Interview with Rosalba Rolón, founding artistic director

By Arnaldo Lopez

Rosalba Rolón: We have an administrative structure with an administrative staff, with an administrative rigor that makes us see Pregones as an organization. The basis of the ensemble is not exclusively artistic.

Arnaldo Lopez: Clearly, it’s formal in other aspects.

RR: Of course. There is an administrative team and an artistic team.

AL: And of course, a professional company in every sense. Okay. I should ask, are we comfortable in Spanish? Because I sometimes go into English a bit, and then back to Spanish …

RR: That’s fine.

AL: We want to delineate a bit Pregones’ mission. The question is, how and why the arts? Who is it for and who participates?

RR: How and why we do theater? We do theater because those of us who created Pregones and those who participate in Pregones are theater workers, that’s our stand. That is our goal — to do theater. That’s our calling.

AL: Correct.

RR: There is no other reason beyond that; it’s true that it is our vocation.

AL: You started, in your case, with a view to do group theater, [as an] ensemble?

RR: Yes. In Pregones’ case, yes. I had done theater in more conventional productions, conventional format. Well, the truth is, allow me to step back. My first reaction is to say no. We were a group of actors that wanted to do theater where we, in particular, had huge reservations about putting together a group or working as ensemble. Because even though our experiences had been positive, we knew the tendencies of a group theater. We also thought, "Enough." Let’s do something.

AL: That experience and those tendencies were found "here" in Puerto Rico or "here" in New York?

RR: Puerto Rico for Luis [Meléndez, co-founder of Pregones], and in my case here in New York. He had much more experience than I did. His reaction was, "No, no." But of course, that was based on what he knew, because we knew a certain way of working. But a monkey by any other name— And once we started working as a group there was a push to keep going, because we discovered we had matured, and [besides] there were other ways to manage a group. Ultimately, it was what we knew best. So, really early on, in the first six months of work, we discovered that we were really headed towards forming an ensemble.

AL: The historical subtext and the interest in Puerto Rican themes were there early on?

RR: From the beginning. That was our main motivation. What triggered it all was that despite the fact that the predominant [Latino] community in New York city was, and still is, the Puerto Rican community, there was very little theater [for them] in New York City. What theater there was was being done by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, naturally. A little something here or there. Duo, Teatro Cuatro, who did community theater in the Lower East Side. So, when you consider almost two million people with one or two theater companies, that’s embarrassing. The rest of the theater companies — many more Latino theaters back in ’79 than today — were not doing Puerto Rican theater, or they seldom did. On more than one occasion, we made theater proposals to those producers and they were not interested. They were set in their ways, and if they were interested, they wanted a certain type of Puerto Rican theater, something much more classical. But, of course, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was the more visible one, their work was geared towards everything Puerto Rican, they maintained a nice balance between works produced here and works produced in Puerto Rico. It was beautiful, one day "La Carreta" and the next Eddie Gallardo. In other words, a spectacular balance. And that was like our model.

AL: So, always a mixture of the classic and the contemporary?

RR: Yes, definitely. That’s when we said, "Good, let’s keep on working." I was going to continue working with Thalia [Spanish Theater] and with the Ensemble Studio Theater, who were doing a project, and I was auditioning for films. In the meantime we did this other stuff because it was also our vocation. It wasn’t like we wanted to do this because we missed Puerto Rican stuff. That was clear then. We got together to do that.

AL: What focus did you give the work? Are there prominent ideas in it, or were there prominent ideas in the beginning? Maybe the ideas are still prominent in terms of how you focus Puerto Rican themes?

RR: By accident, we fell into the exploration of some 60 or 65 plays. From the very beginning, I remember a conversation in my apartment where I said, "My God, why don’t we do all these plays at the same time?" Then I read a really interesting article from a newspaper that Raúl Davila [leading Puerto Rican actor] had given me that had a section with fragments of poetry. I told Raul that I had been wondering if this could be done in theater. He told me he didn’t want to get into that at the moment. But it stuck in my head. We were extremely irreverent from the beginning with the sacred texts [of Puerto Rican drama].We did as we pleased with it, like in a game, and then it started getting serious. And that’s how "La colección" [The Collection] was born. [The piece] covered 100 years of Puerto Rican theater, ever more sharply focused as theater. But when we started curating the texts, the role played [by form] was what helped us thread the texts together. We cut down from 65 to 30, then from 30 to 22, from 22 to 16, from 16 to 11 scenes from 11 plays, and then from 11 to 9. It was the form that helped us. Once we said, "Yes, see, this has comedy, tragedy, contemporary, classical." We were covering a great deal of subjects, besides. Then the issue of content surfaced and in the last stages, while reducing from 11 to 9 scenes, it was content that guided our decisions.

