The Denver Heart is a-humming.
Within the theater firm’s largest home, Emma Woodhouse — to her personal mild comeuppance — is winking her means by means of Kate Hamill’s pleasant adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” (See if earlier than it closes Sunday.) Downstairs within the Singleton Theatre, issues are positively crazy. Or fairly brilliantly looping, as a younger, Latina music-maker units about crafting a blended tape of her life within the hip-hop-influenced “The place Did We Sit on the Bus?,” directed by Matt Dickson. It runs by means of June 2.
So convincing is Satya Chávez (who makes use of the pronoun “they”) within the function of “Bee” Quijada that the viewers is prone to assume it’s their life because the fourth baby of Salvadoran immigrants that shall be recounted for the subsequent fleet, entertaining 80 minutes. It’s not; it’s writer-performer Brian Quijada’s.
Chávez’s intimacy with Quijada’s story may need been earned in the course of the time they spent working (together with Nygel D. Robinson) on the live performance collection “Songs from the Border” at Colorado Spring’s High quality Arts Heart throughout its 2021-22 season. However the vibrant poignancy and tangible intimacy that Chávez created with the opening-night viewers feels very a lot their very own.
Chávez skillfully makes use of the instruments of hip-hop and spoken phrase for the present’s layering of sounds and, extra vitally, private and cultural historical past: rap’s diving and arcing rhymes, an iPad with a Bluetooth connection, 4 loopers, and her voice. However Chavez, a gifted musician, additionally performs a keyboard, guitar, ukulele, guitarron, bass, caña, a harmonica and extra. And so they sing.
Oh, how they sing, warmly, wittily, generally plaintively. Chavez punctuates components of the storytelling with a wordless chorus that soars and wails — just a bit — throughout its exploration of belonging.
“The place Did We Sit on the Bus?” takes its title from the query a 9-year-old Bee asks her elementary college instructor throughout classes on Rosa Parks and the civil rights motion. Defying the reigning black-white dialectic of the nation, little Bee wonders about her place as a brown child, the kid of immigrants, on this American life. Bee and her subsequent oldest brother, Marvin, have been born within the U.S. Older brothers Fernando and Roberto have been born in El Salvador.
The present is disarmingly personable and cleverly participatory because it goes from Bee’s conception and delivery (their time in mother’s womb is bathed in purple mild) to her childhood dwelling first in a trailer park outdoors of Chicago after which in a suburban neighborhood adjoining to Highland Park, with its massive Jewish neighborhood.
They share their love of Michael Jackson, an early function mannequin — till he began to tarnish his repute by what gave the impression to be a drastic repudiation of his pores and skin shade. However they discover their emotional place after they turn into concerned in theater.
Chavez wears a monochrome outfit, a richer shade of military fatigues. They start at a breakneck tempo, then discover a energetic cadence of belief and familiarity, at instances teasing the viewers with the sly rapport of a lounge singer.
The manufacturing design of the present seems like a departure for the theater firm, not in high quality however in tone. The set by Tanya Orellana (who additionally created the costumes) and Pablo Santiago’s playful and geometric lighting design recreate the spare intimacy of a black field theater that may additionally supply a neon-lit portal into Bee’s previous. How far again it goes speaks to (and reverberates, due to Alex Billman’s sound design) the present’s joys and creativeness.
There’s ample sweetness to this journey and little argumentativeness in Quijada’s script — till there must be, when nagging quandaries about belonging boil over. As a result of “The place Did We Sit on the Bus?” is a theater geek’s coming-of-age saga, Bee had described theater as their church. Late within the present, they take us there, to an ongoing, rancorous nationwide dialog about immigration wherein immigrants bear the brunt of ire.
And so, Bee takes an prolonged second to evangelise a gospel of inclusion, one inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, but additionally confesses the sort of harm and disappointment that comes from witnessing a nation fail its beliefs. The nation might falter in shifting towards a greater and welcoming future, however Bee doesn’t.
“The place Did We Sit on the Bus?” started with Bee telling us that she popped the query to her beloved, who’s Austrian and Swiss, in Mexico. It ends with an expansive reply to the query of the title.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelance author who focuses on theater and movie.
IF YOU GO
“The place Did We Sit on the Bus?” Written by Brian Quijada. Further compositions by Satya Chávez. Directed by Matt Dickson. That includes Satya Chávez. On the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complicated, 14th and Curtis streets. By means of June 1. For tickets and information: 303-893-4100 or denvercenter.org.
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