BY SOL MEZTLI GARCIA
Carolina Perez-Jaber has taken on many roles as a member of University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Latino Theater Initiatives organization, and she has recently taken on a new feat: the director’s chair.
Accepting the position this time around was special for the senior because this season’s play will be premiered in Festival De La Bête Noire, an international horror theatre festival based in Montreal, Canada.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival accepted applications from around the world this year. LTI was notified last fall that it had been selected, and Perez-Jaber said the news came at the right moment.
The festival started on Wednesday and is set to finish today.
Members of the UTRGV theater organization had been feeling low-spirited since they couldn’t meet together during the pandemic, said Eric Wiley, theatre professor at UTRGV and the LTI’s faculty adviser.
They found solace during a Halloween production last fall, but what helped revive their passion was finding out their original work was going to be shown to the world through the international horror-themed festival.
“It was great, because everyone was feeling a little down because of the pandemic and we don’t really meet,” Wiley said. “The club was not feeling very positive late in the fall.”
The organization had to record their play to submit it to the festival.
Rehearsal began through Zoom for the cast’s safety. LTI received permission for cast members to practice and record in the theatre studio at UTRGV throughout the semester.
“Everyone was so focused and so willing to make it work, and their performances were not affected at all from beginning to end,” said Perez-Jaber, the organization’s secretary.
The cast, which is composed of around 10 students and one recent graduate, ensured they followed COVID-19 protocols, such as using hand sanitizer and wearing facial coverings the whole time.
Francisco Garza-Rincones, who is also studying theatre at the university, wrote the play’s script about a Mexican witch hunter who must end a witch’s terror in the Rio Grande Valley. The play, “The Witch Among Us,” was based on the legend of “the lechuza,” a witch that can transform into an owl.
“We tried to choose a story that would represent the Valley specifically, so not only the setting, but also the popularity of the lechuza story,” Wiley said.
Perez-Jaber said she learned the importance of leadership skills, and is looking forward to implementing them to bring representation to the Valley and Latino voices.
“One of our goals and one of the things that I’ve learned is that we need to get voices out there and that our voices are so important,” the 22-year-old said. “We are a community that has inherited so many things from both sides of our ancestry from the conquer side to the indigenous side. It’s that mix that makes us the newest version of society forming of a birth of a race. It gives us something very important to tell to the rest of the world.”
This opportunity will hopefully impact future LTI members, Perez-Jaber said.
“I hope that what we have done this semester, as well as this year, will open doors for people that will be involved with LTI and UTRGV theatre after this is over,” she said.
Out of the 14 productions, LTI is the only student organization involved in this year’s festival. Wiley recommended the club keep this in mind during production, Jaber said.
“We are a student organization that represents our university, and we want to make sure that the first look they have of us is something powerful,” she said.
Perez-Jaber’s advice to community members who aspire to get their foot in the door of theatre productions is to realize that opportunities are not only found in big cities.
“You don’t have to move out of the Valley to do theatre. You don’t have to exclusively do theater in Hollywood, in Austin, in New York City, in wherever you think you need to go in order to do theatre,” the Mission native said. “Theatre is something that was birthed out of a necessity of societies to see themselves reflected on stage and the necessity of teaching people by letting them see themselves making mistakes.”
Valley natives should watch the play to enjoy their culture and witness the cast’s hard work, Wiley said.
“People from the Valley representing the Valley and sharing one of the local stories and the local culture at an international festival will be well worth their time,” the adviser said. “They’re gonna see the enthusiasm and the hard work.”
Sol Meztli Garcia is a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
