Draft 3/17/06
ACT I
SCENE ONE: MILONGUITA
(The musicians play a sensual tango old style for Contrabass, violin and piano. CUCA is playing the piano. A couple dances a tango. The tango continues while CUCA talks.
On the screen, we see the dancer's feet.)I don't know much about tango. Because I am from Argentina, people think I can just dance and play a tango as if I have it in my blood. But they are wrong. I am a piano player, you know, and I don't even know how to play La Cumparsita! (play snippet from La Cumparsita). I spent too many years learning how to play Bach (playing snippet of the Invention for two voices in D minor) and Beethoven (playing beginning chord of the Sonata Pathethique) and Bach and Beethoven, for ten years... Bach, and Beethoven, and sometimes, Chopin, or, Liszt, or Schumann… and again, Bach.... and Beethoven... and Bach... and Beethoven.
When I was five or six, or ten or eleven, or fifteen, I didn’t know much about malevos, about men hiding in dark suburban street corners with keen facones ready to jump out of their sheaths at the first provocation. About milonguitas, women with raspy voices and black circles under their eyes, singing from one bar to another, their high heels resonating en las viejas calles adoquinadas de San Telmo, o la Boca, o Boedo. No, I didn’t know about them, because they existed in another world, on the other side of the wall. On the side of the forbidden.
(Music stops. Dancers freeze. On the screen we see a drawing of a brick wall, boots marching, and faces disappearing. We hear the sounds banging on a wall, or heavy doors closing.)
On my side of the wall, in my Buenos Aires, the right thing to do was to shut up! Silence! Because saying the wrong thing could mean death, and fear wrapped everything, hardening people without them even noticing. I was born then, a time of dictators and silence. In an Argentina paralyzed by fear and stained with the Dirty War’s blood.
(On the screen we see a big face with a big mouth open, and a finger pointing down. CUCA is on the stage, following the instructions of the voice coming from the screen, scared. During this part, the dancers will move slowly, with a great difficulty, as if paralyzed. CUCA looks at them from the corner of her eye.)V.O. BIG FACE (to CUCA)
Cállense la boca! If you talk again I'll cut out your tongue!
(On the screen we see red blood dripping from the top of the screen slowly covering the face.)Did you hear me? Me oyo usted! And lift your socks young lady or que se cree? Do you think we are in a bordello here?
(The screen is almost all covered with red.)
You, machona, coming to school wearing pants! Pants, a lady!
(The screen is all red.)
No pants until it gets cold! Till then, long skirt and blue socks to the knees! Did you hear me or are you dumb?
(On the screen: ZOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!! Dancers fall)
SCENE TWO: MARITACUCACLARA
(Musicians play a children's song by Maria Elena Walsh. Cuca and the tango dancers dance with to the music. On the screen we see: animation of these drawings. Text on VO.)Cuca!
Cuquita!
Cucona!
Cucú!
Currucuca!
Cucú!
Cuquita!
All these names my mother calls me.
And Maria de los Angeles Esteves. My official name is very Catholic. Mary of the Angels. But my mother never calls me that.
It's just too long! Too romantic. It sounds like it escaped from a Telenovela: "Oh! Jose Alberto Francisco Perez! Oh! Maria de los Angeles Esteves!" That's not me.
I never used Maria in my parents' house. My mother is Maria. I don’t feel like a Maria. She's Maria. I'm not Maria.
My sisters' official names are Maria too. We are: Maria Rita, Maria de los Angeles, and Maria Clara. Las Tres Marias.
And guess what: my mother's name is Maria too! But she is Maria, just Maria. That is it. She's the first Maria.
(in the drawings, we hear a man calling) "Maria!" (four women's head answering) "Que? Que? Que? Que?" Too many Marias!
So my sisters and I became instead, Marita, Cuca and Clara. Marita Cuca Clara. All one word. MaritaCucaClara. We are an institution.SCENE THREE: SHHHH!!!!
(On the screen we see a family picture. One of the girls has an arrow pointing at her with the name: Cuca. She's the chubby one.)(Four actors/dancers: one man, three women, and CUCA, sit at a table, with plates of soup in front of them. They wear big napkins tucked under their chins. They eat in silence, but CUCA eats noisily. Suddenly, the FATHER gestures for silence: SHHHH!!!! CUCA stops eating, scared, then, starts eating again, this time, more silently. CUCA smiles, pleasing. The silence should be overpowering. Then, carefully, trying not to be seen, CUCA picks her nose, eats some boogers, and sticks the left overs under the table. Still silence. Overbearing. Gigantic. Silence. A couple will be dancing tango, in silence, on the side of the stage.... CUCA looks at them, timidly, once in a while...)
