The picture of a grieving guardian isn’t an unusual sight on the dramatic stage. Euripides, whom Aristotle referred to as “the most tragic of the poets,” returns to the determine of the grief-stricken guardian in “Hecuba,” “Hippolytus” and “The Bacchae,” to quote only a few disparate examples of characters dropped at their knees by the loss of life of their little one.
Shakespeare provides what has turn into the defining portrait of this inconsolable expertise in “King Lear.” Cradling the lifeless physique of his murdered daughter, Lear can do nothing however repeat the phrase “never” 5 instances, the repetition driving residence the irrevocable nature of loss.
In tragedy, the protagonist is usually tormented by guilt for his personal function, nonetheless inadvertent or inescapable, within the disaster that befell his cherished one. Theseus in “Hippolytus” and Agave in “The Bacchae” each have purpose to really feel that they’ve blood on their palms. Lear, although “more sinned against than sinning,” acknowledges solely after it’s too late the error in judgment that led to the devastation from which there will be no return.
The distinction with “Guac,” the one-man efficiency work on the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is that Manuel Oliver isn’t simply taking part in a bereaved father. He’s one.
Manuel Oliver in “Guac.”
(Cameron Whitman)
Oliver’s 17-year-old son, Joaquín, often called Guac to household and buddies, was one of many 17 lives misplaced in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty in Parkland, Fla. The manufacturing, written and carried out by Oliver, turns a guardian’s grief right into a theatrical work of activism.
Co-written by James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, “Guac” has been sharing the story of Joaquín’s quick however vividly lived life with audiences across the nation. Oliver didn’t simply love his son. He appreciated him. Guac was his finest buddy. He was additionally his trusted information to American tradition.
Immigrants from Venezuela, the household had made a brand new begin in a rustic that Guac helped them really feel was their residence. To convey the that means of Guac’s life, Oliver introduces his relations by way of a sequence of photograph pictures he has crafted into artworks.
The final image, and the one that continues to be watching us all through the efficiency, is of Guac. Oliver continues to boost the portrait. Whereas including prospers to the background and making changes to what his son is sporting, he tells us concerning the life they shared earlier than it was tragically stolen.
Manuel Oliver works on a portrait of his late son in “Guac.”
(Donna F. Aceto)
The tragedy is overwhelmingly actual. Oliver bears the burden of it by remodeling his grief into gasoline for activism. The efficiency makes the case for stricter gun regulation in America with the heartbreaking eloquence of a father whose life modified completely after dropping his son off in school on a Valentine’s Day that began so promisingly.
What occurred to Joaquín might occur to any of us, anytime, anyplace, in a rustic that has allowed its elected officers to deflect accountability for his or her repeated failure to go frequent sense gun laws. Whereas taking cash from the NRA, these cynical politicians provide empty “thoughts and prayers” rather than significant reform. The result’s that nobody can go anyplace in public with out eyeing the emergency exits and scanning the gang for bother.
Oliver isn’t a sophisticated theatrical skilled. He’s a dad, initially. However it’s his comfy ordinariness that enables him to make such a robust reference to the viewers. He’s onstage however might very properly be exchanging a number of neighborly phrases with us on our avenue.
Oliver summons his son by joyfully remembering his virtuosity on air guitar. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” resounds all through the Douglas whereas he enlivens the portrait with impassioned strokes. The phrases “I wish I was here” are added to Guac’s T-shirt, and it’s a sentiment all of us devoutly, agonizingly share as Oliver brings his spouse, Patricia, onto a stage that has urgently turn into an extension of our nationwide actuality.
In honor of Joaquín, the couple shaped Change the Ref, a corporation devoted to elevating consciousness about mass shootings and empowering the subsequent technology of activists by way of “creativity, activism, disruption and education.” “Guac” is a potent instance of what will be carried out within the wake of a tragedy that may now not be described as unthinkable.
‘Guac’
The place: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver Metropolis
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 1 p.m. Sundays. No present on Halloween, Friday, Oct. 31. An extra present for closing night time, 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2
Tickets: Begin at $34.50
Contact: CenterTheatreGroup.org
Operating time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
