Crossing Boundaries II: The Tower of Babel Project
The best piece in the show is Antonio Sacre’s charming autobiographical one-person performance Buscando Papito (“Looking for the Cuban”), directed by James Lasko, which explores with straightforwardness and disarming honesty Sacre’s life and hard times as the son of a Cuban father and Irish mother. To his father’s family, his awkwardness with Spanish makes him “the gringo”; to his Anglo friends his darker features and family history make him “the spic.” Doomed to remain an outsider, Sacre leaps from one embarrassing situation to another–elected Hispanic Boy of the Year, he is terrorized by the thought of dancing with the Hispanic Girl of the Year because he, of all people, doesn’t know how to salsa–but he always lands on his feet. Over the course of this superbly acted 15-minute monologue he creates compelling, readily identifiable portraits of his family and friends, and in the process gives us the sort of rare glimpse into another’s life that makes for great theater.
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For all its literalism, there’s not even anything particularly heartfelt or spiritual about this version. In fact from the sloppy, thoughtless way it’s performed you’d never know that this story came from one of the central books in our culture. Then again, I don’t suppose one should expect an insightful adaptation of a biblical story from a show that proudly calls itself “The Tower of Babel Project,” as if the Tower of Babel were a good thing and not a symbol of our species’ grandiosity.
