HOW THE GARCÍA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS
a play by Karen Zacarías based on the novel by Julia Alvarez
directed by Antonio Sonera
a Miracle MainStage English language production

Uprooted from their home in the Dominican Republic, the four García sisters arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures and extended family they left behind. As they plunge headfirst into the freewheeling American mainstream with its dizzying choices and challenges, they remain forever caught between the old world and the new. What they have lost — and gained — is revealed in this provocative story bursting with passion.

This biographical comedy is an excellent choice for students of Latin American literature, English as a second language, as well as social studies and even human development and psychology courses that examine family dynamics, acculturation, assimilation.

Neat PLAY! “How the Garcia Girls Lost TheirAccents”
March 31, 2010
by By Karen Vitt, NEAT editor in chief

Every once in a while a play comes along that makes you want to grab your girlfriends, curl yourselves up together in some dictator’s flag and laugh till it hurts. Or until it doesn’t hurt anymore.

That message of sisterhood shines in Miracle Theatre Group’s West Coast premiere of “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,” a colorful (literally) play by Karen Zacarias that is based on the best-selling novel by Julia Alvarez, running now through Sunday, April 17 atMilagro Theatre in Southeast Portland.

Directed by Antonio Sonera, the memory play follows the four Garcia sisters back through time, beginning in Michigan in 1989 and traveling all the way back to their original home in the Dominican Republic circa 1959. The story, as narrated by central sister Yolanda (Lauren Blair), attempts to make sense of the grown women’s lives by examining key events (both good and bad) that shaped them from childhood through their first three decades in America.

As the story unveils the years in reverse, we watch the older Garcia Girls age backwards through their struggles – finding their passions as women, dating, learning to speak English and find acceptance at school, and immigrating as young girls to New York City from their Dominican island home. We also get to watch each sister’s bright, color-coded outfits (red, blue, yellow and white) age in reverse, beginning with late ’80s shift dresses and trailing back to early ’60s play dresses and hair ribbons.

The Garcia family is a colorful bunch beyond the outfits, too. Yolanda is joined by Papi (Anthony Green), Mami (Eva Rotter), and sisters Carla (Veronika Nuñez), Sandra (Lara Kobrin) and Sofia (Nicole Virginia Accuardi) in a series of emotional crises and freakouts, wild arguments carried out in top-speed Spanish, plenty of laughter, and some excruciating moments with men (dads, uncles, husbands, boyfriends, dates, crushes, flashers and armed militiamen) that will strike a common cord with most women. (Are there any of us who haven’t had to deal with some jerk or perv at one point or another?)

This is not a happy play, but it does manage a brilliant balance of dark and light. For every moment you find yourself wanting to rush on stage to give a sistah a hug, there’s another you find yourself laughing uproariously. Many of the laughs come courtesy of Melik Malkasian, who played every male role in the play save for Papi, and one female role, too – he brought the audience to stitches affecting a high-pitched voice to play the girls’ stuffy old British school marm.

Women especially will love this work – for its complex use of color and language, for its sense of sisterhood, and for its overall poetic look at what it means to be a woman in America. Because no matter from where we come, we’re here – and more often than not we’re here for each other. Right, girls?

Review: 'How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents'
By Holly Johnson, Special to The Oregonian
March 27, 2010
Recommended

Coming of age means acknowledging your truest impulses and acting on them, whether you live in America or an Caribbean island. "How The García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Karen Zacarías swells with passion, pathos and humor as these impulses play out, thanks to a vibrant cast and sensitive direction from Antonio Sonera.

The play at Milagro Theater is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Julia Alvarez, and there are often problems adapting a rich, well-known novel into theater. In this case, it helps to know Alvarez' novel, but it isn't necessary to understand the story line of this memory play. It does, though, require attention to remember that the play moves backward, from 1989 in Michigan to 1959 in the Dominican Republic.

The story follows four sisters, Sofia, the wild youngest daughter (Nicole Virginia Accuardi) Carla the oldest (Verónika Nuñez), Sandra (Lara Kobrin) and Yolanda (Lauren Bair), an aspiring writer who becomes the drama's central narrator--a departure from the novel. Yolanda tells her own story, unable to separate her experiences of growing up and coming to America from those of her three sisters. The family is tight, despite differences and feuds, and the focus on a tight-knit family is one of the major draws of the play. Like Yolanda, everyone is caught between their identities in the old world and the new, but they find assimilation is easier to bear together, even for Papi (Anthony Green) and Mami (Eva Rotter) who find it even harder to leave old ways behind.

In the play's first moments, Bair's inquisitive, passionate and thoughtful Yolanda opens her notebook, and a cacophony of voices spill out. It's a strong metaphor and an effective opening device, complemented by giant pages of narration from the book that spill out across the set designed by Demara Cabrera.

The first scene is Papi's festive 70th birthday party. We begin to move back in time, with all the sisters telling stories and supporting one another. Yolanda's doomed marriage to a man who doesn't understand poetry is made more bittersweet because of her sisters' kindness, and a memory of a swaggering college boy trying to seduce Yolanda is shared with much laughter. The girls ponder the Cuban Crisis in the early '60s, unsure what "nuclear" means. Sofia's return to the Dominican Republic, just as she's getting used to New York, is heralded with envy, excitement and a few surprises once they visit her.

Mami has color-coded all the girls, so she can keep track of their clothes and personal items; this device also helps the audience remember who's who.

