Menudo

Menudo, da. Fr., Menu, mince; It., Minuto; En., Small; G.; Dnn, klein. (Del Lat. minutus, p. p. de minuere, reducir, achicar.)

Adj. 1. Minute, small. 2. Trifling, unimportant. 3. Minute, meticulous. 4. (Small) change. 5 Common, vulgar.
--a menudo, often, frequently; gente menuda, small fry, children; por menudo, in detail.--sus.m. l. (pl.) Offal (of cattle); giblets (of fowl). 2. (pl.) tithe of fruit and minor products. 3. Small change, coppers.

L'Argent de Poche.

The alarm throbs at 7:08 and the body tenses in robot movements that bring the arm erect and propel the hand forward until it finds the button and --
STOP!
Carefully. Can't risk breaking that plastic switch. Docile-little- Wolfie hands resolve Daddy Leopold's screeching dominant seventh into a peaceful tonic.
Pause.
Scattered shards pull together and wrestle into some kind of union.
Saturday, last day of November, opening week-end of Stage I of vacation project:

A MODEST PROPOSAL to re-live the history of Western drama step-by-step in the barrios, villages, and banana camps of El Progreso.

(The mind really was swimming in pretentious ideas like that until I happened to read:

The medieval rubrics were once thought to indicate the use of three readers for the occasion and, consequently, to specify a form of presentation akin to stage dialogue. Karl Young demonstrated that they refer to different tones of voice to be used by one reader--low for the speeches of Christ, medium for the narrative sections, and high for the speeches of the crowds, priests, and judges. His evidence put an end to the speculation that liturgical drama evolved from the reading of the Gospel as dialogue.

(Hardison, Christmas Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages, p.115).

Of course, idiot; "Quem quaeritis" is a trope on the Introit, not a Gospel. Send that title back to Titles.

A STILL MORE MODEST PROPOSAL to play around in the barrios and camps and see if we can discover how Western theatre maybe perhaps might have developed from a real grass-roots base; the ritual reading of the Gospel of the Mass by the children of the barrio. If that French monastery conglomerate hadn't come up with their "Quem quaeritis" promotion for tropes and cornered the modern theatre development market for about a millenium. Otherwise known as:

THE MENUDO EXPERIMENT.)

The Menudos will show me what they've got at 9:00. Thank God for vacation hours.

SMIKE: Is this a theatre? I thought it would be a blaze of light and finery.
NICHOLAS: So it is, Smike, so it is. But not by day. Not by day.

Things are really getting creaky in the bicycle; Pablo will have to take a break from the pick-up to halt the entropy. A familiar body is blocking the door of the theatre but the face is in shadow and it's not until I'm very close that I recognize Javier Barahona, 18-year-old brother of Edy, come from Tegucigalpa, Mama delighted to have her two boys for vacations, Edy getting a group together in Tegus to do Fuente Ovejuna during vacations (Egad!), passed everything in school, still playing football, still hoping for a job offer to play football, got to run to catch the bus to Olanchito.

Mario is struggling with the books, this being Saturday and the last day of the month, and being thus it is the day of the acid test: Please, God, may he have learned to do it; please, God, make it come out right.

Guillermo is shepherding the Menudos in a clean-up operation. Good old cheap third-world child labor. We confer on the day's agenda. He leaves at 10:30 to get to rehearsal in the camps: all the groups will come together in Las Flores. Things are moving faster in the camps than here in town. But then, they're not real certified menudo groups 'cause they got people of all ages so that's not fair.

Obdulio will be back from Tegucigalpa at noon to take the Menudo chorus, Oscar covers the groups of cub scouts, Rigo goes with Guillermo, other Menudos with Oscar, everybody meets at Guillermo's house at 5:30 to walk together to the Barrio Corocol to do the first one at 6:30 tonight; tomorrow starts with the Misa de los Menudos at 9:00 and goes non-stop around town.

So let's see what the Menudos have got.

MRS. CRUMMLES (to Nicholas): I am glad to see you, sir, so glad, and overcome to welcome you --provisionally-- as a promising new member of our corps. (To Smike ) And this? Yet more? An undernourished friend? You too are welcome sir.

They ain't got much on Isaias 2; out of bubble-gum depth.

"Guillermo, take 'swords into plowshares' and Oscar 'spears into pruning hooks'; straight at the audience and move into it. Repeat that on 'nation shall not raise up sword against nation' and 'neither shall they train for war'. Menudos join in for 'let us walk in the light of the lord'. Got it?"

Of course they don't got it.
Mark it through.

Aside to Guillermo and Oscar:
"No hope for the Menudos on this one. Let them bumble through the first part; take over strong on the weapons and the war images to wake everybody up."

Take it through.
Better but still dismal.
Hey, kids, what time is it?
It's Stanislavskian ferverino time.

