Love Your Body: Featuring Claudia Acosta

Claudia Acosta (New York, NY) reminds us what it means "to show up" again and again and again. We are honored to feature her as a guest reader this Saturday (September 13, 2 - 4PM) at our New York Book Release Party of The Panza Monologues at La Casa Azul Bookstore.

Claudia Acosta as 
Siempre Norteada in Virginia's 
play Go Away!

Claudia Acosta is a bilingual actor, producer, writer, and teaching artist. A straight hustler, the girl has performed Off-Broadway in shows such as Dance for a Dollar (INTAR), Don Cristobal Billy Club Man (HERE Arts Center), and Pandora's (Theater Row) as well as in theaters throughout the Southwest. Most recently she was in The Architecture of Becoming produced by The Women's Project, where she played many characters including originating the role of Siempre Norteada created by Virginia Grise. But, there ain't nothing norteada about Claudia - she knows where she's goin. 

Hailing from the state of Texas, her first play Girlie Stories is now published in Taboo Theater: Sex and Violence on Stage (University Readers), an anthology currently being taught at the University of Central Florida. She created and produced the first-ever Rose Marine Latino Film Festival in Fort Worth, Texas and produced a short documentary with Academy Award Winning Director, Nigel Noble. In New York, Claudia has served as a teaching artist in after-school programs, public schools, colleges, universities, safe houses, homeless shelters, and the prison at Riker's Island with The Public Theater, Shadow Box Theater, White Bird Productions, Creative Arts Team of CUNY, Lincoln Center, and Arts Connection. 

For our blog and in anticipation of our NYC reading this coming weekend, we asked her, "If your panza could speak what would it say?" 

And she said...

"Somos nosotras las hijas de Coyolxauhqui, full moon faces. Y yo con una panza to match. Big, round, beautiful full moon panza to match my Olmeca head." 

– from "International Panza," The Panza Monologues

I am a first generation Mexican-American. A Texican, a long lost norteña Chihuahuense that found her way up northeast from the west coast town of Corona, California to a rocky mountain childhood back in El Paso/Juarez forging a creative way past teenage years in Dallas-Fort Worth to find a place to stay and work as a theater artist in New York, New York. A thirty-four-year-old Latina-Teatrista always floating somewhere between her heart and her head trying to make sense out of everything along the way without being a dick about it.

Claudia Acosta's Summer Reading

I come from a long line of Chihuahua hard-asses with convictions, or as this excerpt from a poem I wrote about my mother’s breast cancer would more clearly answer:

I come from a long line
of guerilleros
My Mother the bravest one
and for my Mother,
it was her Mother
and with
Grandmother stood my Grandfather
and with my Sisters, my Brother
with them, me.

All there along my Father's side.

Our blood in my veins,
helped my Mother up
and untied her gown
and guided her arm through
the strap of her bra

I saw my birth in her breasts:
my origin, my nourishment,
my comfort...myself.

Her body is my own.

This the beginning,
soon a space will remain
to give more land
for love to create
greater change
in my blood's time.

***

Whitney Houston sang words I will never forget:

"I believe the children are our future / Teach them well and let them lead the way / Show them all the beauty they possess inside / Give them a sense of pride to make it easier / Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."

I believe in love, in people, in creativity, in prayer, in community, in justice, and happiness. 

I also believe that humans are capable of great, great beauty, stupidity, and horror. 

I believe the imagination is a survival skill.  

I believe I may have drowned at sea in a former life or was a mermaid because of my relationship with the ocean having been raised in the desert and plains of Texas.

That being said, I believe in everything and nothing. 

Okay, maybe I believe that stars aligned for my coming into this world to leave something behind that could be useful for humanity.

I used to believe Jesus died for my sins, but I no longer believe in original sin.  I no longer believe in a God that made me so I can pay him back for all my imperfections.

I believe in the natural force that surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. 

I believe in the force.