AL: So, would you say that a priority of form was preserved, always with an awareness of content?

RR: Yes.

AL: The question of whether the work is or not "issue-" or "issues-driven" in terms of responding to the local concerns of, say, Latino or Puerto Rican communities, how should we talk about that?

RR: Sometimes it has been, sometimes it hasn’t. Sometimes there is an issue that is strong, very present. We sit down and consciously say, "Let’s do something about that." For example, "Voces de Acero" [Voices of Steel] responds to a crisis that was taking place when [Puerto Rican] political prisoners were transferred to a maximum-security prison, and when the atrocities that were taking place there were denounced. We felt a great need to do create a piece about that. That is an example of "issue-oriented" work.

On another occasion, as in the case of "Quíntuples "[Quintuplets by Luis Rafael Sánchez], there was a wish to work with acting, to deal with the purely theatrical craft and to take advantage of talents in the group. And the opportunity to work with Nelson [Landrieu], another actor with whom we wanted to collaborate. And further yet, what we had at the moment was the need of art, pure theater, the need to continue to develop our theatrical skill. So, naturally, when that happens, the text must correspond with the things that please and affect us. I think it’s a combination of everything. I don’t think you can separate things. We’ve always thought, or at least we have learned, that one cannot separate content and form in disproportionate measure. Then we remember the words of Enrique Buenaventura telling us, "If there is more content than form, form goes to waste." Or, if there is more of one than the other, the other goes to waste. A piece can be over-produced and be about nothing, and then it’s a complete waste.

AL: Let’s move to community, because it seems to me that there is a relationship of form and content in this issue of audience and community. The overlap is interesting to see. A distinction is not always required. What type of response did, say, "Voces de Acero" have? Who was it presented to and what response did it get?

RR: We developed it in the other space [St. Ann’s] and we gave it the usual publicity. But of course, there were also other groups who had already shown an interest. We did a short tour of the work, but we did go to other places, to Cuba, to Michigan. It’s difficult for me when someone who is not one of us asks me [this] question, because I don’t want to assume that what they mean by "community" is what I mean by "community." So, for that reason, it’s hard for me to answer. I do know, I think, that for me, and I don’t think we’ve discussed it at Pregones, audience and community are the same thing to us. Our audience comes from the community that we serve, and, for us, community and neighborhood are not the same thing. Sometimes I don’t know if people talk about community when they’re trying to say neighborhood, or if they are talking about community in a broader sense. Plus, we may fall in the trap of thinking anything can be community; ten people think this is green, so it’s the community who said, "green." That’s not it. The community is a very important, very specific social structure. But in our case, for instance, where do we start? We didn’t start from a particular place. We started as a touring company, what’s more, we didn’t even want to be in one place, were not interested in being in one place. Our dream at 27 or 28 years old was to travel. The dream was to go here, go there, grab the luggage, keep on going. Because we were seeing, we went discovering Latino communities that were scattered everywhere, and who were expected to come to Manhattan to see theater. We thought, "Why can’t we go to them?" In a way the sum of all that became our community. It’s difficult to [think], then, that our community is, for instance, here in the South Bronx. Without denying or rejecting the reality that our real day-to-day community is the South Bronx. Because for years our community were the small town in Massachusetts, in New Jersey, in Connecticut. It’s been that, too.

AL: Interesting, because it suggests the notion of "translocality," which is not about only one space, one specific location, but rather about moving about. That which is community somehow belongs to many places.

RR: Many different spaces, but I assign a lot of value to the neighborhood. If people were much more specific, and in a sense more honest, about what it is they mean, and they say to me, "your neighborhood," I say we don’t have enough connection with our neighborhood because this is on the Grand Concourse, because across the street is a parking space and below us is a furniture store. The neighborhood at St. Ann’s was much more conducive to dealing with the immediate neighborhood, the immediate community. So we spoke to the super of the building and we placed flyers here and there and if people brought in the utility bill they got a discount at the box-office. Then we are dealing with our neighborhood.

AL: Were you there for many years?