(And suddenly, CUCA gets up on the table and screams, opening a huge mouth, with a huge voice, opening wide arms, wide legs open, and wide hands open, fingers pointing straight out. The others continue eating, not noticing. CUCA stands on top of the table, and with big gestures, dances a tango imitating the dancers on the side. But suddenly, she looks down, and realizes that the others are still there, sitting at the table, watching her. Then, all together they silence her with a loud Shhhh!!! CUCA gets scared and goes back to her seat, looking small. Complacent, she goes back to eating and smiling.)
SCENE FOUR: BANANAS
(In this scene, two musicians are playing a cartoon sound track, and sound effects. On the screen, we see the picture from the previous scene fade out and fade in a picture of bananas.)CUCA
Yes, I was fat, chubby, rellenita, or so they said. So my Mom took me to the doctor and the doctor said: “You have to lose ten kilos before you turn fourteen. After that it gets harder.” Ten kilos, or six pounds. It doesn’t sound like too much, but for a ten-year-old girl who liked to eat everything, six pounds was a lot.FEMALE DANCER (Singing and dancing. Funny.)
No bananas, no grapes, no white bread, no sweets, no cookies, no candy, no milanesas, no rice, no potatoes, no fries, no cakes or croissants, pasta only once a week, only one spoon of oil or sugar, no bananas, no bananas, no bananas, no bananas. No bananas!CUCA
No bananas.CUCA(As a child, talking to Mother)
But tio Meme brings bananas every Sunday and I love bananas and you make your delicious licuados with bananas and fruit and milk and…CUCA(As mother)
No Cuca, no bananas. The doctor said no bananas.CUCA
But there they were. On top of the fridge. Fresh, fresh, fresh from the warehouse where my uncle ripened them. Bananas. I took a chair, reached the top of the fridge where the bananas were, I took a bunch, stepped down, ran to the bathroom, closed the door behind me, and ate…ate…one…two…then maybe three or four, who knows… bananas… Mmmmm… Delicious...(We hear loud knocks)
Someone is at the door, someone wants to come in, and I have the banana peels there, the evidence next to me...
(The knocks get louder. It sounds as if the knocks will explode. On the screen we see images of a bathroom, as if it were from the point of view of the narrator, alternating with the image of a closed door.)
I run and run around in circles. Climbing the bathroom furniture, I am hanging from the shower curtain, walking upside down on the ceiling, hiding behind the bidet, turning the faucets on and off…
(The knocks get louder, menacing.)
They are coming, coming, coming inside the bathroom and they will find me here with my sin! My sin! (crossing herself, then, whispering to Audience) Maria de los Angeles is a very Catholic name... (back to normal voice) No! I can’t allow that! I can’t let them find out! No, no no! (Throwing the banana peels into the toilet) I'll throw them into the toilet bowl!(Flushing sounds. On screen: toiled bowl, flushing.)
Ahhhhh!
(The knocking continues, softer, normal. CUCA opens the door.)MARITA
Che nena, what the hell were you doing in there?CUCA (as a child)
Nothing, nothing. Caca.(On the screen we see a man’s legs kneeling on the floor, next to a toilet, we see the movements of the body, the arms, the plunger. Toilet sounds.)
CUCA (narrator)
Of course, the toilet flooded and my father was called to the task of fixing it. Plunger here, there, the evidence was clear out of the water: banana peels.(CUCA as a shy child, runs and hides. Then she sits at the table holding a calabash with mate (Argentinean drink) in one hand, and a peeled banana in the other. There is a kettle on the table. She eats the banana and drinks the mate.)
That was the last time I ate bananas.
