Sonia Flew: How the Present is Shaped by the Past

Sonia Flew is an important new play by Melinda Lopez that explores how the past invades the present, but also how the present redefines the past. NYU Educational Theatre is presenting the play at The Players Theatre on MacDougal Street on February 19th runs for two weeks. Each act focuses on an historical event that created a defining moment for individuals and society. The first act takes place during the Hanuka/Christmas holidays that followed the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The second act is grounded during the Cuban Revolution where Fidel Castro had seized power and was asserting his authority. Many were fleeing Cuba, including those that sent their children alone to America for a new life. 

Nan Smithner's direction is extraordinary, achieving an ensemble virtuoso quality that is quite rare for such a complex narrative. The narrative and pace is carefully orchestrated so that the rise and fall of action focuses on the alignment of events and emotions with a well proportioned sense of the whole. The actors are students in NYU Steinhardt's Program in Education, a program that prides itself in preparing teachers who are well-versed and practiced in their craft. These students asserted their command over their characters, and the range of expression emerging from their engagement with the text and interactions was provocative and stimulating. 

Sonia, played by Rocio Lopez is a key figure in the play. We see her as the matriarch of her family in Wisconsin, a Cuban refugee who has created and rich and full life in a new country. She is deeply conflicted about the events of her past. Her moments of reflection in the first act provide glimpses into the emotional ravages that took place as she was uprooted from a culture and thrust into another. Now shadow of 9/11 looms large and reawakens the terror she had felt as a new order swept into power in Cuba, and she was forced by her parents to give up her culture and the only life she had known. In the second act, we see her as a young girl coming of age and caught in the machinations of the Cuban revolution in 1961. 

Tyler Grimes, as Sonia's son, is especially powerful in his role. He has the leading man look reminiscent of Josh Hartnett, a perfect image for a young G.I. on his way to Afghanistan. His decision to leave college and enlist in the army is the catalyst for Sonia's emotional dilemma. When she was forced to flee Cuba and fly to the United States, she told her parents she would never forgive them for uprooting her from her family and culture. As her son Zak leaves the house to enlist, she tells him she will never forgive him for destroying her life and her hopes and dreams for his future.  

When Sonia learns of her son's decision to leave college, enlist in the military and fight against terror in Afghanistan in the weeks following 9/11, memories of her own childhood overwhelm her. She struggles to reconcile being forced as a young girl to leave Cuba at the dawn of Fidel Castro's rule with her own responsibilities as a mother facing uncertainty. 

Sonia must find a way to come to terms with her past, her lost parents, her own children and her adopted country, or risk losing everything that she loves. Set between post-revolutionary Cuba and post-9/11 America, SONIA FLEW telescopes the large cultural and political forces of a historic moment to examine their impact on the intimate lives of ordinary men and women. What do we owe our parents? Can we forgive the past? 

This poetic and urgent play bridges time and culture in a drama about the cost of forgiveness.

SnowDream

Sometime in the early afternoon it began to snow. Tiny flakes.... almost intermitment... not too promising, I thought. In the winter, my passion is snow. I want piles of the white stuff clogging up streets and pathways...big thick flakes clinging to everything.

But all the snow has fallen elsewhere...to my way of thinking, in far away lands. There have been record snowfalls with people lamenting that the snow has become unbearable. "Send it our way," I think, almost in the form of a prayer. I love the snow. I want the snow. But when it is cold enough to snow, we have no water in the sky, and when we have the water, it is not cold enough to snow. So we have rain...more rain than we can handle.

My passion for snow has caused me to search the internet for images of winter snow. My search has turned up thousands of images of winter and snow, many of them spectacular and breath-takingly beautiful. I have made them into the background of my computer screen and into countless screensavers. Some of the images are so vivid, I can actually smell the snow. I realize this is sensory memory kicking in as I see the snow on my screen.

But outside it had started to snow in the early afternoon. I had been working inside and when I glanced out the window, I saw that the snowflakes were larger and the falling snow had become so thick that it was difficult to see all the way up the street. The wind was starting to kick up a little and the flakes were swirling madly in whirlpools. Snow was covering the ground, the street, the trees, the cars, and people were struggling through what had become a winter storm.

At last! All the yearning of winter seemed absolved by this snow storm. I put on my coat and walked out into the snow-ridden landscape. I entered the park and the trees and statues were barely visible through the thick onslaught of snowflakes. Tree branches were bending under the weight of the snow, and statues were covered and disguised as snowposts.

Everyone seemed transformed by the beauty and relentless energy of the unfolding storm. The snow muffled all the sounds of the city. A kind of reverential awe seemed to hold us spellbound in the magic of the falling snow. The quietness seemed punctuated by silence, as though the storm had come to make us discover some miracle in the impending and ongoing silence.

