In one scene in the pueblo marketplace, the girls sing a fiery salsa song in Spanish called “Ten Cuidado” — “be careful” — that warns Anita that life can be dangerous.
“The lyrics are saying, ‘Be careful. Look out. You know, it’s not safe, but here in this place, we have everything you need. You won’t go hungry. We have your back here, but still be careful, because not everywhere else is like that’,” Ortiz said.
Borderlands Theatre is staging its first original musical at Leo Rich Theater.
Another song, “Young Americans,” expresses the sentiment of being the next gen making their place in the world. A reprise sung by the girls talks about being the “young Americans; don’t be afraid of us,” Ortiz said.
“There’s a lot of the sentiment of ‘we are humans, and we are part of this culture, of this American culture, and we’re here to share joy and pride’,” she explained. “I think the goal of the musical is for people to see the little boy in the bunny ears who was separated from his (father) for a week.”
Ortiz was referring to the incident in late January when 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was wearing a hat with baby blue bunny ears, was separated when ICE apprehended his father in Minneapolis, and later detained with his father.
“We sort of give voice to him. You see him in the news, you’ve seen his photo, and now you get to see a more fleshed out character of somebody that’s representative of Liam,” Ortiz said. “I think the best feedback that I got from the development readings was people saying, ‘I feel seen. I feel heard’, and it’s immigrants that are saying this.”
The debut of “Anita” comes after a handful of public readings and workshops over the past five years in which the play was massaged, including cutting some 40 pages. Ortiz said the play has had additional revisions right up to Thursday’s preview.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source tucson.com ’