SCENE FIVE: EDITORIAL CASA
(On screen we see animation of these drawings, with texts in V.O. The musicians play again the children's song by Maria Elena Walsh. At the same time, CUCA is sitting at the same table, eating cookies, one after the other one, getting messy, desperate…)We played outside all summer, getting dirty, my sisters and I. But the summers were long, three months, so my father gave us notebooks and told us to write. “Anything, poems, stories, you can copy some from the book, or make them up...” So we started our own publishing house when I was eight. Editorial Casa. We wrote a book each summer, with drawings, a proper cover with the title, the name of the author, when and where it was published… and all the information you find in the first and last pages of a book. A real book. We wrote poems, short stories, novellas, and even, science fiction and science books about leaves, shells and stuff like that. But we don’t do that anymore…
(When the leaves in the animation fall apart, real dry leaves will fall onto the stage. CUCA takes a leaf, blows it to the wind, and watches it fall. While looking at the dry leaf on the floor, CUCA starts to fall, shaking her arms, trying to fly, to cross, to overcome, to get to the other side of the abyss that started to grow between her sisters and herself. But, she doesn’t succeed; she fails. While trying, she steps on them, on the leaves, breaking them into a thousand little pieces.)
(Black Out)
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE: ON MEMORY I
(On the screen, we see feet walking over different city surfaces: pavement, sidewalks, etc. We hear a life music improvisation consisting of a mix of modified street sounds, voices, and other processed sounds.)CUCA V.O.
You know how it is. Anything can suddenly transport you to some place else, a sight, a sound, or a smell. Back in your memory, you are there: Paris, or Buenos Aires, or Amsterdam... that street corner, the door of that apartment building like the one on the Rue Joseph the Maistre... Hmmm... that smell reminds me of the bakery in Amsterdam by the Tram stop close to Radio 100 where Gloribel and I did our weekly shows… I hear the frogs singing when I go for a walk next to the river, at night, in Riverside, and I am back to Madariaga, where I used to teach, en el campo, a long time ago.But also, memory takes you to places you don't want to go. Places you'd rather forget. I see a piece of paper on the ground, like this one, floating aimlessly across the sidewalk. This piece of paper transports me back to a memory, one I tried to forget for so long. I don’t want to remember but shit, that fucking piece of paper brings it all back. I keep walking but I’m distracted now, shaking my head trying to spin it out. It doesn’t go away. So I pick it up. Look at it. It's blank. And I happily tear it into pieces and throw it into the oncoming traffic.
SCENE TWO: ON MEMORY II
(Stage dark. CUCA enters with a flashlight on. CUCA sits with her legs crossed. She sets the flashlight on the floor, so that it illuminates her, or maybe it points up at the ceiling. She hits herself with the crumbled piece of paper. We hear an obsessive sound, piercing, and very high continuous sound.)CUCA
I can't get that image out of my mind. I am lying on his bed, trying to sleep a bit. I am so tired. I close my eyes, but soon enough I hear the rustling of clothes. I hear him, approaching. So I open my eyes, just a little bit, just enough to see, to spy him. And here he comes, through the door, walking fast, wearing underwear. He walks to the bed and lay down next to me. I don’t move. I try not to move. I don’t know what to do. I stop breathing. He lay there without moving for a while. And then, he turns to me. I am still turned the other way. He starts touching me and pulls me his way, to kiss me. I say no, but so faintly, so dubiously… I can't get that image out of my mind. Him, walking through the door, in underwear. I can't get it out. Him, walking through the door, him, walking. I'm trying to sleep. Him, in underwear. Him, lying next to me. His hand on my shoulder. His heavy breathing on my neck. I'm trying to sleep. Him saying: Fuck me bitch!Then, loneliness. Guilt.
SCENE THREE: LA FEMME
(On the screen we see a projection of the drawing "La Femme."
We hear strong, noisy sounds, improvised life with electronics. During the noisy sound improvisation, CUCA will be dressing facing the mirror on the stage with a fancy hat, stockings, high heel shoes, makeup, etc.)CUCA(yelling over the noise, putting some make up on)
Desgracia, que desgracia haber nacido mujer.
Si, yo te digo, ser mujer es una desgracia.(Noise fades out slowly.)
When I was ten I didn’t like being a woman.