Yes, I believe in the force.

"So it was written on the bodies of Chicana heavyweights all across Aztlan. Live your life without shame."

– from "Historia," The Panza Monologues

i first heard music in the panza...
child in womb

My breasts. I am very happy with them. They are fun and give me much pleasure. Sometimes they concern me, but overall I am very honored to have these breasts attached to my body because it balances me out.  I have a very big ass. It garners a lot of attention, stirring up mixed emotions in men and women.  It is a burden sometimes to have an ass that both compels and alienates. My breasts I can see.  I can hold them.  I was told once that Aries don’t believe in anything they don’t see - so I wonder - because I am an Aries - is that why my ass haunts me?  I can’t see it, but I can feel it.  My ass dictates a lot in my world, but I can take comfort in my breasts. They make me feel like I am Appollonia, the first breasts I saw on TV. While my sisters watched Purple Rain, I hid behind the couch and peeked. I was five, that movie was off-limits.  Seeing Appollonia undress and reveal her beautiful breasts awed me.  I wanted a pair like that on me. Thankfully the boob fairy I prayed to made it happen.  I have big breasts that I can hold so I would never feel alone in this cruel world.  

"Someone's panza story is a sacred story, and to share it with someone else is to tell them about the condition of your life."

– from "Prologue," The Panza Monologues

I was a skinny kid until I was nine, when I  had surgery from an accident that involved losing the tip of my middle finger on my left hand.  I learned two things: how to temporarily write with my right hand and how to eat my feelings. Shortly after that, I remember hearing “PANZONA,” “Que Pansoncita." My little round tummy over skinny knock-kneed legs. I would get these stomach pains when I was little. I went to the hospital twice because my parents thought I had appendicitis, but after x-rays and tests nothing was found.  A phantom pain that startled me, that overtook me, and made me cry out.  Didn’t know it was anxiety.  My panza was trying to make me listen, but I didn’t know what "listen to your gut" meant. It wasn't until I reached adulthood that I realized my stomach was my second brain.  Everything my mind goes through, my stomach does too. I wish I had known that. I wish I had learned that having a strong tummy gives you power to move. I wish I knew how to listen to my panza then. LISTEN TO THE PANZA.

"Our panza has a heart that in extension suffers - suffers from out not taking care of it." 

– from "Hunger for Justice," The Panza Monologues

So, what does my panza say to me now? 

How dare you eat French fries two days in a row and what makes you think you could eat a falafel too?

Thanks for laying off the dairy.

You are worried. I don’t know what you are worried about, but girl you are worried. Can’t you see I’m justa handful away from showing you what you could do with that dress?

That plank position. Get it.

Your back hurts.

Work these abs, girl.

Why don’t you love me, the way I am?

I loved the green smoothies, but I hated the green smoothies.

Why are you scared?

Why are you scared?

That echoes in the deep chamber of my panza when the world I play in gets quiet. I have this fear, this block.  A whole spot at the top of my belly that fires anxiety that makes me tremble like a volcano spewing ash and lava. It burns. It trembles.

This center of my being gets so stuck.  

This center I use to connect to others.

This center that carries me in a classroom or on stage.

This center that can hold life.

This center that tells me to write when it needs to speak.

This center of my being feels trapped forcing me to remember to breathe.

I breathe.

I feel the tightness of my fear stretching and sighing.

I watch my belly expand and release.

Breathe it says.

Breathe.

"Keep your third eye open, mugrosa, cuz sometimes you gots to give ojo to protect yourself."

– from "Panza Brujería," The Panza Monologues

May my panza have power to push me forward.

May my panza grow strong to keep me balanced.

May my panza be healthy to sustain me everyday. 

May my panza be at peace so I can hear the voices of my ancestors reminding me how beautiful and how chingona I really am.

Thank you Vicki and Irma.

Today and everyday my panza makes me a chingona.

So it is written.

