Detroit—In 2024, the tenth year since 43 student teachers in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, were “disappeared,” the production, Peregrina, tears your heart. It is a multimedia 80-minute one-woman performance, telling the story of femicide in Mexico and the movement of Mexican women to combat it. “A Host of People,” a multiracial Detroit-based ensemble theater company creating original work for social change, worked with ensemble member and lead artist Karilú Alarcón Forshee to direct and produce this stunning performance art.
Ms. Forshee writes in the program notes: “Peregrina has been in my heart and mind for years…As I face the reality we carry today, I thought of the women before me, I questioned what happened. I thought of the Soldaderas from the Mexican Revolution; I thought of the music of Violeta Parra, who had no fear to pour her words and songs into wounds, and I thought of all the mothers, all the daughters, all of us who have to walk in a tamed rage to stand for each other…”
FEMICIDE VICTIMS BROUGHT TO LIFE
No formal stage separates Peregrina from her audience in a darkened, intimate community theater. Peregrina appears screaming curses upon the murderers of so many women, and does not spare the whole of Mexican history, including government and misogynist culture which, especially in recent decades, has perpetrated domestic, political and drug cartel violence. Behind the action a screen projects large-print translations from Spanish to English, and the reverse.
Peregrina uses props, video, music—especially the passionate songs of Violeta Parra—and costumes to bring the victims of femicide, including her own daughter, to life. For example, four simple chairs have been quietly standing in the center of the set. Peregrina now takes what appeared to be cushions, unfolds them, and places a set of clothing in the seats, to represent a few of the murdered women. We grieve and rage with her.
The story moves seamlessly into the women students’ movement against femicide, drawing on actual footage of protests. Forshee blasts us with rage for the women students, too, who have been murdered, and then the joy as we feel the power of thousands of women students in the streets, in motion for justice and freedom.
KNOWLEDGE LEADS TO ACTION
My friends and I were speechless with emotion as we left the theater. We all felt a call to action, to share awareness of this performance internationally (“peregrina” means a wanderer, a pilgrim) and to join in further concrete support for the struggles of the women of Mexico against femicide.
As Forshee writes, “Through my voice I wanted to create a space where all of these energies could unite to just be—free from all limitations and judgment. And perhaps through this journey we can find each other and unite to create a better world.”
—Susan van Gelder