Their Dogs Came with Them by Virginia Grise

Abstract

Reviewed by: Their Dogs Came with Them by Virginia Grise Jimmy A. Noriega THEIR DOGS CAME WITH THEM. By Virginia Grise, adapted from the novel by Helena María Viramontes. Directed by Kendra Ware. Julian Wash Archaeological Park, Tucson, Arizona. October 18, 2019. Helena María Viramontes is one of the most celebrated and distinguished Latina authors in US literature. She first came to national attention with The Moths and Other Short Stories (1985) and received widespread acclaim for her first novel, Under the Feet of Jesus (1995). Viramontes’s second novel, Their Dogs Came with Them (2007), is based on her childhood in East Los Angeles in the 1960s. It presents the lives of four young Latina women set against the backdrop of the freeway construction that cut across predominantly Latinx neighborhoods. In her prose, Viramontes spotlights the youth of her community and explores Chicana feminism, gang culture, poverty, the impact of the Vietnam War, and the effects of racist urban development on their everyday lives. In 2015, Tucson’s Borderlands Theatre commissioned award-winning playwright Virginia Grise to adapt Their Dogs Came with Them for the stage. The result is a powerful play that speaks to the history of displacement and marginalization of people of color in the United States. The themes of the book translated readily from East LA to Tucson, which experienced a similar type of community disintegration in the 1960s when neighborhoods were destroyed to build the downtown Convention Center. Grise’s process included working with local residents on an early draft of the script and drew upon their shared circumstances with the novel’s characters. The text was then workshopped and produced in the Perryville Women’s Prison in Goodyear, Arizona in February 2019. In Tucson, the collaboration between Borderlands Theatre and a todo dar productions produced a site-specific performance at Julian Wash Archaeological Park, with the stage and audience located underneath the I-19 freeway. Grise adapted Viramontes’s 325-page novel into an episodic narrative that consisted of a prologue, twenty-eight scenes, and a coda. In total, twelve performers of color played the more than twenty characters that represented the fractured neighborhood. The main action follows the daily lives of two groups of Latinx youth: the F-Troop, four female friends named Ermilia, Mousie, Rini, and Lollie Loop de Lue; and the McBride Boys, a gang comprised of Turtle, Luis Lil Lizard, and Santos. Among their family and neighbors are an array of church people, undocumented individuals, the elderly and working-class, and a homeless woman. Throughout [End Page 359] the production, the Quarantine Authority (QA) and police remained an errant presence, monitoring and terrorizing the residents with helicopters, floodlights, loudspeakers, and guns. Although the QA was ostensibly deployed as a response to rising rabies cases in animals in the area, its actions consistently targeted and impeded the lives of the Latinx residents. Click for larger view View full resolution The ensemble of Their Dogs Came with Them perform under the I-19 freeway in South Tucson. (Photo: Jimmy A. Noriega.) At its core, Their Dogs Came with Them is about dislocation and disruption. It depicts a broken community whose inhabitants are desperately trying to survive amid the remains of a neighborhood torn apart by racist zoning laws and the demands of a commuter society. The audience was divided into three sections around a thrust-like dirt stage, and throughout the production the characters performed in multiple areas below the overpass, including behind the chain-link fence that divided the park and freeway. The site-specific nature of the production invoked an atmosphere of life in constant interruption. A sense of unease (and even danger) permeated the space as cars, trucks, and eighteen-wheelers passed overhead, creating a soundscape of furious traffic that at times sent strong vibrations into the audience. Although the performers wore microphones, the troupe occasionally struggled to overcome the sounds of the freeway. At other times the wind would blow the desert dust into the faces of the actors and audience, creating moments of agitation and discomfort. Moreover, a bike path bisected the performance space and at various moments cyclists would ride through, momentarily stopping the...