"You've got to WANT it. And you've got to make your audience want it. The words come from a long time ago, but isn't this something you really DO want?
Don't you WANT those guns and helicopters beaten into plows and shovels? Can't you WANT this kind of city instead of the mess we live in? WANT it and make THEM want it."

Blank stares.
Daddy Mozart, how did you do it?
"Take it one more time."

They don't make me want it much.

CRUMMLES: You must manage to introduce a real pump and two wash-tubs.
NICHOLAS: Into the piece?
CRUMMLES: Yes, I bought 'em cheap at a sale the other day, and it'll look very well in the bill in separate lines--Real Pump!-- Splendid Tubs!

"Go on to the Luke"

They do Luke 3: 1-19. I'd given Guillermo some ideas about how to attack this using narrative techniques stolen from Nicholas Nickleby; he did the spade work with the Menudos and he did it well: Striking visual compositions of the crowd, clear relation-ships, sharp transitions.

Guillermo himself does the basic narration. His voice is coming to maturity this year and he's developing a crisp and clear narrative style that uses voice and body well. 'Taint Alec McGowen, but 'taint bad.

On the other hand: The Menudos have the form down but their content leaves just a bit to be desired. And it's time to come down hard on Oscar's John the Baptist.

"Oscar, I have said this before more gently and you haven't paid attention, so I'm saying it hard and I'm saying it as a final warning and threat: CUT now and forever all that pious calendar junk and stop studying the paint flaking off the ceiling. If you don't cut it here and now, you are officially de-throned as teen-age idol and Rigo starts working on the role of Jesus for Holy Week.

(Rigoberto Fernández, 14, Guillermo's youngest brother, display the family genes and is far out-classing the rest of the Menudos.)

"And the fact that you break-danced you way into the heart of every teeny-bopper in the country in Scapino means nothing, Oscar: you turned sixteen two days ago, man; you're over the hill as a break-dancer. Is that clear?"
"Si, está claro."
"Rigo, your energy and movements are great in the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' bit. But try not to jump up on the altar; it might scandalize las viejas 'cause it's a bit un-kosher ritually.
"Take it again from the top. Oscar, move like you move when you're dancing--CHANNEL that energy."

They take it again.
Oscar's a lot stronger, but still without conviction.
Except for Rigo, the Menudos wander lost in bubble-gum-land.

"CUT. Elmer, how many pairs of shoes do you have?"
"Dos."
"You've got another pair at home?"
"Si."
Then take this pair across the street and give it to Carlos' brother. He's about your size and I don't think he has any shoes--that I have seen, anyway."
Elmer reacts like a red-blooded 13-year-old.
"That's IT, Elmer; that's how you all react when John tells you that stuff about the guy with two tunics giving one to the guys who doesn't have one: it's ridiculous."

Blank stares.

"Karen and Zulema, you're the tax collectors. You know that señora that works in the tax office, the one with all the rings and necklaces? Walk like her; how is she going to react when John tells her in public to stop ripping people off?"

Karen and Zulema fall into a bubble-gum giggling fit.
Leopold, baby, you were the genius.
"Take it from 'Brood of vipers'."

The Menudos dash in, Oscar stops them cold with "Brood of vipers", Rigo slides into second between Oscar's legs, Oscar tour en l'airs to escape and lands into "Who told you to flee the wrath to come?", Elmer flips his chin at Oscar into "We are the children of Abraham" and backrolls into eloquent street gesture, The girls giggle out of the way until Oscar startles them out of it with "Don't say among yourselves 'We are children of Abraham'", they prance up to him loaded with rings and necklaces and he thunders " Charge no more than is due" but the bubble-giggles are winning and Oscar is hopelessly lost in pious-calendar-land.

"Cut. Oscar, you know a lot of compañeros de barrio who are grunts, no?"
"Si."
"Suppose they come home for Christmas and you get into a heavy rap one night and they ask you what they ought to do. Wouldn't you want to tell them something like 'stop beating up on people'?"
"Pues si."
"Or 'Be content with your salary and stop ripping the rest of us off'?"
"Claro."
"Then TELL them, give it to 'em straight--"
Guillermo taps me on the shoulder. Time to get the show on the road.
"Take it one last time from 'Brood of vipers', and MEAN it, WANT it.

They take it one last time.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is about a millennium in the future.
But it'll be the hottest thing to hit the barrios in the last few centuries.

CRUMMLES: We're strolling players: outcasts, rogues and vagabonds. That is our lot. We carry on. Yes, we carry on.

From all of us at teatro la fragua,
senior members scattered (but present) and Menudos present (But scattered):

May your Christmas be filled with joy and hope
and may the real peace of Christmas be with you throughout the new year.

Peace,

Jack Warner sj

José Ramón Bardales
Elmer Bonilla
Oscar Cardoza
José Obdulio Cuevas
Guillermo A. Fernández
Rigoberto Fernández
Karen García
Mario Inestroza
Cenén H. Montes
Pablo Oyuela
Zulema Soto

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