tlf news Vol. v #2 December, 1984


TW3 or A Week in the Life






Sunday, 25 November: CONTRA LEADER SAYS THEY RECEIVE AID FROM HONDURAN MILITARY (UPI)
DANGER OF REGIONAL CONFLAGRATION MOVES AREA BISHOPS TO MEET IN TEGUCIGALPA (Tiempo)

After the 9:00 Mass in the parish I lock myself in the office of the theatre. Today I have to get a good start on the scene of Herod and the Kings. I want the Kings to speak in verse: they've foreigners, after all, so they're bound to talk funny. I take as models the Herod play from the Coventry cycle and an early medieval Spanish piece, and dig in. It's rough going at first, but after a while I start to get the feel of the game: it's like doing the Times crossword puzzle, only with different rules.

At 8:00 p.m. I look at my watch and realize that I've missed dinner. If I'm going to be awake for rehearsal in the morning, I'd better quit now; the bulk of the scene has some kind of shape. It's a quiet Sunday evening: a little chilly but very clear. I ride home the long way to take the pavement. The new moon is holding water and two brilliant planets (Venus and Mars?) balance above the tips. "We have seen his star in the East..." Appropriate way to end the day.


Monday, 26 November: SALVADOR GOVERNMENT AND GUERRILLA TO MEET FRIDAY (UPI)
SAN PEDRO MAN KIDNAPPED BY AGENTS OF SECRET POLICE (Tiempo)

Rehearsal is Monday morning sleepy; we work on some mechanical things. "Silent Night" is awful but improving. Saúl, our new guitarist fresh from the banana camps, does not comprehend that there exists music that is not in a rock four; 6/8 time is as impenetrable as the Critique of Pure Reason. The muchacho's got talent, but oh so far to go. We plunge in to see what we can do with the Noah sequence. It's a good scene with very colloquial Honduran dialogue. Guillermo will make a good Noah; Rosa is beginning to show some spark as his wife. The three sons are all new and are solidly nowhere.

After lunch Pablo goes to San Pedro to pick up the Newsletter inserts from the printer. They were supposed to be ready last Friday, and then Saturday, and then today. The rest are practicing their juggling (we HAVE to end the show with everybody juggling for baby Jesus) when Edy comes in the inform me that Julio has suddenly quit.

That's it. It is impossible to get this show up in time. It was too ambitious an idea to start with, it takes too many people, we've got too many new people, we'll never be able to pull it off, better to quit now before we've made any public announcement. We've aborted other projects before. I don't like to abort; for six years I've wanted to get up a Christmas show and I thought this was finally the year to do it. I was wrong. Time to admit defeat. Try again next year. No big deal.

I go home and sleep most of the afternoon. When I wake up I start in on Billy Phelan's Greatest Game to get my head on the tracks of a new project. Pablo shows up to announce the inserts weren't ready: come back tomorrow. Lovely way to end the day.


Tuesday, 27 November: GOVERNMENT DELEGATES NAMED TO DIALOGUE WITH GUERRILLA (UPI)
BISHOP OF SAN JOSE: INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION CAUSES OF PROBLEMS IN C.A. (Tiempo)

I arrive at the office rested and ready to decide to which new project we shall turn at this point. The tribe is there before me. "The muchachos want to talk with you." All right, we'll listen to it all again. Nobody will be late. Everybody will concentrate during rehearsals. "We really want to do this because it's something really exciting, nobody has ever seen anything like this before, and Christmas is always so depressing here in Progreso." Against my better judgment, I give in. We spend most of the morning trying to figure out how to reshuffle actors to replace Julio.

Pablo resumes the pilgrimage to the printer in the afternoon; we take advantage of the trip to stock up on sandpaper to refinish the stage floor, and to see if he can find someplace to Xerox labels. I go back to Herod and the Kings while Edy runs a few scenes. Julio had written a good speech of Herod animating his army to wipe out this subversive child for God and Fatherland. Saúl struggles with 6/8 time.

Riding back to the theatre after dinner, I notice a lot of people along the way looking up at something going on in the sky. When I park the bike, I look back and see two planes that seem to have taken off from the San Pedro airport. "We have seen his star in the East..." Secret arms shipments from the U.S.? I finish off Herod and the Kings and end up with a fairly good scene. One internal accent that's off and one forced rhyme, but those can be downplayed if I can get them to read it right. We'll try it out tomorrow and see how it reads.


Wednesday, 28 November: ALL NIGHT FLIGHTS CANCELLED IN SAN PEDRO AIRPORT (Tiempo)
BISHOPS CALL ON CENTRAL AMERICANS TO PRAY THERE NOT BE U.S. INVASION (Tiempo)

Pablo announces the printer had done nothing with the inserts; but he ran into a friend who works with another printer who promised them cheaper and ready by Friday. Let us see. At least he found a place to get the address labels done.

The Herod scene reads well, if I can ever get the muchachos to feel the music of the verse. I must be insane to think I'll be able to get Progreseños to act verse. The Cain and Abel fight has its moments, but Danilo is rushing impulsively and I'm afraid somebody is going to get hurt. He's seen too many karate flicks where the goal seems to be to get the fight over with a quickly as possible. And it doesn't have the ragged sense that he's doing this for the first time, learning as he goes; Danilo probably has too much personal experience behind him.