I wandered for hours in the snow. As the evening approached, the snowfall grew even heavier. Snow was piling up to levels that could become unmanageable. I wandered into coffee houses, drinking coffee as I watched the scenes that had been images on my computer were now the lived experience of true winter. My breath, warmed by the coffee, created icy "smoke" trails as I returned to the storm outdoors. I wanted it to never stop. The storm I had wished for, now erupted in the full fury of winter, and I was happy beyond belief.

I went to sleep watching the storm shake the trees and the wind pile up thick snow drifts. I dreamed of a vivid winter, of being snowbound while a fire crackled in the fireplace and the world came to a standstill, absolutely mute in the splendor of snow falling forever, embracing the world in a white cloak of majesty. In the silence of the snow lay the mystery of being alive.

When I awoke, the snow was gone. Just as quickly as the snow had arrived, perhaps even more so, the temperature rose, and the rain swept everything away.

A dream, I thought, the delusion of watching too many snow scenes on my computer. Looking at the screen, I saw the winter images dissolving into each other in random celebration that in the end, I had to return to my fantasies of winter. Perhaps it all was just a dream, after all.

We Might Be Giants

Sometime about 10:30 p.m. EST, The New York Giants astonished the undefeated New England Patriots by crushing their hopes for a perfect season, outplaying them in their 17-14 victory to become the Superbowl Champions in what was, for me, the most riveting football game I have ever seen. I watched dumb-founded as Eli Manning, endangered by an eminent sack by the entire defensive line, emerge unscathed and launch a rocket to David Tyree whose acrobatic leap and catch saved the Giant's quest for a perfect playoff season as he held onto the ball wedged against his helmet and crashed to the ground, slammed down violently by the defense. Moments later, the ball was sailing in a graceful, beautiful arch into the hands of Plaxico Burress for the winning touchdown with 35 seconds remaining. The play was so vivid that it seemed to occur in slow motion and silence, suspended in the awesome realization that once again the team had bounced back from certain defeat. Like Mercury Morris, a tear came to my eye as I literally wept for the sheer beauty of a Big Blue victory in the desert, a kind of aesthetic peak experience.

More than half a continent away, Manhattan was rocking with cheers from the streets, terraces and balconies throughout the city. Horns were blaring. Sirens were screaming. The Empire State Building was bathed in blue. The streets, restaurants, subways, and bars were filled with people suddenly united by the culmination of a passionate quest, strangers hugging each other like long lost friends.

Suddenly it was after midnight and I had work the next day, but I was too excited to sleep. I tossed and turned and listened to the comments and callers on WFAN.

Around 3 a.m. my son appeared by the bed and said "Dad, let me have a hug." He had just returned from a Super Bowl Party. The last time I had seen him so excited over sports was when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup and we went to the ticker tape parade together. At that time he was a goalie on a travel team. Now in the midst of the Giant's culmination of a most improbable season, we hugged each other in a genuine understanding that something special had just transpired that was more meaningful than just a game. There was connection at many levels, with many years of sharing and working through disappointments, defeats, and victories.

Few had given the Giants a chance to win any of the playoff games. They just were not good enough. And yet, the Giants maintained that they believed in themselves and their teammates, and that was all that was needed to win. They not only believed they could win, despite all odds against them, but that they would win. In a way the entire season for the Giants was a metaphor for believing and persevering through adversity. They began by losing their first two games and having the worst record in football. Then as they played their third game, they began to turn the tide, but each achievement was also followed by mistakes and defeats. The coach was highly criticized and there were calls for his dismissal. The young quarterback was denounced as lacking any talent and simply did not have the right stuff to lead any team to victory, a hopeless draft mistake that had ruined the franchise.

Yet, the Giants refused to listen to the negative energy all around them, and simply replied, "It doesn't matter. We believe." I think the meaning for all of us inspired by their persevering through adversity is that we share the journey of this team to greatness: Never stop believing in yourself. Never, never give up, no matter what. Never believe the deliberately destructive negative noise directed at you.

They Might Be Giants was the name of a 1971 Broadway play and film written by James Goldman starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward. The title comes from Don Quixote, and Justin Playfair, who has retreated into fantasy after the death of his wife, imagines himself to be Sherlock Holmes, speculates about Quixote's madness in tilting at windmills that he believes are giants:

Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

Sunday night, February 3, 2008, the New York Giants extended their metaphor to us and invited us to share their journey. They emerge as giants... and now We might be giants, We can be giants, if we know to believe in ourselves, the power of our destiny and what we might become.