Interview: Caroline Reck & Gricelda Silva of YAMEL CUCUY by Latino Theater Company

Latino Theater Company welcomes Austin, Texas-based Glass Half Full Theatre and its unique production of Yamel Cucuy to The Los Angeles Theatre Center opening October 10 through November 1. Written by Glass Half Full co-artistic directors Indigo Rael, Caroline Reck and Gricelda Silva, with additional text contributions from Jesús Valles and Connor Hopkins, and directed by Reck, the play follows Yamel, a girl on the threshold of adulthood who is pursued by immigration agents and tormented by specters drawn from Mexican folklore. As she crosses the shadowy frontier between life and death, Yamel must summon the courage and wisdom to confront both inherited fears and present-day violence.

Caroline Reck
Photo courtesy of Latino Theater Company

I spoke with Caroline Reck and Gricelda Silva from Glass Half Full about their vision for the production, its blending of sophisticated puppetry with live actors, the legendary folk tale characters who inhabit Yamel’s journey, and how the original score by Paul Piñon, featuring Indigenous percussion and folkloric guitar, underscores the production’s journey through memory, terror and transformation.

Gricelda Silva
Photo courtesy of Latino Theater Company

Thanks to you both for speaking with me today! What was the original spark for Yamel Cucuy, and how did the story evolve among you, Indigo Rael, and the other contributing writers?

Gricelda: We knew we wanted to talk about ICE in Texas that was very prominent in the news then (and unfortunately continues to be quite topical) and that got us thinking about safety and the safety of immigrants and how an immigrant quite like a person in a horror play has to follow a set of rules to make it and that developed into a sort of catechism in the play that the family abides by in order to keep each other safe.

Caroline: We began with the cards that were being passed around the community with lists of “If ICE does this/you do that” written on them – basically the legal rules that allowed undocumented people to (in theory) remain protected when approached by immigration officials. The rule of law in this area has collapsed significantly since this time, but it remains the starting point for the show. The play also evolved into looking at borders in multiple contexts: literal borders of countries, the border between the spirit world and our own, the border between life and death.

Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

The play places a young girl at the intersection of two kinds of fear - being hunted by ICE and being haunted by folkloric spirits. What drew you to bring those two worlds together?

Caroline: We wanted audiences to reconsider their beliefs about what is real and what is invented. Mainstream culture considers “boogeymen” to be invented stories, whereas borders are “real.” This play points out that borders are imaginary lines invented by people, and at this very moment, in this country, boogeymen are taking the form of ICE agents.

Minerva Villa, Gustavo Martinez, Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

How did you approach writing about the very real fear experienced by immigrant families without allowing the supernatural elements to overshadow the contemporary political reality?

Gricelda: I remember our first thoughts of this play spewed out more like a trial jury kind of production and it just isn’t what Yamel’s story needed. We needed to show how oral stories that keep families safe also come hand in hand these days with stories from others that do just the opposite.

Caroline: When we first meet Yamel, the “cucuys” that she grew up learning about are walking around in her apartment (initially unseen by her). So, right from the start these two worlds are crashing up against each other: a spirit world of “cucuys” that our production brings to life through puppetry, and the “real world” where Yamel’s family, who are all undocumented, are at threat from immigration agents making raids.

Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

Yamel is described as being on the threshold of adulthood. How does her coming-of-age journey shape the way audiences encounter the larger themes of fear, violence, memory, and resilience?

Caroline: We live in a moment in which Latine people are being vilified in this country for existing – whether or not their ancestors were born on this side of the border. ICE agents are currently arresting children to send them out of the country. We had questions. Who could be more overtly innocent of crimes against our nation than a young woman attending middle school and helping out her family? Why are certain segments of media working so hard to make people see Latine folks as a monstrous horde here to take “their” jobs? Who should be afraid of whom?

Gricelda: No one is immune to what is happening. Not kids at the brink of their own self-realization just sitting in their apartments watching horror movies. No one.

Gricelda SIlva, Indigo Rael, and Marina DeYoe-Pedraza
Photo by Ulises Garcia

Mexican folklore is central to the play, with figures such as La Llorona, La Mano Peluda, El Viejo del Costal, La Lechuza, and El Cucuy. What do these stories mean to you personally, and what possibilities did they offer theatrically?

Gricelda: I grew up with these stories. They were definitely told to me to keep me safe. I always imagined the figures, or as we like to call them the Cucuys, to have these horrific faces, just monsters I would do everything in my power to avoid. It took me a while to realize that these stories were about keeping us safe from each other, from humans and the monstrous things we are capable of doing. Also, everyone’s version of these figures shifts a little too, so it lends itself to their theatrical presence and our freedoms with that as well.

Caroline: My family is not Latino, so I was not taught these specific stories by my family, but I knew about them peripherally from growing up in Southern California, and through a love of Latine authors like Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sandra Cisneros. We found great scope reinterpreting them for the stage. For example, our Llorona is a triumvirate representing multiple women, our Chupacabra is inspired by 90s pop culture. Lechuza brings a very primal perspective that is both animal and human. El Viejo con el Saco and La Mano Peluda are the most inhuman and were the clearest illustration in our story of creatures, real and spectral, that try to snatch you up.