Pedagogy of the Panza: Panza with Profes

From Irma Mayorga:

On Sunday, August 25th, Virginia Grise will begin rolling through South Tejas on the "Some Like it Hot - South Texas Panza Monologues Book Tour." The tour promises to spread panza positivity and power from South Padre Island to the University of Texas, Pan American (see end of post for the tour schedule). 

However, before V's red hot reports from the South Tejas tour begin, I wanted to share some reflections about a unique staging of The Panza Monologues that occurred earlier this summer at the Association for Theater in Higher Education's (ATHE) annual conference.

The last weekend in July, ATHE held their annual conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. This association is comprised of roughly 1500 members who are, in large part, profes who teach, make, and study theater at the college and grad school level. 

At the profes' annual ATHE convening, they have a chance to dialogue and exchange, enjoy fellowship and intellectual stimulation, meet new people and ideas, and overall, enjoy thinking about theater and education with colleagues from across the U.S. It's a theater profe geek out session of the best kind. As a theater profe myself, I have been a member of this org since around 1996 and consider it my intellectual home for theater studies.

Although the National Council of La Raza and many other Latina/o orgs have called off their boycotts against the State of Arizona [see more HERE] - boycotts that began in response to a long series of hostile [meaning racist] Arizona immigration laws (not the least of which is SB 1070, the law that encourages racial profiling) - the state remains a bitter site for Latina/os: a place to avoid, to go around, and to resist actively as a matter of solidarity against the egregious legislation that continues to be implemented by the state. 

And if that isn't enough, let's also not forget Arizona passed into law HB 2281, a mandate where books that offer critical interventions and rearticulations of dominant U.S. history, as well as cogent breakdowns about discrimination based on race, gender, ethnic identity, and sexuality in the U.S., have been removed from Arizona public secondary schools because they spread "dangerous ideas." Ideas like social justice, like gender equality, like describing the reality of the lived conditions people of color, women, queer people, children and youth, and all other marginalized communities have resisted and survived in the U.S. Yeah, those books. They are now gone from classrooms, which is most definitely not enacting Panza Positive Policies. (To see the list of books removed from Arizona high school classrooms, go HERE.)  

Aaron C. Thomas & Patricia Herrera, 
"Prologue" from The Panza Monologues 
at ATHE 2014, dir. by Jason Ramirez

In light of these troubling circumstances (and there are others...), it was with special attention and care that ATHE constructed its annual conference for Arizona. The organization sought to recognize what we were stepping into while also working hard to honor the ongoing work of those whom we were visiting with for a time. 

So, for example, although he had already been identified to receive recognition, this past July was the year that legendary theater artist Luis Valdez attended the conference to receive one of ATHE’s highest awards, the Ellen Stewart Career Achievement Award for Professional Theatre, which recognized his unmatched contributions to the political and aesthetic shape of U.S. American theater. If that wasn't thrilling enough, playwright, performer, and itinerate community organizer Luis Alfaro addressed the entire ATHE membership as the conference’s keynote speaker for 2014. Luis designed his keynote as a “conversation” with Dr. Tiffany Ana Lopez (who, we might add, wrote the “Forward” for The Panza Monologues, Second Edition!), and his remarks offered important ideas about building community, the current climate of Latina/o theater making, and advice on supporting artists. He also scattered phenomenal snippets of performances from his huge catalogue of work in his remarks, which delighted and, frankly, deeply moved all those gathered. 

Solimar Otero & Kimberly Ramirez
"Prologue" from The Panza Monologues,
ATHE 2014, dir. by Jason Ramirez

There was spirit of resistance among the participants of ATHE 2014, a type of resistance which I haven't felt in any other year of my long time attending the conference. Arizona - because of its embittered status - had inspired people, encouraged them to act on their indignation. It was in this spirit of resistance that the conference organizing committee curated a very special slate of performances to which they invited a staged reading of The Panza Monologues.  

