Borderlands Theater at El Puente Festival
New this year at El Puente Festival, Borderlands Theater brings their production Las Reinas to the stage, featuring 8-foot-tall puppets made by Zarco Guerrero as the actors!
Cultural Coalition is honored to bring Borderlands and their unique production to this festival. Established in 1986 in Tucson, Arizona, Borderlands Theater produces heritage festivals, site-specific original theatrical productions, arts education, and digital content for communities in Southern Arizona and beyond. You may be familiar with their flagship Barrio Stories project, an iterative heritage festival celebrating the history and Sonoran heritage of Southern Arizona’s historic Mexican-American barrios.
Their large-scale productions feature theatre, shadow and giant puppetry, large scale projections, heritage cooking and music. Marc David Pinate, Producing Artistic Director describes Borderlands as an organization that produces “original plays, created by our core ensemble, produced site-specifically in locations that resonate with diverse audiences (in age and ethnicity), about half of which are non-traditional theatre goers.” This kind of theatre is exactly why Cultural Coalition invited them to this year’s festival.
The theme of El Puente Festival, spanish for “bridge”, is connecting cultures and generations through the arts. This aligned perfectly with Las Rienas which Pinate said was developed to showcase the deep cross-border relationship between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora. He goes on to explain this significance, “Originally, during the Fiestas de Mayo, the border was open for five days and identification was not checked during those five days. It was a big party for the residents of both sides. The stage where the crowning of the reinas took place was erected right on the international borderline, with half the stage in Arizona and half the stage in Mexico. This event exemplified the porous nature of the border which remained this way until the 1990s. Las Reinas tries to convey the cultural hybridity that developed in Nogales, and which as a result of draconian border policies, sadly declined.”
The 35-minute production will kick-off the Studio Stage performances at El Puente with giant puppets that captivate the senses, irresistible no matter one’s age. When asked about how this collaboration with Zarco came to be, Pinate remembered clearly, ”When I first visited Zarco’s studio I saw the giant puppets. I had been experimenting with giant puppets myself and Zarco’s were much better designed than what I had been working with. I knew immediately that I would want Zarco to make giant puppets with Borderlands Theater. I invited him to make four puppets for the first Barrio Stories event in 2016 and have been working with him ever since.”
Cultural Coalition is honored to be able to bring this production to El Puente, building this bridge to connect our community to arts organizations from other parts of Arizona. For Marc, he hopes having this performance here helps audiences learn a bit about what the border and cities like Nogales used to be like before. “Back when the border was much more open there was a very deep exchange of commerce, culture, language, and traditions between ambos Nogales. That exchange influenced all of Southern Arizona, even into the Phoenix area. We are a much richer culture because of that open exchange between Sonora and Arizona. I hope that Mexicans and Xicanos who see the performance feel a sense of pride, and of being seen.”