Marisol By Rivera Essay Research Paper Marisol

Marisol By Rivera Essay, Research Paper

Marisol, a play written by Jose Rivera, is the play I enjoyed reading the most

this semester. Rivera, one of the leading contemporary Latin American

playwrights, writes with an image. After reading Marisol, I came away with a

very specific picture of what Rivera had in mind. He easily combines the

realistic moments of life, the dangers of the Bronx, dealing with an emotionally

unstable young man, Lenny, and the friendships developed with those we work

with, with his world on the verge of apocalypse where the mundanities of life we

take for granted have changed. Marisol has elements of pure theology where

Rivera’s own possible musings are written in to his characters. These elements

include the appearance of Marisol’s guardian angel in Marisol’s dreams, the

threat to Marisol’s life in the form of a woman turned to a pile of salt and the

smoke from a fire in Ohio blocking the sun in New York City. These all occur in

the first act before the War of the Heavens begins. This play was written in the

early nineties, copyright 1992, 1994, and revised and copyrighted 1999. Rivera

was very specific in his stage directions and overall views of the design and

production of the play in order to facilitate his image. These stage directions

and other designs should be followed by the people producing his play in order

to produce the image the play means to impart to the audience. He poises a gold

crown, suspended in the air over the set, over the actors, over all of his

creation, signifying God. But this crown, this God, remains motionless, remains

detached from all the proceedings. To support his unnervingly imminently

apocalyptic world, the mundanities that we would take for granted that are

missing from Marisol’s world, like the moon and the extinction of coffee, are

dropped to the audience in a conversation between June, a co-worker and

Marisol’s best friend, and Marisol at work(Rivera 22-23). To accomplish the

subtlety of unnerving the audience, Rivera gives a perfect office building; two

desks, a radio, books, papers, the New York Post (Rivera 20) contrasting

perfectly with the utter absurdity of facts pouring out of their mouths. This

show should be done in a small theatre, and for design explanations, I will use

the Studio Theatre at Towson University. This will allow the action to be

closest to the audience, including them in the show. The set would consist of

three brick walls painted directly onto the walls of the theatre. The wall

behind the center rows of seats would remain black due to seat proximity. The

back wall of the staging area (backing the scene shop) would be painted to the

rafters , leaving the balcony itself black but the wall behind the upper balcony

painted. The wall would have faux windows with iron gates on them running

horizontally at about four feet above the floor. The two side walls would also

have brick running up above the balcony. The two side walls would be completely

masked by a black dropcloth for the first act. There would be two wagons used in

Act One, neither bigger than 8 feet (which I am guessing to be the width of the

scene shop door). The graffiti’d poem, "The moon carries the souls of dead

people to heaven./The new moon is dark and empty./It fills up every month/with

glowing new souls/and carries its silent burden to God./Wake Up." (Rivera,

9) will be painted on the scene shop door which will remain closed. All

entrances and exits will be from the four studio doors. The exterior door of the

studio will be Marisol’ s apartment door and have a series of locks she will

lock behind her. It will only be used once. There will be a ladder from the

balcony to the floor that the angel will use for her entrances. It will lock

onto the bars for support. On one of the wagons will be June’s kitchen, and the

other will be Marisol’s apartment, including bed, table, lamp, and clock (Rivera

12). The office will be downstage with the two desks, chairs and props wheeled

in from opposing house doors and meeting in the middle. The gold crown will hang

from the upstage center of the theatre. Act Two will see the removal of the two

wagons to the scene shop during intermission and the removal of the two black

drops from the side brick wall paintings. The addition of various and asundry

trash cans, trash, and piles of junk will help to transform the studio during

intermission. There are three sections of sidewalk making an "I" shape

onstage, running across the backwall, down centrestage and across the foot of

the stage area. The ladder between Marisol and her angel will also disappear.

This should complete the feeling of being in a familiar, yet completely

different place, which is where Marisol ends up. Costumes for Marisol are

relatively simple, the play being a contemporary piece, yet again, in some

places R

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