Local drama takes another step forward with the next play at the Raven Performing Arts Theater in Healdsburg, Who Will Dance with Pancho Villa? But the production, which opens on Jan. 22 for an eight-performance run, is hardly new.
Gabriel Fraire and his brother, John, wrote the play more than 30 years ago; it had its first off-Broadway performance in New York in 1994.
“This was our first collaboration,” said Healdsburg resident Gabriel Fraire. “My brother is actually the theater fan. He was living in Manhattan and told me that if a couple of Mexicans wrote a play about their Mexican family history, he was sure he could find a producer.”
Though John Fraire has moved on to another career as a university administrator, older brother Gabriel Fraire (he’s 77, oldest of six) is still a writer, with several novels to his credit, plus poems, screenplays and newspaper work. He was editor of the Windsor Times for several years, and a Healdsburg Tribune columnist. His local history book, I Remember Healdsburg, is available at the Healdsburg Museum, and his other works are on his website at gabrielfraire.com.
He and his wife, Karen, have lived in California since 1975, when they realized they had no reason to stay in the Midwest.“We were living on a farm in Illinois, doing that back-to-the-earth, self-sufficient stuff,” he recalled. “We didn’t have a lot of money. In the winter, we had to close down all the rooms and live out of one room. Finally one day, I just said to her, ‘We could live anywhere. We don’t have to live in the cold.’”
That cold was more than the climate. “When we lived in Illinois, we were considered a mixed-race couple. Our landlord at the time told all the neighbors, ‘Oh, Karen is such a nice girl. Too bad she had to marry out of her race,’” Gabriel Fraire said.
“But soon as we came over the mountains and drove down into California, oh my goodness,” he remembered. “Mixed-race couples, blended children; you know, it didn’t seem to be a big deal. And for the first time in my life I felt like, wow, we can just walk the street and not be thought inferior.”
Who Will Dance with Pancho Villa? was the Fraire brothers’ first produced play, quickly followed by Cesar Died Today, staged in 1997 at Brooklyn College. That latter play was produced at the Raven just three years ago—it concerns a Latino family’s reactions to the death of Cesar Chavez—and was directed by Oscar Montelongo. Initially tabbed to direct again, he had to leave this production after several weeks of rehearsal and was replaced by Jenna Dolcini.
Though the original play contained some dancing, Fraire noted, it has been pumped up for this production with the involvement of the Ballet Folklórico Legado de Mi Alegría of Cloverdale. They perform as dancing spirits, intertwined through the play, who help remind the main character—a young man called simply Chicano—of the joy of dancing.
Several of the actors are returning from the Cesar Died Today production, including Windsor Mayor Rosa Reynoza, who again plays the family matriarch. There’s also a father-son team on stage, Juan Vera and Gabriel Vera, but Fraire is most excited by the performance of Ismael Ramos in the lead.
“This kid is a great actor,” the playwright said. “He goes back and forth from Rohnert Park to L.A. I just hope he gets a shot in TV or movies because his facial expressions are so effective.”
Those unfamiliar with the legend of Pancho Villa will be brought up to speed by visual effects on the stage’s screen. The Mexican revolutionary, guerrilla leader and politician occupies a significant role in northern Mexico’s culture, so much so that three cast members of the Raven production claim some link to the charismatic guerilla.
The audience for the play will be seated on the stage itself, with actors and dancers performing in their midst, as it were. “I am doing most non-musicals with the audience onstage from now on; it’s a much more intimate and I think rewarding experience for the audience and the actors,” said Steven David Martin, the Raven Players’ artistic director.
“You know, the really important thing for both John and I about doing theater is that we want young Latinos to see that they can be a part of theater, that they can join theater—that it’s not an exclusive club,” said Fraire.
Though the Players tried to fill the cast with Latino actors, they weren’t entirely successful. “One reason, of course, is that Latinos don’t have the spare time to volunteer for community theater. Most of the Latinos I know have two jobs or a job and a family to care for,” Fraire said.
He verbalized a fact that remains increasingly obvious, even if unpopular to say: “As a person of color, we live a different life in America.”
‘Who Will Dance with Pancho Villa?’ will be staged Thursdays through Sundays from Jan. 22 through Jan. 31 (a Feb. 1 matinee has been cancelled). Curtain time 7pm; Sunday matinees 2pm. Tickets available at raventheater.org.
