Rainier Valley actors learn the joys of racial tolerance

Xiomara Calderon is black. She is also Hispanic. Just the person to foster tolerance and mutual appreciation in a society where blacks and Hispanics have an uneasy record that includes resentment and even gang warfare.


	Adriene Green, right, is Yemaya the sea goddess in the musical "Mabaire!" a collaberation between the Rainier Valley Youth Theatre and a team of Cuban stage artists. Paul Joseph Brown/P-I Photos

Calderon, a Cuban, is a theater director. She and three fellow stage artists from Havana are in Seattle to help 19 Rainier Valley young people gain mutual appreciation through drama.

"But it's not just American Hispanics and blacks," Calderon said during an interview earlier this week. "We also have youngsters from the Philippines, China, Samoa, Colombia, Mexico and, let's see, what else, oh yes, two Romanian boys."

The Cuban team was recruited by Seattle playwright/director/actress Rose Cano. Together with Cano, the Cubans have put together a musical based on a folk tale that comes from a Yoruba tradition of West Africa that was transplanted to Cuba.

The title of the show is "Mabaire!" a Yoruban word meaning "don't forget me!"


Cuban theater director Xiomara Calderon puts her finishing touch on a performer's mask. Paul Joseph Brown/P-I Photo

"Reduced to the simplest terms," Calderon says, "the legend is about the queen of the sea. She falls in love with the patron of fishermen. She wants to reveal the secrets and the treasures of the sea to him. But she's not sure that she can trust him with this secret knowledge. So she pulls out his tongue. Being mute, he can't tell about what he has learned. That part, the part about the tongue, is done in a very stylized, a very symbolic way."

On the basis of this tiny tale, Cano and Cuban playwright Jose Rodriguez have built an elaborate musical drama. It includes Santeria mythology -- the Afro-Cuban lore that fuses Roman Catholicism with traditional Yoruba religion.

The show has music by Edesio Alejandro and Seattle's own gospel virtuoso, Paul Thomas. Alejandro's cosmopolitan resume lists work with Gladys Knight and George Benson. Choreography for "Mabaire!" is by Ricardo Pedroso, a modern dancer who has performed all over the world.

"Mabaire!" opened this past weekend at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St. It runs this weekend and next.

The show involves 19 young people ages 6 through early 20s, according to Jeanette Oi-suk Yew, artistic director of the center's Rainier Valley Youth Theatre. The "Mabaire" budget is about $35,000. Contributions have come from individuals, foundations and government agencies.

"The young people were not sure what they were getting into," Calderon says. "They were giving up part of their summer vacation. Rehearse for four weeks. Then perform during three weekends. And what were they getting? Learning lines, learning lyrics, learning dances -- it's not easy. But then when they performed before their first audience! Oceans of applause. Standing ovation. Curtain calls. That convinced them. The discipline is worthwhile."

At 21, Adrienne Green is the grand old lady of the "Mabaire!" cast. She plays Yemaya, the sea goddess. "Mabaire!" is her third Rainier Valley Youth Theatre production.

"The role has helped me discover a part of myself that I hadn't known about," she says. "I was never a tomboy. But I'm not girly-girly, either. Yemaya is so graceful, so entirely feminine, so seductive in a way. I'm enjoying exploring all that."

Green says that the RVYT experiences are always "spicy." "You have that mix of kids from different backgrounds. And the Spanish. I've picked up a little of that."

Green says working with Spanish-speaking Cubans enhanced the spiciness of the theatrical experience.

Luz Garcia, whose family has Mexican roots, also found Cuban Spanish exotic. "Even my mother did," Garcia says. "The way they talk in Northern Mexico is different from the way they talk in Cuba." Garcia's mother, Francisca, and her sister, Luna, designed and built the "Mabaire!" costumes.

Garcia, 13, plays Ochun, a love deity. A student at Topps Middle School, she found out about the RVYT through school. Garcia says the spicy mix of varied backgrounds is part of the RVYT fun. "And the intricacy of the Yoruba religion just blew me away."

In Havana, Calderon runs Espacio Abierto (Open Space), a training and production company that specializes in dramatizing Cuban legends, folklore and mythology. Calderon's mother is a Cuban version of what West Africans call a "griot," a storyteller.

"European literature was all written down," Calderon explains. "But the African stories were kept alive by an oral tradition. My mother is spellbinding. When she speaks, she captivates a whole auditorium."

Choreographer Pedroso notes that an African heritage is a conscious part of Cuban culture, much more so than it is in the United States. "The Spanish system of slavery was more permissive," he says. "The Spaniards didn't take away the drums. They didn't destroy them. They allowed the dances and singing to continue at certain designated times and places." Pedroso suspects that the difference in cultural attitudes may actually be the difference between American Puritanism and Cuban Catholicism.

"I have gotten the impression here in the United States that black people have hardly any sense of African tradition," he says. "In Cuba, we have the dances, the songs, the stories, the Santeria."

Cano, who was born in Peru, is founder of North-South Conexions, an organization that fosters cultural exchanges between peoples of the Western Hemisphere. She met her four Cuban collaborators during a visit to Havana last December.

"The Cubans are a catalyst for uniting Latino and African American youths in our neighborhood," Cano says.

During an interview at the Cultural Center, Pedroso and Calderon were enthusiastic ambassadors for their homeland and noted how people of humble origins (like themselves) can become sophisticated artists owing to Cuba's everything-for-free education system.

During a day at the WOMAD world music festival here, the Cubans were pleased to observe that the major influences there were Latino and African styles.

Though the four visitors are all well-known Havana artists, they had never worked together before coming to Seattle. "We had all heard of one another," Calderon says. "But we are working together for the first time -- all the way up here."

Tickets for "Mabaire" are $5 and $3. Information: 206-725-7169.

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