¿Mujeres
– saben hacer pico de gallo?” asked one campus
visitor
Tuesday night.
Well,
Jade Esteban Estrada knew how
to make comedy, according to audience members of
his one-man show.
Estrada presented several
monologues, bringing laughs to topics such as
bilingual education and illegal immigration.
“He does a good job of presenting
controversial issues in a humorous way,” said
Andrea Luthi, event co-coordinator and senior
biology, chemistry and Spanish major. “He does
an awesome job of taking his voice, tone and
mannerisms and bringing them to life.”
Estrada switched as rapidly between
characters as between languages. In the space of
a little more than an hour, he portrayed a
teacher, a Spanish-language talk show host and
an accountant, among others.
Cynthia Camacho, a flight attendant on a
language strike, was a character who assisted
the audience of students and area residents on a
mock flight to Mexico City.
“People
assume I speak Spanish because of the way I
look,”
Estrada said in character. “[But] they
don’t pay me to speak Spanish. I’ve been a
non-Spanish speaker for three years now.”
Another character, a Latino cook with an
attitude, faced a staffing shortage after his
co-workers couldn’t provide proper documentation
during an immigration raid.
“Llegó la migra, and they deported all my
workers,”
Estrada said as the cook. “Here at the
People’s Taco, everyone has the right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of pico.”
A few students reported needing the right
sense of humor to accept the outrageous,
stereotypical nature of some of the characters.
“I found it funny,” said Leobardo Guerrero,
graduate student in music. “I think it’s really
interesting because he said the truth.”
With the character Noe,
Estrada portrayed an
eight-year-old boy.
“My mom works at a store called ‘La Segunda’
and she has another job cleaning houses,” he
said. “I watch a lot of TV in English – if
there’s a novela [Spanish-language soap opera]
on, I change it.”
Estrada responded to the possibility of
negative stereotypes in his show by saying the
characters were modeled from observations of the
media and real-life issues faced by
Mexican-Americans.
“I look at my job as being a hand mirror – I
reflect,” he said. “[Hispanics in the United
States] are part American and we’re part
Mexican, and we’re trying to be both. If
something is funny, it’s true.”
San Antonio native
Estrada said he performed
his first one-man show about 10 years ago. He
came to Emporia State last year to perform
“Tortilla Heaven,” a show about conflicts within
a multi-generational Mexican family.
Coordinators of both programs hope to make his ESU visits a campus tradition.
“We definitely want to have him back next
year,” Luthi said.
©2007 Emporia Bulletin
|
|
