Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Karma Nagiri joins me to talk about her new play, Fire Never Dies, the Tina Modotti project, showing at the Cult until October 26th.
Speaker: A new play by acclaimed theater artist and author Carmen Aguirre opened this week at the CULCH. Fire Never Dies was inspired by the life of Italian photographer, Tina Modotti.
Speaker: Modotti was brought up in poverty in Italy, crossed the Atlantic to the US in 1913 when she was in her teens, and then moved to Mexico City where she became part of the thriving art scene that included Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Speaker: Along the way, Modetti made a name for herself with her resting photographs of the working class and Mexican indigenous culture. And Carmen Aguirre joins me today to talk about the play. Hello, Carmen.
Speaker: Hello. Thanks for making a space in between continuing rehearsals. It's great to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you. So when did you first find out about Mordotti?
Speaker: I first found out about her about 35 years ago, actually, maybe a little bit less. But in the in the early 90s, was in theater school and I came across a novel ah by Polish-Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska called Tini Sima.
Speaker: And I read it. And i was very, what I found very engaging about her story was that she lived in the contradiction between art and revolutionary service. And that in the end, she ended up abandoning her art practice to join the anti-fascist struggle in Europe, running the revolution.
Speaker: Red Aid Hospital in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and spying on the Nazis for the Soviets all through the 30s. So yeah, that's when I first came across her story. And yeah, was very engaged by her and and by her story.
Speaker: That spoke to you at the point ah of your life that you were at right then? Yeah, i was in my early 20s. I'm a leftist, I always have been. i was theatre school where the philosophy was art for art's sake and no to political art.
Speaker: So I was very isolated in theatre school in that regard. And I'm very happy that I got the skill set that I got at theater school because then I could provide the content, which for me is pretty much always political.
Speaker: Now, this play has been a long time in the making. I understand that you first started working on a play about Tina 16 years ago. What happened to that version of the play?
Speaker: Yeah, around 16 years ago, I started to write a one-woman show about her, and I i wrote about three drafts of it, but it wasn't working. This is theater-speak, but there was no present tense. So in the theater, you want to have a present tense. You want to have the audience involved in watching a character try to solve a problem.
Speaker: right here, right now in front of us. And i I couldn't really find that in the one woman show. So I put it away. And then during COVID, I took those drafts out and I threw them away and started over again, you know, with a multi-character play.
Speaker: And that's what's opening tonight. You say it's a multi-character play, and and Tina Baudotti's heart is also a character in the play. In fact, that character is the only one apart from Tina who's on stage throughout the play.
Speaker: Why did you choose to do that to split the character into Tina and her heart? because that was the way that I could find the present tense for the play. So, you know, the play takes place in the last 10 seconds of her life.
Speaker: She's in a heart attack. She died of a heart attack in Mexico City and at the age of 45 in the back of a taxi cab. So the present tense of the play is that she's talking to her heart. Her heart is ah is a provocateur in the play, and that the heart is provoking her with all kinds of questions that she needs to answer in order to die in peace.
Speaker: yeah People listening to us now might think that sounds artificial, but I mean, I have to say I saw the preview last night and the character of the heart is brilliant and works really, really well to kind of expose some things that you would just not otherwise know.
Speaker: Yes, thank you. Yeah, yes. I mean, we have a ah brilliant actor. And I had a brilliant dramaturg when I was writing the play who who kept asking me very hard questions about the heart and the role of the heart and who pushed me very hard. So, yeah, I think in the end it does it does work.
Speaker: Now, I said the play was inspired by the life of Tina Modotti. Is it in any sense a biography? No, no, it's not a biography. I mean, first of all, she's talking to her heart, who was a character on stage, right? So that that in and of itself is not a biography.
Speaker: I have, of course, taken moments of her life that that happened, but nobody should look at this as any kind of documentary play. The play is episodic and you use a lot of different styles to to talk about the various episodes of her life.
Speaker: What led you to use that approach? I mean, they're radically different styles. Because we jump around so much in the episodes, like when she died, she was 45. Then we go back to when she was in her 20s. There's times when she's in her teens. We go back to when she was a six-year-old, even a five-year-old.
Speaker: I thought that was the best and clearest way to tell this the story. Now, her photographs are there projected onto a screen, and and they're almost like another character in the play?
Speaker: Yes, that was a very conscious effort on our part to to make sure that her photographs are characters in the play. Now, I've read that you borrowed from a style of theater that started in Spain in the 17th century and then found its way to Latin America.
Speaker: Zarzuela, yes. Zarzuela made its way to Latin America hundreds of years ago, and I think that most countries in Latin America have their own version of it, which of course has been inspired by indigenous practices,
Speaker: enslaved folks' practices. And my version of it, which I consider to be quote-unquote Chilean, is exactly like what you saw last night. Like there's dancing, there's different styles. You have, you know, I have music playing that has nothing to do with the era that a scene might be set in.
Speaker: So it was kind of a mishmash, but in the end it all works. And it's very difficult to do that in an effective way without it coming across like it's completely disjointed or out of place.
Speaker: So that has also been a challenge. Is it a play with a message? No, I would never do that. I would consider that to be very arrogant on my part. No, it's not a message play. It's not a morality play.
Speaker: It's just a play that as thematically, right, thematically asks a series of questions, like what is the purpose of art in the face of fascism? Can the art serve the poor? And if so, how?
Speaker: What is the personal cost of militancy? And I think its meaning lies in the contradictory answers to those questions. Do you think that North American audiences will react differently to the story of and a militant communist fighting fascism now than they would have before what's happening now in the United States, Trump's second term?
Speaker: I don't know. i mean, i find North America to be ferociously anti-communist. So I really don't know. Like even when I was in the audience last night and in the very back row, it's my job to watch the audience in the preview and and see what's happening.
Speaker: And I could see some people in the audience almost physically cringing, you know, when they would hear the word communist or communism. And I think some people left at intermission, right? So I don't know.
Speaker: i don't know. So I guess ah a brave move on your part to make a play about a communist and a good communist. Yeah. suppose yeah i I was at the preview last night, as I mentioned, and I really loved it. And I would encourage people to get get out and see it and learn about this incredible woman. Thanks so much, Carmen.
Speaker: Thank you so much for for the interview and for coming last night. I've been speaking with Carmen Aguirre. Her new play, Fire Never Dies, the Tina Bodotti Project, opened at the CULT in East Vancouver, official opening on Thursday, and it runs until October 26. The play was written and directed by Carmen and produced by Electric Company Theatre.
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Speaker: And you can follow us on Blue Sky at Red Eye Radio. I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
