|
An homage to heritage
A former Tampa resident rediscovered his roots in his grandmother's stories, which he shares in solo performances this weekend.
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 18, 2001
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez made his name as part of a wave of gay performers in the 1980s and '90s who, in effect, came out of the closet onstage.
His popular trilogy of autobiographical solo performances -- Talk of the Town, The Bible Belt and Other Accessories and Love in the Time of College -- document the life of a high school "sissy boy" from small-town Texas.
Now Bonin-Rodriguez has a new show, Memory's Caretaker, which has as much to do with his Hispanic heritage as his sexuality.
"I came to this show out of the need to go beyond the coming-out thing," he said. "It's the idea of coming out in multiple identities, that coming out is not limited to a gay thing, that people come out in all forms of themselves all the time."
Memory's Caretaker, which has three performances this weekend in Tampa, is about Bonin-Rodriguez's experience with his Mexican grandmother, who lived in San Antonio. He took care of her after she had an accident in 1989, and then stayed in her house after she moved to live with his parents. She died at 89 three years ago.
"After her death, I was asked to give a speech on cultural identity and politics at a writers' conference," Bonin-Rodriguez said. "I began to think about where my identity had been rooted. It was sort of rerooted in the stories my grandmother told."
Many of the stories, which Bonin-Rodriguez tells in his grandmother's voice, are from San Antonio in the 1930s.
"They're stories about coming to the States, about buying land to build a house -- she and my grandfather were the first Mexicans in the neighborhood -- and how the neighborhood responded by putting together a petition for them to leave, and how her response was to get in her car every morning and drive by and wave to the neighbors on her way to work."
The title of the hourlong show comes from Bonin-Rodriguez's notion that by living in his grandmother's house he was "taking care of the memories." One of the memories was of an uncle who vanished, probably as a result of foul play, in 1983.
"She always asked me to stay for the son who would come home," he said. "He was gay, and we didn't talk about that. He never reappeared. He became the unseen other part of ourselves."
Bonin-Rodriguez, 37, continues to live in San Antonio, where he and his partner have a Latin American folk art gallery. He also teaches and works on a doctorate on theater history at the University of Texas in Austin.
In 1987, he got to know the Tampa Bay area as a dancer with the Tampa Ballet, which was then in the process of moving to Denver, where it flourishes today as Colorado Ballet.
Though Memory's Caretaker has often been presented at gay festivals, the audience for it has been pretty diverse, Bonin-Rodriguez said.
"My demographic for this show has been a lot of queer, but it has also been a lot of baby boomers who are taking care of aging parents or grandparents. In Chicago, it looked like young Latino queers who came. In San Antonio, the audience shifted from queer to ultimately a Latino audience of all ages. I think there's a universality to it."
Theater preview
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez performs his solo show Memory's Caretaker at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Shimberg Playhouse of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $15.50. (813) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; or see www.tbpac.org.
Back to Weekend
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
