St. Louis: Luchadora!

Luchadora play, Theatre Nuevo, Mustard Seed Theater, St. Louis, Missouri. June 2018.

June 2018


When I saw the promo for the play, Luchadora, it was a must-go-see for me.  A connection between my current home in Ferguson and my most recent home in El Paso, by way of my new guilty pleasure, lucha libre.

Luchadora play, Theatre Nuevo, Mustard Seed Theater, St. Louis, Missouri. June 2018.

It is high praise, indeed, for me to tell you that the play kept my attention for both of the 45-minute acts.

The main theme is the self-empowerment of girls and women both today and in the Vietnam War era. Where girls and women literally fight, albeit incognito, for their places at the grown-up table of the world.

It's a personal story that a grandmother tells her granddaughter, the former a secret luchadora and the latter, a hopes-to-be boxer.

It's about keeping secrets from family members who keep you back and from the larger society that would keep you boxed in.

The Spartan set design was clever and effective. Granddaughter and grandmother, in today's time, sat in an upstairs alcove. Grandmother's story played out on center stage. A bridge between the modern-day alcove and a large staircase was a platform for real-time play action and as a mechanism for "unseen" characters to reveal their thoughts or the contents of their letters.

Luchadora play, Theatre Nuevo, Mustard Seed Theater, St. Louis, Missouri. June 2018.

The Mustard Seed Theater, within Fontbonne University, is petite. Very comfortable seats! And they are roomy. Plus each row is sufficiently higher than the one below it to assure all attendees a fine line of sight onto the stage.

Ticket prices are not inexpensive. Fortunately, it appears that plays are accessible to most for at least one performance of each play, when attendees can pay what they can afford if they also bring a canned good for donation to a food pantry.

El Paso: A Movie With a Blast of Sexism

At the Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

Actually, the movie happened in The Fountain Theater in Mesilla, New Mexico. But because I came up to see the movie from El Paso and my movie seat neighbors also lived in El Paso, I'm claiming this post for El Paso.


The movie, The Lamb, took me back to Ethiopia. I can't look at the trailer without sighing. In nostalgia at my time there; in sadness for the movie's protagonist, the beauty of the country, the tenderness of the boy toward his lamb, the little shepherdess; the pathos of the young woman.

I didn't think about it til just now re-watching the trailer and considering the blast of sexism that blew my way in the theater, that the movie's themes include sexism contra women and men. Not to mention the interconnectedness of Ethiopia's Orthodox Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations.

So about the movie: I recommend it.

Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

The theater is an historic one, lovingly tended to by volunteers, screening films that the mainstream movie theaters might not offer.

Fountain Theater, Mesilla, New Mexico. November 2016.

My seat neighbors were a husband and wife who live in El Paso. Congenial, engaging to chat with. The husband is an attorney. Not relevant under normal circumstances, but ....

I shared with them my recent visit to the Kentucky Club in Juárez, how back in the day, only men (per my understanding) were allowed in.

Mr. Husband allowed as how Mexican law now requires that women be admitted to bars, even to private clubs that used to be the sacrosanct dens for those with affluence and influence of the male persuasion.

The Mrs and I chuckled mildly about the bad old days when women were shut out of back-room and golf-course business deals, and then Mr. Husband said something like: "Oh, but we made sure that women who came to our club wouldn't stay long. We would say things and do things that would intimidate them into leaving. We showed them what was what." Hohohohoho.

The Mrs. allowed as how men needed their space and how there was never anything interesting going on in those men's clubs anyway.

I'd like to say that I whipped out my

bumper sticker ... but I didn't. I took the easy way out and just smiled weakly.

And wrote about it here.