Paraguayan Metropolitan State University student rolls difficult and impoverished life experiences into intriguing plays

-- Jc Drobac

Nestor Amarilla, who grew up in Coronel Oviedo, Paraguay, didn’t have much. His parents, who have never been outside their small town, farm cotton on the land, earning only $800 a year. They grow their own potatoes, corn and peanuts and have pigs and chickens, and cows for milking and cheese.

“They are considered very poor, but they are not hungry, they don’t think they need anything else,” says Amarilla, who explains the standard, tough life, saying “You need to work hard every day, typically in 100-degree weather.”

At 17, Amarilla came to Minnesota on a full academic achievement scholarship and finished high school here.

He continued to pursue his academic career here and was awarded a singing scholarship which paid for his tuition, granted by The Wallin Foundation, through the Plymouth Music Center. Amarilla works by day as an event coordinator for Student Life and Leadership at Metropolitan State to cover boarding expenses. “Ripped Dress” became his first Spanish-spoken play. Amarilla wrote it for his mother, who was desperate to see one of her son’s productions but unable to afford to travel to Minnesota.

Says Amarilla, “I decided to write something small that could be produced in Paraguay when I was there. We did it first in my hometown, where my family, friends and neighbors took a bus to experience theater for the first time.”

The play soon got national media attention. The Theater of the Americas, a foundation with the American Embassy that owns a theater in Asuncion, Paraguay, offered to produce it.

“Ripped Dress,” redone in English, spotlights two young men as they prepare to end their lives in despair over their lack of opportunities in rural Paraguay. “The play is going to be about faith, and that what enters our lives either sustains us or not,” says Amarilla.

“La Pruebera” (The Voodoo Lady) tells of the search for a stolen scooter, for love and other things that make the world go ‘round, suggesting to many in town that life is mystically blessed.

Theater department head and Metropolitan State’s Theatre Underground’s advisor, Gail Smogard, co-directs both plays with Amarilla. Community faculty member, Maren Hinderlie, will play Margarita in “La Pruebera.” When asked how such different concepts can play back-to-back in the same evening, Amarilla and Smogard explain the plays as “one light and one dark…They are really a pair, but are two different styles.”

Theatre Underground builds on previous success stories

“‘Up Against the Wall Mother,’” a play by Gayle Weber, was the first play we did here. It placed in The Kennedy Center,” says Smogard. “Since then, Metro State has had other Kennedy Center winners and runners-up with ‘Country Girl,’ by Fiacre Douglas, and ‘The Atomic Energy Circus’ by Bill Kover.

Smogard credits Metropolitan State’s student body with having much to contribute because of their rich life experiences, noting the students’ median age is mid-30s. She feels its theater department benefits from that wisdom and is able to translate it into insightful and intriguing presentations.

She’s also excited about Metro State and Minneapolis Community and Technical College’s (MCTC) new theater, nicknamed “the black box,” for now. “It’s a 300-seat, semi-thrust theater on Loring Park, in Minneapolis. You go out to the lobby and you are in the beautiful park, literally,” she says. The new theater “can hold fewer people and still have a more intimate experience for less money [to produce].”

The quest for greater insight

Amarilla, Smogard and Hinderlie flew to Paraguay for two weeks in June to research characters, the environment and experiences for the upcoming fall productions. Amarilla’s play, “Ripped Dress,” was inspired by a string of 14- to 22-year-olds suicides that occurred within a two-month period last year in a Paraguayan town of 7000.

He feels the tradgedies prompt the question, “What do you do when you have no hope?” Amarilla says, “In ‘Ripped Dress,’ you get to see more of why this is,” adding that powerful family dynamics can unintentionally even intensify the already devastating despair.

Beyond the original production of “Ripped Dress” (in Spanish), Amarilla and Smogard felt there were cultural differences that were crucial to explore, to better communicate them to American audiences.

To gain insight into the real-life Margarita—La Pruebera—the group of three held a days-long visit with her, asking questions and observing.

Amarilla met Margarita in 1999, when he lost his trusted scooter. Without the scooter, Amarilla would be unable to get to work or school. When he went to the police to report the theft, he was quickly enlightened of the odds of the scooter’s rescue.

“The police said with so many people here, we only have one truck [to solve crimes] and it has no fuel. There’s fighting in the streets, prostitution, robbery…They weren’t going to look for the scooter,” explains Amarilla. But they recommended he try a voodoo woman, which led him to Margarita, a local mystic with mysterious methods and connections, who included “others” in her attempts to help him.

“The play begins there: What is life about? Where do you look for things? Who do you listen to? It goes beyond material possessions,” he says.

For more information on auditions, the fundraiser or other contributions, contact Nestor Amarilla at 651-793-1556, or nesalvama@yahoo.com