Gustavo Ramirez and Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

Caroline, you created the Yamel puppet as well as directing the production. How did physically designing Yamel influence your understanding of the character and the way she moves through the story?

Caroline: Our Yamel puppet appears in the story to allow us to illustrate a specific physical transformation that the character undergoes. She specifically serves to help us illustrate Yamel’s passage through the Mictlan underworld, to make visible an idea that would otherwise stay in an abstracted place.

The production draws inspiration from both frightening folk tales and modern horror movies. What horror traditions or cinematic techniques influenced the creative team?

Caroline: I was inspired by the creation of cinematic suspense through stillness and movement: in a horror shot, either something is moving and you don’t know why, or NOTHING is moving and that means something is about to move in a way that will not end well for the characters. In film, the director and editor are controlling what the viewer looks at very carefully through placement of the lens and the size of the shot. In theater, we have to be crafty to get you to look at what we want you to look at, at the exact moment we want you to see it. This is where our physical theater training and the visual language of puppetry helps us reproduce the feelings of terror and “what would I do if that were me?” that we want our audience to be experiencing.

Gricelda: Jump scares! And that ominous presence that the bad guys tend to have in horror movies before you know more about them.

Gustavo Martinez and Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

Gricelda, as a co-writer, how did the collaborative writing process work in practice? Were there particular characters, scenes, themes, or cultural elements that became especially important to you?

Gricelda: I love co-writing with Caroline and Indigo, and devising in a room full of other brains and thought-dreams and experiences. The melding of all that is what brings so many nuances to our characters and scenes. As a horror movie lover, I did contribute a lot to the development of Yamel and what she would be like and what scary movies she’d gravitate towards and why and how in watching these films she could be preparing herself in a way. I think she likes horror movies so much because it’s the only aspect of her life that she has control over. If something overwhelms her in a movie, she just pauses it or changes the channel and moves it. Her real life, in her mere 13 years, has proved her quite helpless in ways. She didn’t choose to hear the stories about the Cucuys, but she is able to control the fear she lives with day in and day out through horror.

Minerva Villa
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

The production is bilingual, performed in English and Spanish with supertitles in both languages. How did language affect the writing, rhythm, humor, emotional tone, and accessibility of the play?

Gricelda: We’ve done quite a lot of productions that are in English with some Spanish so I think we have an ear for the necessary flows of 1) information and 2) rhythm. Sometimes it can also depend on the actor playing the role and what they’re more comfortable with. It’s definitely a listening game in a devising room. We want everyone to be on the same page when watching our shows so if something crucial is said in one language, we always make sure to say it in the other.

Caroline: Gricelda said it. We think about this a lot and make edits based on audience understanding as well as actor comfort.

Lori Navarrete
Photo by Ulises Garcia

Glass Half Full Theatre is known for using the physical language of humans and puppets to confront environmental and social justice issues. Why is puppetry such a powerful medium for addressing difficult political or social subjects?

Caroline: People often assume puppets are only for children. But globally and historically, puppets have been used for many generations to connect humans to the spiritual world. There is a tacit acceptance of the impossible being possible that you have to undergo to believe that puppet performance is “real.” That state of mind makes people more open to questioning “black and white thinking” and absolute truths, which in turn makes puppets dangerous to tyrants and ideal weapons of revolution.

Gricelda: Puppets can do so much more than humans can on stage. I don’t want to dole out spoilers here, but I definitely wouldn’t do what Puppet Yamel has to do in this show! I think they also provide a way for humans to see something objectively, something they might be so embedded in that they haven’t had a chance to zoom out and contemplate.

Connor Hopkins and Victor Santos
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

In what ways did you incorporate the original score by Paul Piñon, which features Indigenous percussion and folkloric guitar, to underscore the production’s journey through memory, terror and transformation?

Caroline: I first came across Paul in his role as a session musician in Austin where he was hired to do standard drum percussion, but we got to talking about creating a certain sound. Cut to, Paul goes to his truck and comes back with a duffel bag full of indigenous percussion instruments like the defacto musicologist that he is. We knew then we had to work with him on Yamel. He also loved horror music and the creation of suspense. He and our sound designer, K. Eliot Haynes, worked closely together to build the sonic support of the show.

Gricelda: Paul is amazing to work with. He definitely understood the assignment when we were giving him all the themes including folkloric, but also modern horror and indigenous, but to keep it tense. We were working with a lot of layers in our show and he made sure to include every single one.

Diana Guizado
Photo by Lens of Athena Photography

Anything else either of you would like to add about the production?

Caroline: This is a show about real problems affecting people today. But as our company’s name indicates, we approach this topic with optimism, humor, and a call to reinterpret this difficult situation into a moment of uplift. We take care of our audiences, and endeavor to leave you feeling inspired and hopeful. If you come out to see us, please say hello.

Gricelda: I really hope people can make time to see Yamel Cucuy! Especially now that we are officially in my favorite time of the year. It’s a modern horror on stage and so much more, but it needs witnesses, eyes and ears and mouths to keep it alive!

Thanks so much!

Thank you!

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