2009 ASTR Conference

Jason Ramírez, Bronx Community College ( CUNY )

Nuyorican playwright Carmen Rivera’s La Gringa is currently the longest running play in Repertorio Espanol’s season. La Gringa’s success is in part a product of Nuyorican displacement from, and desire to return to, Puerto Rico, an enterprise made extremely difficult by both economic constraints on the island as well as a rejection by native islanders who see the Nuyorican as a “sell-out” or “Yankee.” Rivera’s autobiographical play vividly illustrates the complex nature of Puerto Ricans “de aquí y de allá,” often in conflict with each over their envisioned latinidad. La Gringa is a drama about family lost and found. Broken ties, due in part to one sister’s need to leave the island in search of a better life in New York City, mirrors the structure of René Marqués’s classic, La Carreta (The Oxcart). While his play culminates in the family’s inability to return to Puerto Rico and the subsequent destruction of their dreams, Rivera’s María returns to the island to reclaim her roots. The irony and conflict is rooted in the fact that though María has defied the odds and returned on her own “guagua aérea,” she meets with great opposition from members of her family, who define her as an outcast or “gringa.” This examination will shed light on the displacement of Nuyoricans seeking to return to their native soil and the necessity for spiritual healing as dramatized in Rivera’s longest running bilingual play.

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Jason is Assistant Professor of Communications at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York whose specializations include Latino Theatre in the United States and the American Musical Theatre. As a member of both Actors Equity Association and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers his work has been featured in New York and regionally for over two decades. As a playwright Jason has written for the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre’s Professional Playwrights Unit and the Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab at INTAR, which commissioned his plays Old Pueblo and Off the Deuce in 2008. His play Passing Judgment was produced by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and Danisarte Theatre in 2007 and was published in the “Teatro Nuyorican y Teatro Puertorriqueno en Nueva York” volume of the Boletín del Archivo Nacional de Teatro y Cine del Ateneo Puertorriqueño. As a scholar Jason has been published in Aztlan Journal of Chicano Studies, Theatre Journal, and by Ateneo Press of Puerto Rico. Jason and his wife Kimberly continue to develop new projects with their company Dos Alas Theatre, which explores the intersections between Cuban and Puerto Rican Theatre, both on the respective islands and in the mainland United States.

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