Sisterhood of the Traveling Dead Man

In which I relate to the staging of "Cebollas" in Santa Fe.
By Zach Hively
​
A trip to the theater offers us a moment to pause in our own overwhelming lives. Sometimes, we just need that break from driving places and interacting with other people who might, a little too often, be just a little too much like ourselves for comfort.
Yes, granted, the theater has people in it. However—it’s superior to the cinema, with its fake people on screen, because the people in theatrical seats actually mostly shut up during the show lest they get called on stage for some Surprise Improv! as punishment for disturbing the play.
So it was with this need for escapism that I entered the Santa Fe Playhouse last Friday night to watch Cebollas, a new play by New Mexico wright Leonard Madrid.

Before the House Lights Dimmed

​​My week leading up to this had been full. I had driven from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque (after driving, a few days prior, from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs, as round trips tend to go). Then I had spent some time with family in the 505 (including none of my four sisters, though yes I have four sisters. This will matter in a moment).

All this to say: I yearned for ninety minutes free of relatives and the open road, with a bit of good ol’ comedy.

What is this new play about? Well, it opens on a dead man (Mitchell, played stonily by Mitchell) in Albuquerque, which landed a little close to home. Three sisters must load his inanimate body into their car and return it to his home—before morning—in Denver. Nearly the entire play takes place on I-25, including, obviously, a stop at IKEA, because every New Mexican is obligated to stop at IKEA when we have a car with some free space left over.

Highway signs denote all the locations along the way. All the locations, that is, that I had just driven through—twice.

So much for escapism. I had only regret, because I had missed the IKEA. At least I didn’t have my sisters with me for the drive. Nor a Mitchell.

However, it became promptly apparent that these three sisters are funnier than mine, likely because (unlike my own sisters) their lines had been workshopped.

Rear, left to right: Celia (Rios y Valles) and Mitchell (Mitchell). Front: Yolie (Vigil) and Tere (Martos). Credit: C. Stanley Photography.

Yolie, the distant youngest (played by Cristina Vigil), sports a sunny dress, a nine-month bump, and a dead Mitchell in her living room armchair. Celia (Vanessa Rios y Valles) rocks the nurse scrubs and a recent conversion to lesbianism. And the elder sister—and thus the one with my greatest sympathies—is Tere (Christina Martos), already tired at the start from holding everyone’s crap together and the only one with a purse I trusted held granola bars, tissues, bandaids, and a paperback book thick enough to smack sisters (hers or anyone else’s) upside the head.

I’m used to the theater whisking me to some far-off place and time: Shakespearean England, for instance, or Shakespearean Italy. But these three sisters? They sounded all familiar. Like the people I grew up with, dropping Spanish words in ways I understand but am too gringo to do myself, adding plurals to words like no one else does—you don’t even know. The accent I have pieces of, sometimes, without even realizing it, so people abroad think I must be all Canadian or something because they can’t place it.

Look, I’m a straight white dude in the US of A. I see myself more or less represented everywhere I look, except for like Taylor Swift concerts. I’m not used to feeling quite so at home when I see myself represented, though, as I was at Cebollas. Not a hundred percent, of course; I am not a hermana from Burque, after all. But I might feel more comfortable than Mitch does, that Colorado womanizer, buckled in the backseat with sunglasses on and Burqueña sisters having it out with each other.

No spoilers here, ’kay? I just want to say that this production crew staged Cebollas magnificently for staging it so minimally. Even the scene breaks incorporate bridge plot as the sisters help rearrange the bare-boned car and hoist Mitchell from one compromising spot to another, unclear if they’re actually committing any kind of crime, but knowing it gets worse when they cross into colorful (and repetitively so) Colorado.

And those sisters? They attain more tenderness, more connection, more self-awareness than my sisters ever gain in a single hour-and-a-half timeframe. These three characters pull off real sisterhood—I bought it, and I know sisters.

Credit: C. Stanley Photography.

If any one thing felt untrue—in a play very good at plucking out what feels true—it’s this: No one can make it from Albuquerque to Denver that fast. Not with so many stops; especially not with one at a casino gas station. And not with all the construction happening around Pueblo at the moment. Trust me; you don’t even know.

Cebollas will perform on the main stage of the Santa Fe Playhouse (142 East De Vargas Street, Santa Fe, NM) through November 10, 2024. Performances are on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm.
Read here for more information about the production.