Awards

• Winner of Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award 1994 (Canada)
• Winner of Governor General’s Award for Drama 1993 (Canada)

Overview

Fuelled by equal parts outrage, intelligence, and wit, Fronteras Americanas recreates one person's struggle to construct a home between two cultures, while exploding the images and constructs built up around Latinos and Latin America. This one-person play works through bold juxtapositions and satiric reference points: Simn Bolvar and Speedy Gonzales; Columbus and Fodor's travel guides; Ricky Ricardo and the Latin Lover; La Bamba and Placido Domingo; Carlos Fuentes and American drug-war movies. Verdecchia twirls stereotypes and cliches, offers comparative histories, examines myths and mysticism, and provides lessons in language and dancing. However, even as the ungovernable and surrealistic Fecundo Morales Secundo, or ""Wideload,"" edifies us about how sex between a ""Latin"" and a ""Saxon"" can be ""a mind-expanding and culturally enriching experience,"" eloquently quoting Octavio Paz and Federico Garca Lorca in direct response to contemporary struggles and injustices, he also transcends his role of ""estereotype,"" reaching a place beyond maps that are only metaphors where borders are more than divisions between countries and take on the most outlandish properties. In Verdecchia's preface to the new edition, when examining his reasons for bringing forth a ""refried"" form of Fronteras Americanas in the 21st century, he indicates: There are, after all, people all over the globe living, crossing, resisting, defining, and defending linguistic, cultural, racial, gender, psycho- geographical, cartographic, political and other borders. While the world has changed in many ways since I first wrote and performed it, the processes of migration, displacement, and globalization that informed the play's creation have only accelerated. Some of us may lead more networked lives now, but the Border is alive and well and living all over the globe. Cast of 1 man.

Full Product Details

9780889227057

Table of Contents

Reviews

“An intelligent, heartfelt take on the Latin American immigrant experience in North America.” —Globe and Mail “A witty and intelligently lively deconstruction of the Latin American experience.” —Books in Canada “By turns funny and profound and often both at once.” —Toronto Star “Funny, fast-paced, smart, and provocative.” —Globe and Mail

Funny, fast-paced, smart, and provocative. -Globe and Mail By turns funny and profound and often both at once. -Toronto Star A witty and intelligently lively deconstruction of the Latin American experience. -Books in Canada An intelligent, heartfelt take on the Latin American immigrant experience in North America. -Globe and Mail

A witty and intelligently lively deconstruction of the Latin American experience. --Books in Canada An intelligent, heartfelt take on the Latin American immigrant experience in North America. --Globe and Mail By turns funny and profound and often both at once. --Toronto Star Funny, fast-paced, smart, and provocative. --Globe and Mail

Author Information

Guillermo Verdecchia Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama, fiction and film; a director, dramaturge, actor and translator whose work has been seen and heard on stages, screens and radios across the country and around the globe. He is a recipient of the Governor General's Award for Drama, a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, a recipient of Dora and Jessie Awards and sundry film festival awards for his film Crucero/Crossroads.

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