Word for Word presents:

Retablos

By Octavio Solis

Featuring the Chapters Retablos, The Way Over, Consuelo, El Judío, La Migra, La Llorona, Nothing Happens, The Quince, Mexican Apology, El Segundo, Neto, and My Right Foot

February 19 - March 15, 2020
(run was cut short due to COVID-19)
Directed by Sheila Balter and Jim Cave

2 acts, 2 hours, plus a 15 minute intermission

Word for Word’s latest full production is from author & playwright Octavio Solis. Retablos is a coming of age memoir; each chapter a memory tale, verging on fable, which paints a dreamlike picture of life in El Paso in the 60’s and ’70’s. Drawing from his own childhood, Solis says that he wrote these stories "to see how that skinny brown kid riding his bike out there in the desert made sense of his complicated, deeply beautiful and troubled world." Octaviosolis.net

“A retablo is a devotional painting, playwright Octavio Solis tells us. In this poignantly written, heart-warming coming-of-age memoir, Solis pays tribute to those cornerstone moments in his life, negotiating borders at once personal and cultural, with such color that the reader is left spellbound. Astonishing, what more can I say?”
—Greg Sarris, author of How a Mountain Was Made and longtime Word for Word friend

Cast

*Member, Actors’ Equity

Designers and Crew

Directed by Sheila Balter and Jim Cave
Cultural Consultant: Carolina Morones
Original Music and Sound Design: David R. Molina
Set Design: Nina Ball +
Lighting Design: Jeff Rowlings+
Costumes: Callie Floor+
Dramaturg: Karina Gutiérrez
Choreographer: Carolina Morones
Scenic and Properties Artisan: Vola Ruben
Graphic Design: Sendy Santamaria

+Member, United Scenic Artists

PRESS RESOURCES

The dedicated press agent for this show was David Hyry, who can be reached at daldenh@aol.com.

in the media

SF CHRONICLE REVIEW
““Retablos” insists that there’s meaning to be found in quiet. It asserts that the thing that happened only in your mind when you were a teenager is valid and valuable, even if the only way you can prove it to the outside world is through the force of your conviction, the vividness of your observation. Even if all you have is unshowy, conversational language that still somehow spans horizons and reaches skyward..”’ —Lily Janiak

SF WEEKLY FEATURE
‘“I wanted to write this as a tribute to her [Consuelo],” Solis tells SF Weekly. He wrote it as if it were one voice but the directors, Balter and Jim Cave, found a way to incorporate 8-10 voices in telling the story. “That’s the magic of Word for Word. They know how to distribute the text in a way that makes it feel incredibly theatrical. And almost like dialogue, like they’re talking to each other.”’ —Jeffrey Edalatpour

THEATRE EDDYS
"How can one not walk out of Z Space and this fabulously insightful and moving Word for Word production and not want to rush immediately to City Lights Bookstore to purchase a copy of the full fifty chapters of Octavio Solis’ Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border?" —Eddie Reynolds

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Octavio Solis is a playwright and director whose works, Mother Road, Quixote Nuevo, Hole in the Sky, Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Quixote, Lydia, June in a Box, Lethe, Marfa Lights, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The 7 Visions of Encarnación, Bethlehem, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, and La Posada Mágica have been mounted at the California Shakespeare Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Dallas Theater Center, the Magic Theatre, Intersection for the Arts, South Coast Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Shadowlight Productions, the Venture Theatre in Philadelphia, Latino Chicago Theatre Company, Boston Court and Kitchen Dog Theatre, the New York Summer Play Festival, Teatro Vista in Chicago, El Teatro Campesino, the Undermain Theatre in Dallas, Thick Description, Campo Santo, the Imua Theatre Company in New York, and Cornerstone Theatre. His collaborative works include Cloudlands, with Music by Adam Gwon, Burning Dreams, cowritten with Julie Hebert and Gina Leishman and Shiner, written with Erik Ehn. Solis has received an NEA 1995-97 Playwriting Fellowship, the Roger L. Stevens award from the Kennedy Center, the Will Glickman Playwright Award, a production grant from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and the National Latino Playwriting Award for 2003. He is the recipient of the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists Residency Grant from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust, the United States Artists Fellowship for 2011 and the 2104 Pen Center USA Award for Drama. Solis is a Thornton Wilder Fellow for the MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists alum and member of the Dramatists Guild. He is working on commissions for the Arena Stage, SF Playhouse and South Coast Repertory Theatre. —From Octaviosolis.net

The River Plays, his anthology of plays about the US/Mexico border is published by NoPassPort Publishing.

His new book Retablos: Stories From A Life Lived Along The Border, published by City Lights Books, is available here.

Mr. Solis’ relationship with Word for Word extends back twenty years, when he directed their production of “Slaughterhouse” by Greg Sarris. In 2010, he adapted John Steinbeck’s “The Pastures of Heaven” (which was one of the five NEA Distinguished New American Plays) for a Word for Word collaboration with Cal Shakes. Mr. Solis is a member of Word for Word’s Authors’ Council.