Tickets from $5 for the online video until November 29, 2020 at www.eventbrite.ca
Posted November 26, 2020
Catalina La O Présenta: Ahora Conmigo is a 53-minute online, live theatre/video hybrid co-written by Jenny Larson and khattieQ, performed by khattieQ. Winner of the 2020 Vancouver Fringe New Play Prize, Catalina La O is presented jointly by Jk Jk (Larson and khattieQ, who described themselves as a couple who creates “collaboratively-devised queer performance to magnify stories of the disenfranchised and disrupt the status quo”) and Neworld Theatre.
It helps if you speak Spanish because the solo character is Puerto Rican, and English and Spanish are spoken interchangeably. And it’s useful if you have some familiarity with Puerto Rican singer-celebrities like Myrta Silva (1927-1987) and Ruth Fernández (1919-2012). Or you know about the song, Catalina La O, which in turn was inspired by a poem by Puerto Rican poet Luis Páles Matos (1898-1959). Layers upon layers of references.
Credit: Steve Rogers
According to a November 19 interview with The Straight’s Janet Smith, khattieQ began developing the persona of Catalina La O some time ago, but from a narrative point of view, the main character in the first part of this show appears to be Myrta Silva herself who hosted a weekly music variety TV show Una Hora Contigo (An Hour with You) on a New York City Spanish-language channel.
In Catalina La O Présenta: Ahora Conmigo, this solo character bursts into a TV studio where she has been preparing to tape her show. A hurricane rages outside; rain and wind are howling. But the studio is empty: no band, no makeup person, no director, no props, no audience. Undaunted and already dressed to kill in a shimmery red lamée form-fitting gown, she decides to do the show anyway. Her celebrity guest does not arrive. Is it the storm or is Catalina/Silva losing favour? Phrases like “It’s over, baby” or a reference to the controversy arising from her kissing “una señorita” lead us to think the singer might be on her way out.
khattieQ, however, is in her prime and can really deliver a song. She’s passionate and powerful and loaded with charisma when she sings these songs of resistance, courage and endurance.
Eventually, the sparkly red dress is shed, underneath which the character is dressed all in white; the outrageous black beehive wig comes off to reveal a spiky-haired blonde – perhaps Columbian singer Carolina La O (Carolina Ovalle Arango)?
And when that persona is shed perhaps the character now revealed is khattieQ herself, building a shrine in homage to her own mother and grandmother. Several camera men appear our of nowhere, following her around the stage.
The script is somewhat bewildering: from the loud, brash salsa singer to the blonde delivering a commercial for Skin Success (a skin whitener for women of colour) and finally to a contemporary character in sweats, I was never certain whom I was with. The piece addresses racism, sexual identity and indigeneity but in a very mixed bag.
It began as a live stage performance at the Vancouver Fringe but because of Covid-19 has morphed into this hybrid and perhaps something has been lost in translation.
Credit: Renna Larson
What it has is passion and heart. And a talented singer/performer in khattieQ. Seldom does the Latinx community see itself represented here in Vancouver and there are some parallels with our First Nations people, especially the women.
A November 17 Vancouver Presents! article had this to say: “Catalina La O Présenta is a piece for the queer communities. It is a piece for the colonized body. It is a piece for Puerto Rico. It is a piece for anyone who has experienced heartbreak. It is a piece for survivors. It is a piece that speaks to resistance.”
You really can’t argue with that.