RR: We were there almost ten years. Here the nature of the relationship is different because this is a commercial space all around except for these buildings right here [to the north]; and now is when we are starting to reach them. The girls go out with volunteers and leave flyers in the buildings.

RR: What is the best way to talk about the connection between the community and the work, in other words, what part does the community play in the work and vice-versa. Maybe you can give us some examples from your time in St. Ann’s?

RR: Let’s take it from before St. Ann’s because those seven years were crucial. The easiest thing, again, is to connect it to space. But, for example, the entire time we were touring there was a need to have a kind of center, like a place. First we were in El Barrio. We were there for two years before we came to Longwood in the Bronx. We were in Longwood for three years and there we had our own office, very nice, on the third floor; we started making connections. Churches, for example, or United Bronx Parents, which was very, very active place. And what convinced us to come here and establish our own office in the Bronx, despite the fact that we were a touring company, was precisely all the work that we were doing with the Bronx community. With churches and places like Casita María. That work influenced our decision to establish ourselves in the Bronx, because this was like a desert. Not in terms of music, because the Bronx has always been a step ahead in terms of the music, and in visual arts too, but in terms of Latino theater it was a desert. The Bronx has always had poetry and some literature but no theater. So, everything that we were doing with the community and the impact it had, what we were receiving, was what made us make a decision that any other theater group in Manhattan would have simply said no to. To pack and move to the Bronx with a group of talented, young, well-schooled people, schooled musicians... We had a promising future in Manhattan, we were already seeing it. Although it didn’t matter much because we were always traveling. I’m telling you all this because of what happens after, this is how we arrive at St. Ann’s, which is another example of how the ties with the community influence our decisions. When we first started putting on productions in the Bronx we said, "Let’s open here in the Bronx, even though the works are meant to travel." Still resisting the idea of a permanent space. Then we thought, "Wow, there’s a following." People came from other places to see us. That’s what caught the attention of Father Roberto Morales’ at [St. Ann’s Episcopal] church. He said, " You know, were doing these workshops with the church, the space is available; why don’t you go rehearse there and take permanent residence?" And we got caught up in it. It was like a circle, and people kept coming to our run, so we kept responding. The decision to create a theater was the biggest decision we ever made in our lives. The biggest.

AL: There’s the move on the one hand, but also demographic changes and the desire to respond to other Latinos who are not Puerto Rican, no? If you could talk a bit about that. When you move, do things change? Does the audience change?

RR: No. In all truth we had been noticing the demographic changes before. That’s why in St. Ann’s, and this is important, we modified our mission statement, modified and expanded it. What we did was expand it. And that’s when we added the Visiting Artists program, when we had the theater and not enough material to fill it all year round. Plus we continued to travel. So, we started to bring in other people, presenting other artists. What did we decide to do? Present artists from other cultures. It was a way for us to complete the picture, because we were covering only a certain aspect of Latino culture, and this other work made it clear that we were a lot more than that. We were not interested in representing others. That’s something else entirely. So, we began to present and that’s why they [visiting artists] have always been from other cultures. We’ve always had Puerto Rican artists, but the majority have been from other groups. That was natural. We moved to Hostos and we had no idea what was going to happen and what happens is that the change to a venue that was more accessible, more secure, less challenging for the audience, increased our audience by 40%, and it’s documented. A full house all the time. Our move coincided with Hostos opening its new theater that year. We were their first project, the first rental Hostos had and the first time, of course, that the theater was full [on every show night]. We realized the public was following us, they were really following us. But we have always seen the demographic changes and where we see them most is through the Visiting Artists Series. That’s where we see the biggest mix of people.

AL: Curiously enough, that comes out of St. Ann’s, which was the time of most intimacy with the neighborhood.

RR: Exactly.

AL: Very good. What other challenges has the institution been faced with? Institutional challenges.

RR: Well, change of space. These are artistic challenges, but also institutional challenges. Now what’s approaching is another change of venue, these are big challenges, challenges in terms of image, logistics, everything. Getting used to develop an administrative structure and to delegate day-to-day management of the organization to that structure. Financial challenges, of course. We have made some choices that perhaps are not the most profitable.

AL: What kind of support do you have to face these changes and what kind of support would you like to have? I mean specifically with folks from the borough, or the relation that you may or may not have with other organizations in the field. What kind of support does Pregones have to face these institutional changes and what kind of support might be missing?

