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Who’s Got Us?

On Sept. 5, Mango Tribe — a theater collective of Asian Pacific American women from Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles and Minneapolis — premiered Sisters in the Smoke at the Vittum Theater in Chicago.

Mango Tribe began back in 2000 when Anida Yoeu Esguerra and Emily C. Chang (both members of the Chicago-based spoken word group, I Was Born With Two Tongues) brought together nine Chicago-based APA performers for their first theater production Mangoes, Cigarettes, and My Mama’s Hands. Since 2000, Mango Tribe has expanded to its current size of 22 and returned to Chicago with their multiethnic, intercity, multimedia stylings, to present a four-day run of their latest show.

A GATHERING OF VOICES

Sisters in the Smoke premiered in conjunction with the Guild Complex of Chicago’s annual Women Writers Series. The opening scene of the play, “These are the Stories,” begins with the ensemble scattered throughout the theater, gathering slowly on stage, whispering, “These are the stories we have to tell.”

This gathering of voices very much reflects the difficult process of bringing 22 women together from four different cities in one production. The fact that a Chicago-based collective has expanded to include four cities strongly speaks to an important role that this collective is playing for APA women to come together as artists, and for the broader community. Chang, artistic Director and musical director, said of the intercity process, “We had understudies in each city so people could fill in when the others weren’t there. Every once in a while we would have cross-city rehearsals in Chicago. We would just try to do a lot in that time, and a lot of discussing over e-mail and phone.”

Above (top to bottom): Anida Yoeu Esguerra; Kelly Tsai; Jennifer Cendana Armas.

Sisters in the Smoke, fuses together dance, video, spoken word, traditional theater and audio collage. Each actress appears in various incarnations and has different functions. There are elements of dance throughout the piece, both in numbers focusing directly on dance and through more subtle choreography by Gina Magsombol during the acting sequences. Jennifer Cendaña Armas appeared on stage doing a solo tap dance entitled “We Be Witches,” while the full ensemble piece “Break” features seven of the women breakdancing.

The recorded audio also plays a variety of roles, one of the more experimental exemplified in “Power Moves.” In this piece, Kelly Tsai compils audio clips of 12 APA men talking about violence. While this audio collage plays, Tsai and five of the other women perform interpretive dance.

The video team headed by Ann Poochareon and San Tong incorporated projections into four of the pieces. The videos work both as an enhanced backdrop and take the forefront in “Damaged Merchandise,” where a black and white film in the style of a silent movie depicts a white male picking up his mail order bride from the airport.

The final touch of this very experimental format is that of the rotating shows. Thursday and Saturday nights shows were the same, while Friday and Sunday featured four different scenes, replacing four from the previous nights. Esguerra said the choice was because “we had so much quality work from all the girls ... we didn’t want to desensitize our audience by saying, this is it, this show encompasses everything about violence.”

VIOLENCE BREEDS

Sisters in the Smoke forms its tonal center around an exploration of violence. Each vignette speaks clearly on an aspect or effect of the violence of living. The play uses its array of characters and voices to explore domestic violence, sexual violence, violence in the APA community and violence perpetrated through hate crimes, in war and within oneself.

Some of the pieces in their intimate and personal dealings with violence as it affects women presented great difficulties for the actors portraying these characters. Director/producer Esguerra said, “Within our group of women there are a lot of survivors from assault, rape, abusive homes, relationships, being refugees, molestation. These women are so remarkable in having the courage to explore these stories. Whether they are theirs or someone else’s, the women brought humanity and caring to these stories, so that they have become part of them.”

One of the most difficult pieces for the women on stage was “Revolver.” This piece takes the basis of its story from the sexual assaults on six APA women on the north side of Chicago. For the six actresses to get into character for “Revolver,” they had to meditate before the show, right before the piece and after the show. There was also a therapist member of the Tribe who helped with the psychological difficulties in enacting some of these scenes.

One of the actresses, Sarwat Rumi, said, “For me, ‘Revolver’ was the hardest piece to work with … reliving those moments over and over again throughout the everyday mundane. As a survivor of rape, I have come very far in my healing so I can come out on stage and say these things, talk about these things publicly. But to choose to put myself back in a place that I had left a few years ago is really emotionally taxing. It never gets easier. Literally five years ago I couldn’t even utter the word rape. Part of what I try to do is to break those silences so other women can also speak their truths.”

This sense of necessity in breaking silence surrounding violence in the APA community is at the heart of Sister in the Smoke’s mission. The strong tone that breathes throughout the work has a sharpness and haunting presence that keeps the piece glued together, yet does not become repetitive, depressing or give a sense of finger pointing in one direction. Instead the finger seems to point in all directions, the pain is internal and external, the violence is endemic yet not without hope for relief. The strongest resolutions that rise from this journey are that of resistance through the sharing of our human stories, through community.

For Mango Tribe, this feeling of unification crowned the performance in their closing piece, “Who’s Got Us?” written and directed by Esguerra. This piece is a call to arms, a celebration of the power of sisterhood. While video clips of mothers and daughters in their homes play behind the ensemble, the women ask, Who’s Got Us? and the answer seems clear.

Mango Tribe plans on taking the production to New York for a four-day run later this year, and after that it is hoping to take the show on tour across the country.

For information on Mango Tribe, go to http://mangotribe.thecollectivechicago.org/index.html.