CUCA (as a ten-year-old)
Why can’t I run around like boys, kick their asses like they do to us? Why is that bad? We are playing boys against girls and girls against boys, and they are chasing us, and they are winning because we don’t defend ourselves, and I don’t like it. Look at that, all the girls are prisoners and all they boys are free! So I go and kick their asses: Come here you, bam bam bam on top of your head, and now they’re all running away from me, La Gorda! La Gorda! They yell… And they are scared of me! Good! But no. That is not good, my mother says. I am a señorita and a señorita can’t do that.CUCA (as mother)
Can’t hit the boys, that’s for tomboys, machona. You can’t yell at them and run behind them. That’s maleducada, rude.CUCA (as a ten-year-old)
But, that’s not fair. Why can they, and we can't?CUCA (as narrator. Taking the hammer)
At fifteen, I had dreams.CUCA (At 15, putting a backpack on)
I want to go backpacking around the country...CUCA (As mother)
Cuca are you crazy? A girl alone can't do that. It is dangerous.CUCA (At 15)
Why?CUCA (As mother)
Because you are a girl! You can't do that! What will the neighbors think?CUCA(as narrator, hitting the table with the hammer like the judges do)
Sentenced to life in prison without parole! Later, I learned, that the unfairness of my society was not the only cross I had to bear. No. Later I learned that as a woman, I also had to deal with the pains of the body, the body of a woman. Because, being a woman, on top of restricting my freedom, gave me blood every month. Que castigo Dios mio!!!!(CUCA takes the big book and sits again at the table.)
In my last year of high school, my suspicions about the conspiracies against women were confirmed. I found the proof in the career guide. I was trying to decide what to do after high school. I wanted to be a park ranger and live in a cabin surrounded by trees and lakes…
CUCA (At 17, reading from the big book, huge, like a triple bible book.)
Age required, 18 years old.” Good, that's good, I'm gonna be18 next year. Next.
Citizenship: Argentinean.” Good, that's good. I am Argentinean. Next.
Genre, male, only. Male only.” Male only!!! I am not a male but I still want to be a park ranger!CUCA (As narrator, standing up. Putting the boa on.)
I was left out. It was then when I realized that to be a woman was a disadvantage. I had been born impaired. Sexually impaired. (hitting the table with the hammer) Woman!
SCENE FOUR: I LOVE YOU
(This scene is a music/text improvisation using sensors and live electronics. On the screen we see a slide show of couples from magazines, drawings, pictures, etc. CUCA begins the improvisation saying "I love you" very slowly and sensually. This sentence will be recorded and modified with live electronics, mixed with the sentences provided bellow. This will create a counterpoint-kind of texture. The Tango dancers dance a more pop-modern or free version of a tango.)(Text to use for the improvisation)
"Stephane, Je vous aime."
"Creo que me estoy enamorando de vos...Que?"
"Can't you see this? Can't you see that this is theater? Our gestures, rehearsed gestures of tenderness. Our words, dictated passages of magic prose. C'est le theatre. Le theatre de l'amour."
"I pronounce you, husband and wife..."
etc.SCENE FIVE: FREEDOM?
(We hear songs of Silvio Rodriguez, "Ojala," "Que cosa sea," etc, mixed up and distorted with crowd sounds and disco music from the 80's. On the screen we see archive video or pictures of crowds on Plaza de Mayo, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, etc. The dancers could be dancing along with the music, like teenagers.)CUCA(Standing on a chair, yelling)
Yeah!!! In my first year of secondary school, when the dictatorship had just ended, I was elected the representative to the student Council. Now that we were in a democracy, we also wanted to have a voice. (stepping down from the chair) But when I went home and told my parents about it, they didn't like it.(Music stops. Dancers stop.)
CUCA (as father)
No, you should get out of that. It is dangerous.CUCA (as child)
But why?CUCA (as father)
Because if the milicos come back, the first thing they will do is blacklist you! I know about these things, believe me Cuca. Or do you think this is the first time that we have democracy?CUCA (as child)
No... I know it's not... But this time is different!CUCA (as father)
Different? Ha! Who told you that? Your leftist teachers at school? They don't know anything, they didn't live enough! They are dreamers! I've been there, I've I'd been there in '43, '55, '62, '66, '76... And believe me, they'll come back....
CUCA (narrator)
I didn't listen to my father. I had seen the movie "La Noche de los Lapices," where some students from the student council were kidnapped during the Dictatorship and killed, or, perdon, "disappeared." But we, my generation, were ready to change the world, and we were not going to be scared by a bunch of thugs and fascists... (Crowd sounds) Soon thereafter, I joined the Marxist Communist Literary group, and one day after workshop, I went home with Camilo, and he played for me the tapes of El Che Guevara and Fidel Castro talking to the Cubanos the day of La Revolucion.... Yeahhh!!! (Crowd sounds) I have to say, it all sounded a bit weird to me... you know... up until then, all I had listened to, in terms of speeches, was Pope Juan Pablo speaking in front of the multitudes in Plaza San Pedro. But, I wasn't into that anymore, and this leftist stuff sounded much more interesting and real than all that Accion Catolica religious bullshit.(On the screen we see the face from before, scene one Act one)
BIG FACE V.O.
