Play About O.C. Latinas to Be Staged in Washington

With a powerful true-to-life play about their own struggles, six women are eliciting tears from audiences while also conveying the rich tapestry of Latino culture.

The women are Rancho Santiago College Chancellor Vivian B. Blevins, director and playwright, and her actresses, students Helen M. Alatorre and Enedina Garcia, and faculty members Mary Castellanos, Enriqueta Ramos and Angelina F. Veyna.

The play “Voces,” which has been performed in Orange County, will be presented in Washington tonight during a conference of the Women’s Caucus of the American Assn. of Higher Education. The production teaches lessons about compassion and diversity.

“It’s an educational tool for the teachers and counselors who say, ‘I treat all my students alike,’ ” Blevins said. “We’re telling them you can’t treat everyone alike. Everyone comes from a different culture and you have to understand them.”

In a recent performance at Rancho Santiago College, Castellanos told of her alcoholic father, who routinely beat her mother.

“My father was pounding on my mother on the kitchen floor,” Castellanos said of an episode when she was a child. “The linoleum was blood-splattered. . . . As a teen-ager, I would go out with my friends always (fearing) I’d come home and she’d be dead.”

She also told in the play about a longtime boyfriend who left her devastated when he revealed he was gay and of her family’s expectation that she become a wife and never dream about a college education.

Ramos expressed how she was placed in a high school cooking class instead of an advanced academic class because she was Latina. She also shared the story of her love for the husband she speaks to every night, though he died 10 years ago.

The other women also revealed their heart-wrenching stories about how they are overcoming stereotypes and achieving their dreams.

“That was so moving,” said Romelia Madrigal as she sat in the audience, wiping tears from her eyes. “These women are inspiring. They are courageous to be able to reveal such privacy.”

Adds Blevins: “These women are telling the truth about their lives and it’s personal, very personal.”

The program ends with the question, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?”

It answers: “The world would split open.”