HOUSES WITHOUT WALLS
You think?
I know!
The tail end responses for different questions
It is a scorcher day in 1985, Havana Cuba in a small town called Bauta located 25 miles southwest of Havana. Friends and next-door neighbors Candela (Yelyna de León) and Gloria (Magdalena Emar) are separated by a wall in their homes. These mothers are still surviving the aftermath of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. They habitually have their dinner in the tin can it came with. The women worry for their daughters Justina and Socorro, both actresses play dual roles, who left Cuba for a better way of life. These mothers mourn for their daughters, who they believe didn’t make the journey. In their conversations, both to each other and alone, they question their fate, their roles as mothers and what will become of Cuba since Fídel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista.
There’s a lot of heart and soul that will both uplift and sadden the human spirit. María Ignacia Hojas serves as both the narrator and participator. She conveys what the women are too emotional to say. In this trio of sanctity, they are the last voices of the war that lasted from July 26, 1953 to January 1, 1959, approximately five years, five months and six days. That’s a lot of anger, resentment and heartache to process. Playwright Susannah Rodriguez Drissi used the events in her life to transpire this heart-breaking but uplifting story. She was in Cuba, during the Mariel boatlift where over 100,000 Cubans were able to leave. This included the thugs, murderers and rapists. Castro wanted to rid the once precious island of these hard-core degenerates.
All three actresses do an exceptional job in expressing their feelings of despair, anger and eventually hope for a better life. Rodriguez Drissi writes an eloquent letter to the strength of the mother-daughter bond who must face a new experience and lean heavily on each other to get through it. Most recently HOUSES won the 2018 Encore Award for Producers’ Award. means two things: 1) the show is great and 2) it won’t be available for much longer. So go and enjoy before it leaves or you’ll miss out on a wonderful experience. Rodriguez Drissi says it best. “This play is about walls—the ones we imagine, the ones we build and, ultimately, the ones we must tear down.”
HOUSES WITHOUT WALLS plays this Wednesday, June 20th at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 24th at 1 p.m. at the Stephanie Feury Theatre Studio, located at 5636 Melrose Ave., in Los Angeles. For tickets, log on to www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/4939?tab=tickets. An additional show has just been added for Wednesday, July 11th at 8:30 p.m.
