Marisol in Context: A Note from the Dramaturg

To make and experience good theatre, one of the first questions I believe theatre-makers and audiences should ask is “why this play, now?” Even though Marisol originally premiered in 1992, I think it’s equally as relevant today as it was then. It was inspired by the circumstances of the playwright’s homeless uncle and the socio-political happenings of New York City during the late 1980s, making it very specific to time and place. However, Marisol comments on what it means to live in a broken world and how we can make that world better, which is universal.

The playwright, José Rivera, wrote the play in the style of magical realism which is a dramatic genre closely tied to Latin American culture. But what does magical realism look like in the world of Marisol? It looks like two planes of reality, the everyday and the spiritual, which are heavily distorted. It also looks like angels and heavenly wars that are accepted as real and true without any evidence for why. Rivera uses the image of a spiritual war between God and Angels to show how 1980s New York City became a battleground between the administration, the marginalized, and those with the agency to fight back. Even though it seems completely unrealistic, Marisol is fully rooted in the reality of New York City during the 1980s as seen through the eyes of our heroine.

Part of what made José Rivera write Marisol was the policies targeting the homeless that were proposed by New York City mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s. Though these policies were never implemented, they would have forcefully removed homeless individuals from urban spaces and required them to go to shelters. If they refused, they would be arrested. We see bigotry towards the homeless illustrated throughout the play as they are burned, locked up, and victimized. For most of us, seeing homeless individuals is an uncomfortable sight. But instead of facing these difficult realities, we, as privileged urban onlookers, focus on comfortable images of the City like Broadway, the Empire State Building, and Times Square. By rejecting the reality of homelessness in favor of a “tidier” view of urban spaces, we continue to erase the homeless from society by pushing them out of our scope of vision. Our idealized city then becomes built into the way society actually constructs urban spaces. This causes the forced removal of the homeless, the gentrification of cities, and the continued marginalization of disadvantaged groups because they do not fit within the tidy world we’ve constructed.

How is all of this relevant to Charleston? Well, that’s simple. Charleston struggles with the exact same issues today as those in New York City that were the basis for Marisol. In 2016, Charleston’s own Mayor Tecklenburg forcefully removed all the homeless individuals from Tent City, a major homeless campsite on the Peninsula. Tecklenburg made it an arrestable offence for homeless people to refuse removal. We see time and time again across the United States the underprivileged continually beaten down by the system because their existence makes the privileged uncomfortable. So we make their existence as invisible as possible. Marisol forces us to ask hard questions: are we the onlooker sitting comfortably in the audience of the theatre? Who does our own urban space, Charleston, belong to? Is our discomfort worth someone’s criminalization?

But that’s not all: Charleston, like New York City, is already beginning to feel the affects of climate change making the play’s outlandish portrayal of the destruction of the environment all the more impactful. The play shows a realm where the moon has disappeared, apples are made of salt, and massive fires destroy thousands of miles of land in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many of our leaders deny climate change. But, similar to Marisol, our world is seeing environmental issues that rival the scale and severity of those in the play.

At the end of the day, it really is up to us to make things different, and it must start in our own community. And there’s the hope in Marisol. If those in charge won’t listen to the voices of those they represent, we’ll take the crown from them, we’ll be a voice for the individuals who might not have one yet, and we’ll transform society ourselves. Though Marisol depicts a depressing world where awful things happen seemingly without cause, we would completely miss the point if we didn’t recognize the hope that it offers. It’s my deepest desire that watching this play will not only open your eyes to the issues our own communities face every day but that it will also call you to action. I want this play to empower you to leave the theatre and no longer be the complacent urban onlooker or the quiet bystander as the disadvantaged continue to be beaten down. What this play teaches us is that we are equipped to make a difference, as long as we answer that call. And, to me, that’s awe inspiring. With that in mind, it seems fitting to end with Marisol’s own closing lines: “What light. What possibilities. What hope.” – Noah Ezell, Marisol Dramaturg