RR: I think that Pregones and many other organizations that do work like Pregones, no? Because no one does exactly the same work, but organizations that do incredible artistic work with limited funds. The fact is that the work that we do has a lot more value in the commercial market than what we have to manage with. Pregones is known as a theater in the Bronx, which equals community theater and translates to a permanent slot in the lower ranks of grant making, for instance. That can only be challenged in the annual audit, where we can say, "Look here, it’s not like that." We’ve opted not to seek political support, which is a good thing, but on the other hand, we don’t have all the money that we could have. Then again, we don’t have political debts. And we have the guarantee that in moments like these — when we will need, for the first time, to go and ask public officials for their support in order to complete our move — that they will respond positively, I hope, because we have not worn them down.

AL: No matter their ideology.

RR: No matter, there has always been respect. And because Pregones has always maintained a truly prestigious reputation on a national level, it gives us leverage in that type of negotiation. But we definitely would need more resources, not only financially, but, in this case, we need to bring our journey through different spaces to an end and have a permanent space that can be inherited to a younger generation.

AL: Can we talk some about the legacy? I know that in the past we’ve talked about the work of Pregones as one that cultivates a certain style as far as the visuals and the text, because you do adaptations. Can you tell us more about that? What is your favorite work or the one you would like people to remember?

RR: I don’t know, the repertory we’ve created throughout the years is a very important one, not only for Latin American theater but for the American theater of North America, of the United States. In other words, I’m not interested in creating my own theater farm. I believe, and I wish, that our work will have an impact at large on North American theater, and that it may learn from us as we’ve learned from other forums. But it should be recognized. Because Pregones has been doing what is now being called the "biggest boom music theater" ever since we began. In fact, Latin America has been doing "music theater" since the beginning of the [20th] century. It is Latin America, and later Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble, who are the leaders of "music theater." And now it turns out that "music theater" is "in." What has happened with [Julie] Taymor, very beautiful work. But in Latin America, people out in the country do that. Here it’s done with lots of money, there it’s done with rags. But that has been taking place in remote communities all our lives. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been recognized where it is that it comes from. The fact these people are considered the great pioneers of that style of theater. Maybe they are pioneers here in the United States, but I’m not even sure of that. In that case, we would have to give them the diploma. But all around there is other theater like the theater that we do which is music theater. I’ve always resented the fact that I can’t call it "musical theater," like the "musical theater" in the United States. Because in the United States musical theater is measured by a different standard, the standard of Broadway. And, of course, we come out short. But it really is musical theater. The day that we can document it appropriately through recordings and CDs or whatever, the richness of our company’s musical theater will be made quite clear.

AL: This gives me the opportunity to ask you to speak more about the documentation, because I know that it’s one of the company’s major interests. I wonder if you can put that need in perspective for us.

RR: We’ve begun an archive project and it’s sort of stopped half-way, but it’s been in the last three or four years that we have been more attentive to documentation. We’ve learned that a lot has to be invested in the documentation; buying a video camera, storing the videos, a series of things that have to be done. Even then, I really do think that we need to find a way to document, for the general benefit of both our audiences and the field at large, our most important works, the most relevant in terms of a contribution to the field. For example, "Quíntuples" is a marvel, we love it, we even did an adaptation [of the original text], we cut it and practically turned it into performance [art], not so much comedy [anymore]. But I think even more important is to have done "La otra orilla."

AL: More daring?

RR: More daring. El apagón [The Blackout], San Miguel, that type of work.

AL: In my experience as part of the audience, I’ve seen several presentations of the same show and I see how each time it’s different, and think documenting this also offers—

RR: Exactly. For example, El apagón that we did with Jorge [Merced] and Tony [Chiroldes] is different from the one with Jorge and José [García]; of course, if the actor changes the show changes. But we’re talking about the fact that what changed was the essence of the direction. With the first two actors, the piece went on this direction, and with the other two, it went on a radically different course. Not so the setting. There we have an example of content and form.

AL: How about the aesthetic evaluation of the work?

RR: We don’t a formal procedure that we follow to "evaluate" the work. We always like to meet at the end of run, especially if it’s new, to talk about what we’ve experienced. But it’s a conversation between artists, more to review and discuss than to evaluate. Culturally, the evaluation of what we do, the evaluation (I always say as if in jest, but not just so), the evaluation is obtained on the spot, in relation with a live audience, from what the public gives to us or withholds from us, in the end.