Programmers Karen Jean Martinson, Jason Bisping, and Patricia Herrera (all theater profes) curated and organized an epic staged reading event entitled:  “Intimate Acts: Banned Play Readings,” as part of the conference’s performance offerings. The event featured “selected cuts” of four plays. As this dynamic trio of curators and caretakers put it:

"The de facto banning of novels and plays from the Tucson Unified School District in 2012 marks the continuous struggle to define 'America' through acts that divide and silence. 'Intimate Acts' offers a space to connect, reflect, and speak out through the reading of work at the edges of 'acceptability.' Through  the shared reading of excerpts from the plays of Amiri Baraka, Cherríe Moraga, Luis Valdez, Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga, among others, we offer an intimate gathering space for making meaning collectively." 

Now, although The Panza Monologues is, of course, very dear to me in any performance incarnation, I was simply too busy to help put up this staged reading event for ATHE 2014, as I told the curatorial committee when they contacted me. "No problem," they said with generous understanding. Instead, they turned to ATHE's very talented pool of profes (many of whom are professional theater artists) to stage the reading. This meant that when I arrived to my seat at the reading event, I had no idea what would occur. I had entered a brand new phase of my relationship with The Panza Monologues: that of spectator.

Patricia Herrera & Solimar Otero
in a staged reading of The Panza Monologues,
ATHE 2014, dir. by Jason Ramirez

Because I’ve directed the play with Virginia for so long now, I've grown used to The Panza Monologues looking a certain way, feeling a certain way. I know its rhythms intimately and have a certain take on the material. Together Virginia and I have staged it in numerous venues with numerous changes over the years. But, in the hands of a new set of theater artists, I never could have imagined how startling and, indeed, necessary a new take on the piece could be. Talented and dedicated folks were taking care of The Panza Monologues with as much commitment and love as Virginia and I have always attempted to do. "A panza story is a sacred story."

For this special performance event of "dangerous plays," The Panza Monologues went last in the evening’s series of readings, and as a friend of mine noted, the panza “brought down the house.”

Aaron C. Thomas performs
"Sucking it In" from 
The Panza Monologues, ATHE 2014,
dir. by Jason Ramirez

Brilliant NYC-based director/scholar/profe Jason Ramirez (who took up the task of staging The Panza for this reading) reconceived the work for a cast of four, thereby making the staging multi-voiced, sexed, and gendered. To make the piece playable for four actors, Jason also reimagined the texture of our text. This included reconceptualizing the piece’s “Prologue,” retuning "Historia" (que viva las chichis!), and the play's final section “Panza Girl Manifesto” so that these large pieces were spread among four voices/actors/identities. The result was something I never could have imagined for our dear panza...the result was vibrant, poignant, and crackling with life.

Jason also rethought how to stage the piece physically - how to maneuver it among four bodies. The audience sat “in the round” or almost on all sides of a large, cleared playing area. The actors placed four music stands in this clearing, roughly forming a square in the circle of audience around them. The music stands faced inwards – away from the audience, so that the actors faced each other across the “corners” of the “square” they and their music stands made. When they embarked on a new monologue or part of the play, they rotated around the music stands, addressing the room from new locations. 

After entering the playing area at the top of the staged reading, the actors/profes - Patricia Herrera, Solimar Otero, Kimberly Ramirez, and Aaron C. Thomas - tossed the “Prologue” between them and across the space, filling it with their telling, weaving their voices and the “Prologue's’” thoughts among them. The multivocality of this new staging was captivating. And, having the presence of a male voice in the thoughts that are addressed in the "Prologue's" ideas proved deeply affecting and illuminating. "Men" from all points of the gender spectrum have always articulated their identifications with The Panza Monologues to Virginia and I throughout this past decade but to see an identifiably male body participate in helping to voice the call of The Panza Monologues’  “Prologue” aloud...truly revelatory.