The cast is wonderful, particularly Bair as Yolanda, moving from wild, childlike joy to utter despair to new insightfulness as she chases her muse, sometimes stumbling in her quest. As Papi, Green gives a beautifully underplayed performance throughout. He's the male anchor in this girl-power story, loving but always in charge, panicking and gathering them together to leave the Dominican Republic.

Rotter is low-key yet powerful as Mami, who spills over with delightful malapropisms as she learns English ("Necessity is the daughter of invention," she says). As Sofia, Accuardi, with her dramatic good looks and vivaciousness, is the least afraid of life. Her marriage works, and unlike her unwed siblings, she didn't graduate from college and doesn't care.

In a prize cluster of small roles, Melik Malkasian shines, but he often upstages the story, with his outstanding quick-sketch renderings of all the men the girls encounter, most of them comic--an oily Dominican macho guy, a New York cop, an American hippie, an Irish Catholic priest and more. He's a wonderful performer and mimic, but it's as if he stepped in from a comedy sketch troupe next door. The audience would laugh on cue each time he entered a scene, and he nearly upstaged Yolanda and her vibrant, loving family. Nearly, but not quite. Sister power reigns.

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first 10 years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country. Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and ¡Yo! (1997). Her publications as a poet include The Housekeeping Book (1984) and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004), and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare (1998). Many commentators regard her to be one of the most significant Latina writers, and she has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale. Many of Alvarez's works are influenced by her own personal experience as a Dominican in United States, and focus heavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her diverse cultural upbringing as both a Dominican and an American is evident in the combination of personal and political tone in her writing. She is known for works that examine cultural expectations of women both in the Dominican Republic and the USA, and for rigorous investigations of cultural stereotypes. In recent years, Alvarez has expanded her subject matter with works such as In the Name of Salome (2000), a novel with Cuban rather than solely Dominican characters and fictionalized versions of real historical figures. In addition to her successful writing career, Alvarez is the current writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.

Karen Zacarías recently saw three world premieres of her work: The Book Club Play at Round House Theater (also selected for the 2007 Eugene O'Neill conference and developed with PWC), An American Home at the Kennedy Center, and Looking for Roberto Clemente at Imagination Stage (with music by Debbie Wicks La Puma). Her work was last seen at the Miracle Theatre when it produced Mariela in the Desert in 2007, a play that won the 2006 Francesca Primus Award, the 2005 TCG/AT&T First Stages Award, the 2004 National Latino Playwrights’ Competition, finalist for the 2004 Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and short listed for 2005 Kesselring Prize. Her play, The Sins of Sor Juana won Outstanding New Play at the 2000 Helen Hayes Awards and has been produced throughout the country. Her musical plays for young people have enjoyed productions at The Goodman Theater, The Coterie, Chicago PlayWorks, The Alliance Theatre, Imagination Stage, Arden Theater, Cleveland Playhouse, and St. Louis Rep. The plays include Einstein is a Dummy (world Premiere at the Alliance Theatre), a flamenco version of Ferdinand: The Bull, the mariachi-inspired The Magical Pioata and salsa/hip-hop Cinerdella East Rice and Beans: A Salsa Musical. Karen Zacarías is the founding artistic director of Young Playwrights’ Theater, an award-winning non-profit dedicated to enhancing literacy, arts empowerment and conflict resolution through playwriting in Washington, DC area schools.

March 26-April 17, 2010

PRODUCTION SPONSOR

Josie Mendoza
&
Hugh Mackworth

How The García Girls Lost Their Accents was picked by NY Librarians as one of 21 classics for 21st century, including The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White; Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; and The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, September 13, 1999.

Dear Olga, Tony, Milagro Theatre, and Garcia Girls Family-

I cannot tell you how proud I am to be part of the Milagro Theatre Family...and how much  wish I could be there to give you all a big abrazo on Opening Night.

I am so grateful to Olga for providing so many dynamic opportunities for Latino artists to express themselves and to Tony for directing the process so well.

I am lucky to have such a talented and brave cast willing to take on decades and decades of the journey that is immigration. Thank you.

Julia Alvarez will be proud.  And I am thrilled.

Viva a the vibrant production of GARCIA GIRLS...

Love and gratitude---Karen Z

CAST
Lauren Bair … Yolanda
Lara Kobrin … Sandra
Verónika Nuñez … Carla
Nicole Accuardi … Sofía
Eva Rotter … Mami
Anthony Francis Green … Papi
Melik Malkasian … The Other

PRODUCTION TEAM
Antonio Sonera … Director
DeMara Cabrera … Scenic Designer
Kristeen Crosser … Lighting Designer
Ruth Waddy … Costume Designer
Hal Logan … Sound Designer
Drew Foster … Prop Master
Bronwyn Rice … Stage Manager
Katelin Braymer...Asst Lighting Designer
Melissa Weckhorst...Production Asst
Rebecca Lewis...Carpenter
Elizabeth Hadley...Sound Operator
Angela Bolaños-Osorio … Artcard Artist
Sarah Hinds and Sylvia Malán … House Managers

Miracle MainStage presents both adult and family oriented artistic productions in English, commissioned from the ranks of the company's resident playwrights, as well as plays by accomplished and emerging Hispanic writers from the USA and abroad. The productions are performed in the El Centro Milagro's intimate theatre in inner southeast Portland . Performances have ranged most recently from the critically acclaimed 2004 production of Lorca in a Green Dress - a play that explores the power of poetry to challenge oppression by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz -to Guillermo Reyes' outrageous comedy Deporting the Divas, winner of three 1999 Drammy Critic's Awards.