The Arthropologist

Women are under attack in America, but a new Talento Bilingue show fights back

Angeles Romano in Sueño at Ohio State University in 2003, with artisticdirection by Johannes Birringer
Video Still Courtesy of the Artist
Angeles Romano in Sueño at Ohio State University in 2003
Video Still Courtesy of the Artist
Angeles Romano in Sueño at Ohio State University in 2003
Video Still Courtesy of the Artist
Angeles Romero
Photo by Naomi Madrid
Angeles Romero as Frida in El entrecejo/The Brow at Talento Bilingüe de Houstonin 2007
Photo by Sayra Contreras

Who could imagine that in 2012 women would be under siege? It's a time to garner strength from powerful women, even if they hark from the 17th century.

Writer/actor Angeles Romero has done just that in her new one-woman show, Sor Juana & the Chambered Nautilus, based on the life of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a legendary Mexican 17th century poet and essayist, running at Talento Bilingue de Houston (TBH) Thursday through Sunday.

Sor Juana's reputation is so embedded in Mexican culture that she's even on the National Currency.

"She was a true genius of her time," muses Romero, who is also the director of programs at TBH. "She was like Mozart, in that she produced a tremendous body of work. Sor Juana had a drive to question, she was a constant thinker.

"With a mind like a playground, her mission was to know everything there was to know. She was a beautiful, tragic heroine."

In a humble convent cell, Sor Juana amassed the largest library in the Americas. Completely self-taught, she was given free reign to publish her work, thanks to Marquis de la Laguna, and his wife Maria Luisa, Countess de Paredes. "Maria could have been Sor Juana's lover as well, and that is touched on in the piece," Romero says. "There was no way not to."

The show covers what happened when there was a change at the church guard. "Carta atenagórica (Letter Worthy of Athena) was the essay that got her in trouble with the church," Romero says. "Sor Juana responded to the bishop of Puebla in March 1691 with her magnificent self-defense and defense of all women's right to knowledge, the Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz (Reply to Sister Filotea of the Cross.)”

Getting Into the Role

Romero needed to breathe the same air as Sor Juana, so her research took her to Desierto de los Leones and Sor Juana's convent, the Order of St. Jerome, now called Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana. "

As a performer, it's so important to feel the texture of things," she says. Some of the footage she shot at these locations is now part of the work. Sor Juana was her graduate thesis, so Romero has done some serious homework.

The performer didn't set out to do one-woman shows. "I never wanted to be alone on stage," Romero insists, "I imagined friends to play with. But there is something very portable about a one-woman show."

Last year, her meditation on Frida Kahlo, The Brow: The Life and Times of Frida, sold out. As an actor/performer she excels at taking in an iconic figure's life, and then translating it for the stage.

Raised amidst border culture in Brownsville, Romero graduated from the University of Texas, performed with Deborah Hay and Alien Nation, and completed a residency at Ohio State University.

Two powerful women, Romero and Rigdon, coming together to celebrate the life of another free-thinking female feels about right in light of the current ongoing onslaught against women dominating the political conversation.

Sor Juana is directed by Trish Ridgon, a freelance director and executive director of the Houston Cinema Arts Society. Romero and Rigdon crossed paths while collaborating for the 2011 Cinema Arts Festival.

Ridgon read Romero's play, and her masters thesis, sensing an immediate connection.

"I fell in love with the material," she says. "Sor Juana is my kind of woman. I also felt Angeles' passion for her subject. She's so well trained, and we share a similar vocabulary."

Their working relationship proved a rich collaboration. "I knew that I would learn a lot from Trish," Romero says. "Every rehearsal is a class. That's how delicious this process has been. Trish is an amazing teacher."

"I believe that when we have unintended consequences, we have to look at the unexamined assumptions that we take for truth. So, even though we know that women are equal to men, we assume they are not deep down," Romero explains. "What keeps me engaged with this character is my attempt to understand how someone so brilliant and outstandingly elegant could have been subjected to such brutal and humiliating behavior.

"I can’t wrap my head around it, yet it continues to happen, again and again. There must be an unexamined assumption that women deserve this. I genuinely don’t know the answer, this is why I write."

A sneak peek at Sor Juana & The Chambered Nautilus

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Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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