Kimberly Ramirez performs "Political Panza" 
from The Panza Monologues, ATHE 2014, 
dir. by Jason Ramirez

Patricia, Solimar, Kimberly, and Aaron were simply brilliant. I took the photos that are spread here throughout this post, which capture just a glimmer of the energy from the reading. But at a certain point, I simply stopped taking photos and just sat on the edge of my seat listening to the piece, to the other audience members in the room also listening intently, laughing, like them, in recognition and empathy. The staged reading reduced me to amazement, filled me with humility. 

Although they had committed to the performance, and prepared for the reading in their homes, these four actor/profes plus Jason their director did not rehearse together until they hit the ground in Arizona, about two days before their performance, which made their staging all the more incredible and also displayed the depth of their abilities. Solimar Otero offered a stirring rendition of “Praying” that scored the anguish of domestic abuse into those assembled. Patricia Herrera (also a playwright) and Solimar offered a loving rendition of "Panza to Panza" that split the piece between their two voices. Aaron C. Thomas wound his way through a hilarious version of “Sucking it In,” even with his svelte body. Likewise, flaca Kimberly Ramirez rallied us all with her reading of “Political Panza,” shouting to the room and to the State of Arizona that we all needed “panza positive policies, now!”

Solimar Otero & Aaron C. Thomas, 
"Panza Girl Manifesto"
from The Panza Monologues, 
ATHE 2014, dir. by Jason Ramirez

As I sat watching this innovative staging, my thoughts couldn't help but recall the history of The Panza Monologues and its singular journey. My thoughts flew to Virginia, who I wished was there with me to see what our Panza was put in motion to do by the people performing it anew in front of me. And, yes, after the event someone came up - as people always do - and asked if they could do the Panza too. Yes, I said. Yes, I'd love to see the Panza done again and again with this much care and urgency for its future manifestations, for the future audiences who need its stories. 

And I thought, she doesn't need us anymore, not really. She's a book. She's a DVD. She's something far beyond Virginia and myself, which is what we always intended. 

What she needs is you!

*

Good wishes and advice on staging The Panza Monologues or hosting a Panza Party in your community can be found in our new book The Panza Monologues, Second Edition.

*

"Some Like it Hot - South Texas Panza Monologues Book Tour"

• August 25th - Brownsville at the Musuem of Fine Art, 1-3pm
• August 25th - Paragraphs Bookstore in South Padre Island, 7pm
• August 26th - McAllen for a private Panza Party
• August 27th - UTPA Library Auditorium, 6pm 

Know anyone in these cities? Tell them to come show us their panzas! South Texas Raza don't let us down!

Pedagogy of the Panza Featuring Irene Mata

Each and every time we learn of a teacher, activist, scholar, artist, professor, organizer, coordinator, or facilitator who is or has used The Panza Monologues as a teaching tool, we are extremely gratified and thankful. Our second edition of the play in publication was specifically conceived of and designed to help facilitate its use in classrooms of all kinds. We included numerous kinds of materials to accompany the script in order to inspire its use as a wide reaching teaching tool.

So, for the summer, we begin a series on our blog - "Pedagogy of the Panza" - celebrating and profiling teachers and their innovative instruction using The Panza Monologues, Second Edition. Over the next few months we will feature posts that showcase important, determined, and ingenious teachers of all kinds who are taking our work to the next level of its manifestation. Are you using The Panza Monologues, Second Edition in your classroom? We’d love to hear your story – contact us! panzapower@gmail.com

Name:  Irene Mata

Hometown:  El Paso/Juarez (currently living in Wellesley, MA)

Where do you teach? What’s your home department?

Wellesley College in the Women’s and Gender Studies Dept.

What class did you use The Panza Monologues in?

WGST 218—Stage Left: Chican@/Latin@ Theatre and Performance

Why did you choose to teach The Panza Monologues in your class?