SHUT UP!!!!(CUCA continues talking and standing on the chair, but no sounds come out of her mouth. She covers her mouth with her hand and bends her head down.)
SCENE SIX: I'LL FLY AWAY OH GLORY...
(On the screen, we see the animation of these drawings: hang gliding, across the screen, going down. We hear the song “Fly Away,” performed live by the musicians. We also see a pair of feet walking, from under and behind the screen.)CUCA V.O.
At fifteen, all I wanted to be was a spirit. I was a very Catholic and church-addicted girl. As I was going to church some Wednesday afternoon, it came to me: “I wish I didn't have a body. I wish I could just be my ideas. I wish I were just a spirit." I wished hard for this. But I always had to carry the burden of my body...(On the screen we see a hang-glider crash. Then we see a drawing and animation of CUCA's face, sad, with her right arm up, suspended. CUCA comes out from behind the screen with an arm in the air. She lay on a bed, suspending her arm in the air. On the screen we see a drawing/animation of a window, from the inside. Swallows play outside the window.)
CUCA
Yes, I ended up in a hospital bed, my arm hanging from a wire that went through a hole in my elbow. For 40 days during the hot Public Hospital summer, I lay there. My mother stayed with me every night, just in case, for there were not many nurses around. We had heard stories about young doctors sleeping with young girls there... Nona brought me mate every afternoon...(A woman brings CUCA the mate.)
(To the woman) Gracias Nona. (To the Audience) But one night, Marita stayed with me instead, so my mother could go home and rest. She couldn't sleep, so she took my hospital notebook, the one I wrote in with my good hand, my left hand, and she wrote me something while hearing the painful moans of the older women in the other room.
(We hear painful moans. The screen starts to fill with colors from a drawing.)
It surprised me. She said I had no skin, that I was living with my soul exposed, feeling too much.
(CUCA gets out of the bed, disengages arm and walks to a box full of letters on the floor. The screen fills up with words.)Clara wrote me many nice letters when I was in France. She called me once not long ago and told me that she found a box with fifty letters that I had written her, before I used email. We used to write more then...tell each other things. Now, it's hard...
People change. Even sisters change. We grow up, make new friends. And I left... went to follow my dreams in Paris.... then in Holland... then in the U.S...
SCENE SEVEN: QUE?
(On the screen we see pictures of Paris, Holland, the US, and other places. We also see an animation of these drawings and we hear street sounds and the sound of many voices speaking in different languages, becoming very loud and overpowering. During this time, on the stage, CUCA starts to speak in different languages, holding her head, as if it was going to explode.)
CUCA (Yelling over the loud sounds)
I am not the same person in English as in Spanish, or in French. Do you understand? Je ne peut pas parler en Francais de la meme facon je parle en Espagnol, parce que je sais que si je ne dis pas la "j" dans "jazz" correctment, ils vont pas comprendre! Ils ne comprendre jamais quand je fais un petit erreur, seulment un petit erreur, and that's it. They don't understand a word I said because I made a little, insignificant mistake in the pronunciation... That happens in English too... I'm sure you are experiencing it right now. What did she say? Did she say pronunciation, or renunciation, or what? Is she speaking in English? Y como verán, en español es mucho mas fácil... bueno, no es español, es Argentino. No me tengo que preocupar por las pronunciaciones... Aunque, las últimas veces que estuve en Argentina, me volvieron loca repitiéndome que tengo un acento. Acento? Accent? I have an accent they say. Acento de dónde? Del inglés, dicen a veces, English, o del francés, decían antes cuando vivía en Francia... French... Por suerte, nunca se me pegó el acento en Holandés.... because Dutch hurts. I don’t like it. "Ik spreak gein Netherlands!" Ya, ik spreak gein Netherlands, ik spreak gein, ik spreak, ik, ik, ik gein, geseleg, ik... Alstublieft.... spreak... gein... Netherlands... un, deux, trois, quatre, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen. See, see how it hurts? It hurts here (touching throat) here, it hurts...(On the screen we see the animation of a drawing of a face with the words "Que?" filling up the screen. The voices in other languages get louder and louder.)
CALLENSE LA BOCA! Or shut up, anyway.
(Black out)
ACT THREE
SCENE ONE: ON MEMORY III
(On the screen we see feet walking in nature. We hear a music improvisation with modified nature sounds.)CUCA V.O.