AL: The same goes for the conversation with the audience after the show, be it through formal questions or through the informal receptions.

RR: Exactly. That’s interesting. We’re not really given to dialogue after a show unless the piece is brand new or we have previously agreed with the audience to talk after the show. I believe there is little to discover once the work is done. We don’t have any mechanism to include the audience before the piece is done, that would be ideal. For example, in "Promise of a Love Song," I’ve discovered, despite myself, that it’s a show after which I like to hear from the audience because it’s a work that confronts so many issues that it is worth hearing from the audience. Sometimes it isn’t, but generally it is. We don’t do that as much as we do one-on-one conversation with the people who always stay after the show, with the actors whom we ask to come out of the dressing room. And on the following next day, we get together and say, "One lady said this or that." Contrary to this model, there are very strict formats known in Latin America, where everyone sits down with the audience at the end of the show. It was interesting when Yuyachkani visited [from Peru] because Teresa [Ralli] asked, "Aren’t we talking afterwards?" And I said, "Sure, let’s do it, we’ll do the dialogue." But at the end when I told them to come out of the dressing room they said, "Wow, what a beautiful custom!" They were marveled that [audiences] stayed to share, to drink a glass of wine with the artists.

AL: Very intimate.

RR: Very intimate. Very beautiful. We experienced something similar in Denver, at Su Teatro, when we discovered that there was a door in the dressing room leading to the reception hall, where the audience awaited us for a last round of applause. Absolutely beautiful! And that’s what we prefer to do. So, I understand that when we get together after a show our conversation constitutes an evaluation that in no way obeys the parameters or standards for evaluation observed [at large] in the United States.

AL: How about favorite works?

RR: Favorite works? That’s a tough one.

AL: Probably many of them because they are all different, in many ways.

RR: Exactly. They’re satisfying in different ways. But of course, "La colección." "La colección" and "Migrants" are two pieces that, for me, are like our epic pieces where we did something that was new. New for us and new for everyone else.

AL: And they both have immigration as a theme.

RR: Not the first one. "La colección" was more about a survey, in other words, it talks about racism, about the countryside in Puerto Rico, about capitalism, it talks about everything, about the American cultural dominance in Puerto Rico, and it had a scene from "The Ox-cart." I’d have to stay "Migrants" was the most fun to create. We created "Migrants" from newspaper articles and [it was] where the ensemble just dove into the depths of intimacy. [It was] when we broke all boundaries of space between us, when we reached a greater intimacy.

AL: Is there a fundamental difference between working from [a theatrical] text and doing an adaptation, be it from a novel or story as source? I wonder if the structure requires a different approach in order to move ahead.

RR: Yes. Because "Voces" and "Migrants" were done in the same way and that made the game easier. In other words, I’m talking about works that take four weeks to create that used to take six months, and not because we were less capable but because we were discovering what we now know, and we now have it under our belts and it can be done. And what we are realizing is that the old guard at Pregones is taking for granted that as if by osmosis a new actor is going to acquire the technique without having to go through the process that we went through. And I believe that they do, they have to go through what we went through. But they don’t have to discover it in the same way that we did; we can guide that discovery process. It was incredible to be able to spend an entire day doing exercises and appear not to have moved forward at all. Then the next day we had the answer.

AL: The process peaked.

RR: Exactly. In "La otra orilla" [The Other Shore], we jumped into that as well. That’s what I’m looking for now [with "Los angeles se han fatigado"/Breathless Angels by Luis Rafael Sánchez]. Of course, it’s much more difficult because it’s just me, but that’s why I wanted someone else to join. Yesterday I had the first beautiful experience with Desmar [Guevara, Pregones’ musical director]. When I gave him the script I thought he would just put it to aside and forget about it. Instead he showed up at my house and told me about everything he had in mind. It was the first time Desmar shared that, the first time he voiced an opinion about the script in terms of the acting. He said, "I don’t know how you’re going to do this, I see her doing this and this." He said a lot of interesting things.

AL: I remember something you told me, very interesting, that even though there’s only one actor on stage [a show by Pregones Theater] is never a one-man show.

RR: It’s a team.

AL: Thank you

An ensemble-theater scholar born and raised in Puerto Rico, Arnaldo J. Lopez studied English literature, typography and letterpress arts in Pennsylvania, where he also lived and worked as a graphic designer. A Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU, he likes to write on issues of identity, arts and politics.

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