Paul G. Heller - Playwright

Spit in You Face

Director – Guillermo Aviles Rodriguez
New Threads Theatre Company (Frank Mihelich, Artistic Director)
February, 2024

When a visiting world famous Mexican director opens his new play in San Francisco, he goes beyond the typical Land Acknowledgement, that heartfelt statement made at the start of many productions.  He not only acknowledges that the theater rests on land taken from Native Americans, he formally returns it to the Bay Area Native Peoples and – on further thought – to Mexico as well. It is the last battle cry in a war waged between the eccentric director  Fernando Calderon and progressive American artistic director Tom Leary to prove who knows what is best for the Latinx community.  The fact that neither older, white man is a member of this community is not lost on Liliana Tzintzún, an outspoken young Mexican American assistant of P’urhépecha origin.  Liliana’s attempts to navigate her professional relationship with each man allow the playwrights to explore how she deepens her sense of identity until she is finally able to uncover the self-serving and brutalizing motives each man harbors in the name of racial equality.  By doing so, Liliana forges a new purpose for the theater company, transforming it into an arena where the community can explore their own stories and narratives. Spit In Your Face opens a door for us to think about how we can get past merely speaking the words of a ritual, and actually take the next steps.

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