Putting together a coherent syllabus that includes the diversity of theatre and performance in the Chican@/Latin@ community is a daunting task, and I chose to teach texts I believed encompass the complexities of this community. I decided to include The Panza Monologues because the text engages with multiple issues affecting the Chican@ community through the important lens of intersectionality. As a queer Chicana professor, the construction of identity and the intersecting role that race, gender, sexuality, class, and accessibility play in that construction is always at the center of my teaching. While the performance piece deals specifically with Chicana bodies, the stories of the panza go beyond any one group, and I knew students would be able to engage with the text regardless of their own background. Students at Wellesley are very familiar with, and quite critical of, The Vagina Monologues, and I wanted to introduce them to an example of a performance piece that more responsibly represents the voices of women. The Panza Monologues entertains but also educates an audience without appropriating the stories of the women whose lives the characters are drawn upon.

How did you teach The Panza Monologues (can you offer any fun or meaningful activities or panza teaching tools you want to share)?

I chose to teach The Panza Monologues at the end of the semester in order to help students bring together the multiple aspects of identity formation we had been discussing throughout the class. The performance piece focuses attention on the multiple structures of oppression that affect how we see and treat out bodies. The specificity of the panza as a site of analysis helped students think critically about how our bodies are constructed beyond the individual. We had an amazing discussion of body politics that intersected with a larger discussion of structural violence, including poverty and food justice.

Unlike traditional scripts, The Panza Monologues provided a rich set of texts to widen the discussion of the performance piece. Students loved reading the script and had much to say about it. Having access to secondary material included in the text, especially the narrative history of the play’s development, allowed students to understand the creative process involved in the production. We were able to discuss the script but also how the larger themes analyzed in the secondary materials were represented in the performance. The book as a whole provides a powerful example of a feminist praxis of creating activist art. Our college library also purchased the video of The Panza Monologues, which gave me yet another pedagogical tool in teaching the performance piece. Students watched the recording after reading the script and wrote responses on how watching Virginia perform the monologues added to their initial reading and understanding of the piece.

Why is it important to your field of study? What conversations/issues did the book raise?

Dr. Irene Mata (with Inigo Montoya)
reading The Panza Monologues,
Second Edition

The Panza Monologues invites its readers to think critically about how our ideas of our bodies are constructed through ideologies of worth and beauty. The performance piece roots its discussion of this construction in its analysis of multiple systems of oppression, including the medical establishment and a patriarchal structure that perpetuates violence against women. The book encourages a discussion of larger structural inequality through its emphasis on the panza and the role of the panza in the construction of womanhood.

What did you learn from teaching The Panza Monologues?

Unfortunately, teaching The Panza Monologues has made me aware of how much young people continue to struggle with their body image and the continued role that race and culture play in that struggle. I learned to use the book as a tool, as a counter-narrative to the very loud and destructive message young people receive about their panzas and marginalized communities. Brilliant students surround me, and I often forget that students, regardless of their level of intelligence, continue to battle external messages that dictate what constitutes beauty and worth. I feel, however, that teaching The Panza Monologues gives me an opportunity to intervene in their internalization of dominant ideologies of beauty and offers me the chance to talk back to ideologies that position our culture as deficient or lacking.  The performance piece has helped me teach students about our bodies, our culture, and love in our community in a way that challenges the medicalization of our bodies.  

Favorite quote from The Panza Monologues Book?

“Now someone’s panza story is a sacred story, and to share it with someone else is to tell them about the condition of your life” (42).

Finally - any new news? Or things/reflections you would like to share re: Panza? Or about your recent accomplishments?!

I loved teaching The Panza Monologues Book! It was a powerful educational experience for my students and myself, and I can’t wait to teach it next year!

Read more about Dr. Irene Mata HERE.

N.B. from Irma & Virginia: we are very, very proud to note that Dr. Mata recently received tenure at Wellesley - ajua!

Do you have a "Pedagogy of the Panza" story to share? Let us know! panzapower@gmail.com