Barrio Dreams

Selected Plays

Fiction & Literature, Drama, Nonfiction, Entertainment
Cover of the book Barrio Dreams by Silviana Wood, University of Arizona Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Silviana Wood ISBN: 9780816533848
Publisher: University of Arizona Press Publication: May 12, 2016
Imprint: University of Arizona Press Language: English
Author: Silviana Wood
ISBN: 9780816533848
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Publication: May 12, 2016
Imprint: University of Arizona Press
Language: English

During the advent of Chicano teatro, dozens of groups sprang up across the country in Chicano/a communities. Since then, teatristas have been leading voices in the creation and production of plays touching minds and hearts that galvanize audiences to action.

Barrio Dreams is the first book to collect the work of one of Arizona’s foremost teatristas, playwright Silviana Wood. During her decades-long involvement in theater, Wood forged a reputation as a playwright, actor, director, and activist. Her works form a testimonio of Chicana life, steeped in art, politics, and the borderlands. Wood’s plays challenge, question, and incite women to consider their lot in life. She ruptures stereotypes and raises awareness of social issues via humor and with an emphasis on the use of the physical body on stage.

The play Una vez, en un barrio de sueños . . . offers a glimpse into familiar terrain—the barrio and its dwellers—in three actos. In Amor de hija, a fraught mother-daughter relationship in contemporary working-class Arizona is dealt an additional blow as the family faces Alzheimer’s disease. In the tragedy A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories, and in the trilingual (Spanish, English, and Yaqui) tragicomedy Yo, Casimiro Flores, characters love, live, die, travel through time and space, and visit the afterlife. And in Anhelos por Oaxaca, a grandfather travels back in time through flashbacks, as he and his grandson travel through homelands from Arizona to Oaxaca.

Part of Wood’s genius is the way she portrays life in what Gloria Anzaldúa called “el mundo zurdo,” that space inhabited by the people of color, the poor, the female, and the outsiders. It is a place for the atravesados, the odd, the different, those who do not fit the mainstream. The people who inhabit Wood’s plays are common folk—janitors, mothers, grandmothers, and teenagers—hardworking people who, in one way or another, have made their way in life and who embody life in the barrio.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

During the advent of Chicano teatro, dozens of groups sprang up across the country in Chicano/a communities. Since then, teatristas have been leading voices in the creation and production of plays touching minds and hearts that galvanize audiences to action.

Barrio Dreams is the first book to collect the work of one of Arizona’s foremost teatristas, playwright Silviana Wood. During her decades-long involvement in theater, Wood forged a reputation as a playwright, actor, director, and activist. Her works form a testimonio of Chicana life, steeped in art, politics, and the borderlands. Wood’s plays challenge, question, and incite women to consider their lot in life. She ruptures stereotypes and raises awareness of social issues via humor and with an emphasis on the use of the physical body on stage.

The play Una vez, en un barrio de sueños . . . offers a glimpse into familiar terrain—the barrio and its dwellers—in three actos. In Amor de hija, a fraught mother-daughter relationship in contemporary working-class Arizona is dealt an additional blow as the family faces Alzheimer’s disease. In the tragedy A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories, and in the trilingual (Spanish, English, and Yaqui) tragicomedy Yo, Casimiro Flores, characters love, live, die, travel through time and space, and visit the afterlife. And in Anhelos por Oaxaca, a grandfather travels back in time through flashbacks, as he and his grandson travel through homelands from Arizona to Oaxaca.

Part of Wood’s genius is the way she portrays life in what Gloria Anzaldúa called “el mundo zurdo,” that space inhabited by the people of color, the poor, the female, and the outsiders. It is a place for the atravesados, the odd, the different, those who do not fit the mainstream. The people who inhabit Wood’s plays are common folk—janitors, mothers, grandmothers, and teenagers—hardworking people who, in one way or another, have made their way in life and who embody life in the barrio.

More books from University of Arizona Press

Cover of the book New Deal Art in Arizona by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Out of Nature by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Mineralogy of Arizona by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Tarahumara by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Alternative Leadership Strategies in the Prehispanic Southwest by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Understanding the Arizona Constitution by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Fluid Arguments by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Unsettling Mobility by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Occupying Our Space by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Moral Ecology of a Forest by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Buried in Shades of Night by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book With the River on Our Face by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Senegal Taxi by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Pushing Our Limits by Silviana Wood
Cover of the book Mexican Melodrama by Silviana Wood
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy