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Actress'
anti-Castro message rings strong in South
Florida
Posted on Mon, Dec. 15,
2003 in The
Miami Herald.
Living in New York, actress Carmen Peláez
overdoses on Che Chic. They're everywhere,
the hip-hoppers and hippies and post-grungers
who go around with Che on their T-shirts
like he's Biggie or John or Kurt or somebody
cool like that.
One day, tired of the cliché parade,
Peláez took out some felt and some
glue and made her own T-shirt. It features
what you might call a counter counter-culture
message: ''F*-- Che.'' She stuck Che's star
where the letter u would go.
''I walked around in it and you would think
I was throwing babies into a meat grinder,''
says Peláez, a would-be poster child
for So-Uncool-She's-Cool, except few are
cool enough to get that about her. "The
guy was an assassin. Treating him like a
rock star is the epitome of trendy ignorance.''
Peláez, starring in Rum & Coke
at the Coconut Grove Playhouse's Encore
Room through the end of January, has had
plenty of run-ins with what she would call
trendy ignorance.
The one-woman play she wrote at 24, at
the height of a typical Cuban-American identity
crisis, had a sizzling run at a tiny Lincoln
Road theater six years ago. Rum & Coke
was sold out for weeks and graced by the
roster of hometown celebs. Gloria and Emilio,
Jon Secada and Albita not only came, but
each was so taken by Carmen's writing and
acting they separately called her to collaborate
on projects. (She recently worked on a treatment
for a screenplay Emilio Estefan wants to
produce.)
PLAYING IN PEORIA
Rum & Coke caught the attention of
everybody from Ted Koppel, who featured
her family's story on Nightline, to feminist
icon Betty Friedan, who saw the show and
raved, to NBC and Fox Theatricals, which
both came calling with development deals.
But the theater world couldn't get beyond
its own narrow perspectives on narrowness
-- and Rum & Coke was stopped cold.
''Nobody in New York wanted me to do it,''
Peláez says over guava-glazed chops
at Havana Harry's. 'Everybody said it was
too right wing. They basically said if we
put a communist character in it, they would
take it. In the end, 'Viva Fidel' was all
they wanted to hear.''
In 2000, Peláez spent eight weeks
in Chicago performing and tweaking Rum &
Coke with Fox Theatricals (its Broadway
productions include Thoroughly Modern Millie
and Death of a Salesman). And for a minute
there, Rum & Coke got watered down.
But she doesn't blame Fox. She blames herself.
'The play did have some holes in it and
I knew it, but I didn't know how to fix
them. Fox really helped. But in the process
of trying to develop in for mainstream America,
I lost my voice. It turned into more of
a travelogue. They were like, 'What do you
mean by apagon (power outage)?' And I would
have to stop and explain everything.''
In the spring, Coconut Grove Playhouse
director Arnold Mittelman offered Peláez
another run in a city where she doesn't
have to explain.
''I'm not sure why anybody would think
the show should have any character in it
that didn't belong to Carmen,'' Mittelman
says. "It's about her organic, artistic
experience.''
Playwright Charles Busch, whose The Tale
of the Allergist's Wife just completed a
run at the Playhouse, caught Rum & Coke
while he was in Miami. His first question:
Why hasn't it run in New York?
"I would have thought, in my ignorance
I guess, that it would have run in one of
New York's avant-garde performance theaters.
Or, whatever the word for avant-garde is
these days. I think they're totally insane
for not wanting it. I found her an enormously
likable and sympathetic performer and was
particularly struck by the writing, which
is touching and smart. I would have thought
the American left stopped being sympathetic
to Castro when they figured out Stalin wasn't
Santa Claus.''
FINAL RUN?
Rum & Coke is political, but it is
hardly humorless. It's an edgy, funny and
(yeah, so what?) sentimental take on identity.
In it, Peláez offers the voices of
six Cuban women: Among them Camilla, Peláez's
alter ego, a chunky Cuban-American girl
in search of self-worth and a supermodel's
strut; her grandmother, who has learned
to live with her unrootedness and doesn't
apologize for doing hunger strikes in shifts;
a jinetera who suffers the indignity of
prostituting herself along Havana's Malécon
for pocket change but draws the line when
she gets a half-eaten candy bar by way of
pay; a Tropicana star demoted to bathroom
attendant for attempting to escape the island
on a raft; and Ninita, a woman Peláez
can't talk about without breaking down.
Ninita was Peláez's great aunt and
the sister of one of Cuba's greatest painters,
the late Amelia Peláez. Carmen met
her in 1995, on her first of four trips
to the island. In her late '80s, Ninita
was the sole caretaker of the Peláez
family home, rattling around among Amelia's
paintbrushes and easels and the memories
of a pre-Castro Cuba, when the family was
still together.
She died last year at 91.
''When she died I lost my only porthole
into my history over there,'' Carmen says.
Yes, Rum & Coke makes a political statement.
But it's less about politics and more about
honoring elders. Carmen, 31, is the typical
Cuban-American kid who grew up in Kendall,
feeding on second-hand nostalgia.
Her play is her grown-up thanks to her
parents. Even if her perspectives tend to
be more moderate that theirs, their loss
is not lost on her.
''You don't get a revolution by mistake,''
Peláez says. "And if we can't
acknowledge the mistakes that were made
in Cuba before Castro, we'll never get out
of it. Our generation, both here and in
Cuba, we're basically getting back this
Ming vase that has been shattered into pieces.
We're going to have to try to put it back
together, without even knowing each other.''
Peláez's quest through Rum &
Coke has been to understand both side of
Cuba. So don't go telling her the play is
not authentic enough.
'I have gotten, 'Oh, you're one of those
exiles. Why don't you tell the real story?'
As if buying a Buena Vista Club CD makes
you an expert. They say I'm too nostalgic.
To which I say, when I go to Cuba, I shower
out of a bucket. When you go, you take pictures
in front of a 1950s Cadillac. Who is more
nostalgic, me or you?''
She's thinking after the Playhouse run,
she's shelving Rum & Coke.
"If this is where it ends, that's
great. Because I won't change it so it gets
to run somewhere like New York. Now I'm
focused on finishing my next play, Abuela.
It's about my grandmother. She's a huge
inspiration. Her strength is outstanding,
and she doesn't advertise it. And she has
barely ever talked to me about Cuba. She
doesn't dwell.''
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Rum & Coke
WHERE: Coconut Grove Playhouse, 3500 Main
Hwy., Coconut Grove
WHEN: Through Jan. 25; various times.
HOW MUCH: $25 and $30
TICKETS AND INFO: 305-442-4000
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