We start sanding in the afternoon; I faint when I discover what we paid for sandpaper. Do they make it out of gold dust? Rosa and Edy struggle to get addressed envelopes in order. I try a new tack with Saúl: ¡COUNT! 123456. "123 pause, 456 pause."

When we knock off work, I discover that the front wheel of the bicycle is frozen in position. The tijera (whatever that is), Guillermo explains. Perfect way to end the day. I walk home, and decide I haven't the energy to walk back to the theatre in the evening. I dig into Billy Phelan:

They were up from below. And when you're up, you let no man pull you down. You roll your wagons over the faces of the enemy.
And who is the enemy?
It's well you might ask.


Thursday, 29 November: GOVERNMENT/GUERRILLA TO MEET IN OUTSKIRTS OF SAN SALVADOR (UPI)
BISHOP OF COPAN: U.S. INVASION OF C.A. WOULD BE IMMORAL (Tiempo)

We get Saúl to add some percussive sound effects to the Garden of Eden scene. He picks up the idea and the scene begins to take on form. I finally have the chance to use an idea I've been tossing around for years: the forbidden fruit is a banana. I like that image Obdulio (Adam) is bubbling with enthusiasm when we finish a run-thru of the entire sequence.

Rolando Paguada shows up: motorcycle helmet, shades, sporting a scrawny mustache. The soul of tlf our first two years, Rolando is now teaching high school in a village near the Salvador border ("Gringo military everywhere, and helicopters all over the place"). He's on his way to Olanchito with his family for the school vacations.

Edy and Pablo go to Santa Rita in the afternoon to arrange details of our out-of-town tryout there; they drop the bicycle off at a repair shop on the way. Guillermo and Rosa work on Noah and his wife, Raúl and Obdulio are sanding, Danilo and I attack the alphabetizing of envelopes. Saúl is struggling with some exercises to learn to read; he's been at it for weeks and remains far out in left field. Suddenly something happens: I hear snatches of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." "I think he's got it. By George he's got it." Saúl becomes an irrepressible grin.

I'm still vehicle-less, so I take another night off and finish Billy Phelan:

"All sons are Isaac, all fathers are Abraham, and all Isaacs become Abrahams if they work at it long enough."

"Then Abraham bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And Stretched forth the knife... and slew his son,
And all the seed of Europe, one by one."


Friday, 30 November: BISHOPS CONDEMN SHIPMENTS OF ARMS TO C.A. (Tiempo)
SANDINISTAS DENOUNCE MASSIVE SHIPMENTS OF ARMS TO HONDURAS (UPI)

Edy and Pablo report that all is set up in Santa Rita: two weeks from today we open this thing. ¡Egad! Well, we'll do the best we can.

We work the musical sequence. The genealogies (scat-sung and break-danced) are coming along. When we get to "Silent Night" I fall through the floor: Saúl is playing in 6/8. Ragged, but 6/8. And he knows it: much as he tries to affect super-cool, the grin breaks through. The verse is beginning to sound in the Herod scene. The muchachos really like the scene, but I'm a bit afraid of it: even when you try to play them down the contemporary parallels jump out.

Pablo takes off for another try to the (new) printer, Guillermo goes to pick up the bicycle from the shop, Saúl ponders the mysteries of ledger lines, the others attack the sanding of the stage floor. Edy and I set in to put the new bunch of address labels on envelopes. The print rubs off at a touch; the ink hasn't dried. We try putting them under a PAR light to dry them. It works, but it's going to take a while.

The bicycle is working nicely; they gave it a grease job and tightened a few bolts as well as fixing the tijera. After dinner Pablo returns from San Pedro with the inserts. Thank God for small favors.


Saturday, 1 December: GOVERNMENT/GUERRILLA TALKS "ADVANCING WELL" (UPI)
CIA HAS 6,000 REBELS POISED TO ENTER IN NICARAGUA (UPI)

We run the whole Nativity sequence a couple of times. It's going to work, but it's not what I want. Well, next year we can re-write it. In a break Saúl, fooling around, plays something that will work perfectly for the construction of the ark; much easier to use that than to futz with the thing I was trying to teach him. Simplify. We do the whole Noah sequence: the music works well, the three sons are still nowhere. What about trying to switch Edy from God to Shem? That might spark up the trio.

I ride back to the theatre after lunch to write the Christmas Newsletter. About four blocks away the back wheel suddenly goes CLUNK: out of alignment again. I should have expected it since it came back from the shop yesterday. Luckily, Edy and Pablo show up to shower for the Saturday night dance (there's no water in their barrio). They know how to fix these things.

Now that we've gotten to this point, let's see how long it takes to get this printed up and out to I'll. But even if it arrives late:

From all of us at teatro la fragua,
our sincere prayer for a Christmas filled with joy and hope;
and that the real peace of Christmas
be with you through the coming year.

Every tramping boot of the soldiers
and every garment drenched in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called
"Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

Peace,


Jack Warner, S.J.

Edy Barahona
Danilo R. Bueso
José Obdulio Cueva
Guillermo Fernández
Raúl García
Saúl del Cid Jiménez
Rosa Melba Mejía
Pablo Oyuela


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