By Angelica Jimenez–

The room became silent as a Latina woman, wearing only brown and black, approached the stage to tell her story of spending 20 years in prison on charges of seditious conspiracy.  Another woman shared the painful history of forced sterilization of women in Puerto Rico, as part of the  government’s Operation Bootstrap.

“The Brown Girls Chronicles: Puerto Rican Women and Resilience” is a labor of love for playwright and director Dr. Yolanda Nieves, and the Oct. 15 performance at Columbia College left the audience catching their breath and holding their hearts.

The production was four years in the making, during which Nieves carefully recorded and interviewed Puerto Rican women’s experiences with ethnicity, gender, colonialism and immigration.  While the stories are specific to the women Nieves interviewed, there are common themes which Puerto Rican women share as well as themes that are universal.

La Vida Bella Ensemble

Nieves tackles multiple roles in the production.  In addition to writing and directions, she also acts in the production along with the members of La Vida Bella Ensemble, a cast of all-female, Puerto Rican, inter-generational artists.  The cast includes Nieves, Sandra Posadas, Laura Nieves, Esmeralda Cuevas, Diana Cruz, Marisel Melendez, Anabel Duarte, Natalie Bormeo and Norma Mateo.

The production has moments of laughter, but the subject matter is far from light and fluffy.  The actresses do more than play a part; they channel the women lived through these painful and life-altering moments.  While their was applause after scenes, tears broke through the silence of others.

The production is a mixture of song, choreopoems and acts, which describe the experiences of the women.  One scene had the youngest member of the ensemble portraying a young girl whose mother has neglected her.

The scene begins with the young girl talking to the audience in a playful manner then slowly changes as she shares how she helps raise her younger brother while her mother is gone for hours or days at a time.  The girl has no food to feed her brother, and she is alone, hungry and in pain.  She cries out to her mother, but she isn’t there to comfort her.

Nieves stresses that Brown Girls “was never written to entertain but was meant to interrupt and disrupt the current imaginings of who second-generation Puerto Rican women are.”

The process of compiling the women’s stories into this type of art form was very intense, explains Nieves.

“You have to hear and overhear the women that were interviewed, these characters talk to you,” said Nieves.  “I remember working on this in June, when it was 90 degrees, and I was under the covers because the writing so intense.”

Bringing these characters to life was no easy task, but the process of finding the actresses came very naturally.  Many of the actresses are family and friends.  Nieves daughter, Laura Nieves, and sister, Sandra Posadas are in the production.

“Everything was organic and came together,” explained Posadas.  “Yolanda found women she felt she could work with, and we connected.”

Nieves’ daughter, Laura Nieves, was part of the process early on and saw how the response grew to their sold out shows in New York and Chicago.

“It started as a gathering of the immediate women in our family in our kitchen,” explained Laura Nieves.  “Then we had three sold out shows in March, May and September; we had to bring in extra chairs.”

Esmeralda Cuevas is the latest addition to the ensemble but shares she feels like one of the family.  She said the decision to join was easy, and she is proud to be in a production so many people, from all walks of life, can enjoy.

“All genders, ages, races, ethnic backgrounds could find something to relate to, that everyone could partake in and learn from,” Cuevas explained.

She said the audience members get the same sense and identify with the characters they play on stage.  One of the characters Cuevas plays deals with sexual identity.

“They migrate to a character and are very open,” said Cuevas.  “I play a lesbian, and I don’t know how many women in homosexual relationships who say that is me, ‘That was me.’”

La Vida Bella Ensemble is off to Los Angeles, California on February 25, 2010 for another performance, thanks in part to an agent Nieve’s husband works with.

“It’s breaking boundaries and breaking shells,” explained Laura Nieves.  “So much in our culture is taboo; we’ve broken our bond of silence.”

Angelica Jimenez is a graduate journalism student at Columbia College Chicago.