Last month the People's Theatre, the long-running community theater collective in Washington Heights and Inwood, opened the Centro Cultural Inmigrante, a gorgeous gathering space with a sprawling theater, a cafe, and studios. And its latest production,"Wayfinding: Señas del Camino," is exactly what the largest Latine-owned theater in New York state was built for: a play which casts local residents in a collaborative production drawn from their own stories. Led by the Colombian director Catalina Beltrán, the cast of eight consists of mostly immigrants to the U.S., and "Wayfinding" was created with each actor's personal journey in mind, combining their experiences and input into "three stories of escape, survival, and discovery."
In advance of the show's opening this weekend at the People's Theatre—before it moves on to engagements at the Whitney Museum of Art and Flushing Town Hall, all free—Hell Gate spoke with Beltrán about the process of creating the piece, how the community members came to be cast, and what showgoers can expect from the majority-immigrant production. "It's a very nice, cross-cultural experience of sharing," she said, "about our backgrounds and how we imagine ourselves becoming part of the society, helping to build a society that is equitable and based on care."
Hell Gate: How did you come to this project?
Catalina Beltrán: So, the community productions have been at the core of the People's Theatre for years, because this is a theater that does theater with the community that it serves, not just for the community. This production has been happening for a few years, but it started taking like a very particular shape three years ago, when the actor Reza Salazar was invited to direct an iteration of it. I'm mentioning this because that's also when I came in and became familiar with what they do. I worked as an assistant for Reza, and the next year, I was invited to direct my first community production with the People's Theatre, which was called "The Space We Share."
What it means to me—both that production, and the one I'm doing now—is just giving an introduction to theater to some of the community members. We also get some aspiring actors participating in these programs, but it's not necessarily an introduction in terms of the technical tools of performing. We do a little bit of that, but it's mostly the exercise of collaborating and creating something from scratch.
In the case of "Wayfinding," as the director I came in with the theme, because wayfinding is a very interesting thing that us humans do. I also brought in a couple of stories—a myth and also a fairy tale— that talk about wayfinding. The rest all of it just happens in the room, which I think is just a very magical exercise in understanding how stories, even when they seem to not relate to us, eventually do relate to a shared human experience. It's also an exercise on how people who don't know each other end up creating a mini-society. I always see it as a wonderful experiment of putting strangers together to create something.