I remember, I was with R. We were on the hills behind his house in San Juan Capistrano. We were hiking at night and something transported me back in time, to some other place. I don’t remember what it could have been, maybe a tree branch brushing my face as I passed by, or the shape of the terrain, or the feeling of the cool night sky and the ocean dew on my skin…or all of these things together. Or maybe some fantastic chemical combination of sensations did it, and then I was in Pinamar, the beach town where I spent all of my summers with my family from five years old on. The place I would like to live someday, just a simple and deserted beach town 400 km from Buenos Aires. Pina, from pine, mar, from sea. A pine-sea town. And just the memory of being there makes me feel loved again. It is instant happiness.
SCENE TWO: LOS BATONES DE LELA
(On the screen we see an older woman’s calves. The dress is moving with the movements of her arms. She is kneading dough. We hear some music improvisation with kitchen sounds mixed with the Tango "Madreselva" sang by Carlos Gardel. The tango dancers are dancing on the side, old style.)LELA V.O.
Cuquita, Cuquita, pobre Cuquita. Cuquita bonita. Hermosa Cuquita, preciosa.CUCA
Ramona Aurora Lazabagaster de Esteves, or Doña Ramona, or Lela, my grandmother.
Cooking buñuelos some afternoon, after her two-hour siesta. Flower, eggs, butter, sugar, heat the oil… and… the secret ingredient, Liquor de Anis Ocho Hermanos… Hmmmm… Take a sip… What good is to cook if you cannot taste a bit of everything?
Panqueques, arroz con pollo, arroz con albondigas, empanadas, puchero, asado! Sesos, chinchulines… food, food, food de campo, food from la estancia, food from times when there were no fridges to cool and preserve, from times when cakes were hidden in holes in the soil so she, the gluttonous Ramona, would not eat them.
She was very white, almost pale, with dark eyes and dark curly hair, but for me, her hair was always white. She was very fat by today's standards, in this century when machines do all the heavy work. But for her time, she was strong. She married late for the time, at thirty something, because her mother said: “What’s the rush?”
(On the screen we see the previous image fading out, and fading in, a picture of an old Estancia in the middle of the Pampas.)
She lived in an Estancia within the limits of that time’s civilized world, in la frontera, or the frontier, at the edge of the Salado River. Beyond the Salado, it was Indian Territory.The government gave Remington riffles to the people living in La Frontera, so they could themselves against the Indians, and in the process, help La Patria get rid of them. The Indians used to come together in a malon. But the malon was not made of Indians only. There were criollos too, renegaos, outlaws. The people of the Estancia dug trenches around the house and lay there with their Remingtons, waiting. When the thieves came, the shooting started. It was a war.
The Estancia is now called "La Manuelita" in honor of Mariela's mother. Mariela, a cousin of my father, niece of Lela, owns it now. She was still living there alone a couple of years ago, even though she is almost 80 years old. Now she lives with her divorced and broken brother who is also around her age. I've never met her. My father has told me a lot of things about her. He says that if somebody gets close to the Estancia, she goes out with the Remington and shoots.
(CUCA joins the tango dancers. Continue dancing through the next piece.)
LELA V.O.
Cuquita, Cuquita, pobre Cuquita. Cuquita bonita. Hermosa Cuquita, preciosa.
SCENE THREE: EL NOGAL DE LELA
(On the screen we see an animation of these drawings: arrows falling, flying on the air. Kids laughing. Marita, Cuca and Clara playing Indians... The breakfast over the hot roof tile in the woods of Pinamar... Cuca on top of the Nogal (walnut tree) del Jardin the Lela, yelling: Hey! I'm up here!... a piece of paper with this text: Cuca es poeta! Text on the screen: "Writing poems sitting on a branch of El Nogal. The view of the red Spanish tiles on the roof of her house... falling, breaking into pieces on the floor, mosaicos, red and yellow, tiny little pieces on the floor.... and I... flying." We see tiles, flying. The drawings evaporate and mix with one another. We hear a mixed improvisation with children's songs and the tango from the previous scene.)
SCENE FOUR: A NAME
(We hear a music improvisation, live on stage, made of recorded voices of family members in Spanish and Italian, mixed with CUCA's live voice, using fragments of the following sentences.
On the screen we see bare feet walking on grass.)(Texts for the improvisation)
I finally learned why they called me Cuca.
“Why did you nicknamed me Cuca?”
