“Cuando Los Muertos Lloran,” a one-woman show written, produced and presented by Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas of the Brownsville Independent School District, will come to the TSC Arts Center stage Friday as a Day of the Dead fundraiser for student scholarships and employee grants.
“Cuando Los Muertos Lloran,” a one-woman show written, produced and presented by Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas of the BrownsvilleIndependentSchool District, will come to the TSCArtsCenter stage Friday as a Day of the Dead fundraiser for student scholarships and employee grants.
The show tells a story of particular relevance to the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Mexican immigrants who come to the United States without documentation to work, meet an untimely end and never return to their homeland.
It is the story of Gilroy John Doe No. 1 and Gilroy John Doe No. 2, and their eight-year journey to their final resting place after lying in a morgue in California before Zendejas takes them home.
“It took me a year to work through this,” Zendejas said last week in her office. “It’s an outlier ghost story … a murder mystery that never gets resolved. They haunted me, but in a good way, for seven years until I finally learned who they were.”
She said the account is factual and that she has performed the play four times before, in California, Florida and Indiana, and once in a small production at the Camille Lightner Playhouse in Brownsville.
“It’s for a good cause, that’s why I don’t mind stepping forward and taking a little bit of a risk,” she said. “In this particular case I’ve added some salt and pepper, and invited Pablo Montero to be part of the show and follow my lead and sing.”
The show will have two performances, at 5 and 8 p.m. at the TSCArtsCenter on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Brownsville campus. Tickets are $20 for general admission or $40 for VIP, and available by calling Brenda Ochoa in Zendejas’ office at (956) 639-9599.
A more complete version of this story is available on www.myBrownsvilleHerald.com
