it off, and fortunately they did. You work with people that are talented and they can do it. Writing a road trip play when you don't have a road and you don't have a movie, you have to find a way to make that feeling of movement happen."
On the loveliness of the story:
"I think what's lovely about both the book and the play is how surprising it is in the sense that they find beauty and grace in places that they don't expect. Like when Nayeli goes to the mountains and this nice U.S. fisherman is very sweet and helps her in a different way. There's grace and beauty in a lot of different places of this play, and there's a lot of humor and heartbreak. I think this idea of taking this subversive narrative of what it means to be an immigrant and what it means to be a Mexican, especially in this political climate. I think it's a really interesting dialogue and I hope a lot of young people come and see it. This is a story about young people taking charge of their narrative and changing their circumstances."
Milagro Theatre is staging Zacarias’ adaptation of "Into The Beautiful North" through May 28.