“Marita was too young to call you Maria de los Angeles... we had to find a short nickname for you... I liked Cuca and called you Cuca”
“Why Cuca and not, Pocha, Coca, Nina, Chela? Why Cuca?”
“Marita was very jealous, very jealous! So I started calling you Cuca, Cuquita, and she'd laugh..."
Cuca... the wife of the Cuco... the monster... roarrr!!! The monster that comes to take you and eat you if you don't go to bed right now!!!!
Fea, ugly, Cuca.SCENE FIVE: LIKE MY NONO
(On the stage CUCA is standing in front of the empty lighted blue screen. When CUCA speaks about herself, she looks to the left. When she speaks about Nono, she looks to the right. The other characters speak to the front.)CUCA
I, like my grandfather, Nono, chose to be a foreigner.He left Italy because the opportunity came to him in a difficult time, after the Second World War had devastated her country and his village. Right then, when my Nona, his young wife, had to wait in long lines for a piece of old bread to eat...
I left Argentina because the opportunity came to me in a difficult time: I had seen my country go from a dictatorship to a democracy that had generated devastating inflations and a system that paid its teacher less than its cleaning ladies. A democracy that had to fill the black economic hole left by years of submission to the International Monetary Fund.
But he had what he needed in Italy: he’d just bought a home, had a job, and a wife and two kids. But his brother, his little brother, was leaving, and he said, "Come with me," so Nono, Chichilo, went, just to see, just to try, just to leave the war-ragged Italy for a while. Capriccio de juventu, as he says.
But I had what I needed in Argentina. Had a salary that many envied. I taught music to at the music conservatorium. But I wanted to leave for so long! And then, just then, Ariel, this friend, this love, left for Sweden. He said: “I’ll help you.” So I left. I was in love with Paris and French even before I knew anything real about them.
Nono never lost his Italian accent, and he never, never stopped speaking his Conversano dialect with Nona and his son, Meme.
I, like my Nono, might never lose my accent, or my language, my Spanish from Argentina.
He will never forget the sweet hills of his Conversano, the trips to the rocky beach from the old medieval town.
I will always keep close to my heart the scent of the pine trees and the sound of the ocean roaring close by my parents' beach house.
He, (maybe like me in a maybe future?) had to see his daughter, my mother, lose the dialect of his village first, and then, lose the Italian language, giving them away in the name of a new citizenship and a new identity.
"They make fun of me at school! They call me La Tana!"
He had to see his wife, Nona, Doña Fontina, cry and yell at him "This is what you took me here for! To work twelve hours a day seven days a week and never see you! Not even Sundays we eat together! Your daughter is crying because the neighbors called her guacha, orphan!"
He heard my mother, his daughter, cry, because she couldn't go to school when she arrived to Argentina at seven because the teacher didn't understand her.
"She has to go to first grade!"
"But my daughter finished the second grade in Italy already!" He wanted to say, but he couldn't because the teacher wouldn't understand him.
He had to see his own daughter, refuse to speak his language. He had to listen to her talk in a new language that now had to be his own because they couldn't go back. They couldn't go back because they didn't have enough money for the ship fare.
Will it happen to me, too? Will my children refuse to speak Spanish because of school children’s name calling? Will they refuse to learn my language and then be cut away from my whole heritage, my family, my history? Will they never go to Argentina, like my mother never went back, not for a day, to Italy? Will it happen to me like it happened to him? Will I daydream about the streets of Buenos Aires, as he dreams about the olive and cherry trees that grew on his parents' farm?
(The screen fills of small cherry blossoms... Floating... The dancers dance a short and dreamy dance... The other dances/actors start forming a line in front of a desk INS style... Then, suddenly, we see on the screen, from behind the beautiful flowers, the big face with the pointing finger...)
SCENE SIX: SHUT UP TANGOBIG FACE V.O.
SHUT UP! Just stand there in line y CALLESE LA BOCA!(All the dancers and actors on stage starts saying "Shut Up," looking at each other, "Shut up?" Laughing, and the dancers start dancing a tango while the musicians, CUCA at the piano, play the "Shut Up Tango." We see a big mouth laughing on the screen, and hear laughs. It is like a party, everybody dancing, and saying shut up between laughs.)
EPILOGE: LAS TRES MARIAS
(On the screen we see a collage of pictures with the three sisters, parents, grandparents, etc. Fade in song "Iu Brouk mai jart" for the credits.)THE END