Document text
The Mother Road, the road of flight By Caitlin Fowlkes of the Ashland Tidings Jul 02, 2019 03:33 PM A A It was Octavio Solis’ own road trip down Route 66 that inspired his new play “Mother Road,” which made its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March. Solis, raised in the Mexican border town of El Paso, said his life experiences influence most of his work. “Really all of my plays are about what it means to be of Mexican descent in a country that often will not have you,” Solis said. “Even before I knew I was going to be a playwright, when I was studying to be an actor all the writers that we were studying were writers of the Western canon, and so I felt like I was studying to be a dead white man. I felt that was an awakening for me.” The play is a modern tale inspired by John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” in which a descendant of Tom Joad is looking for a family member to take over his family farm in Oklahoma. The only relative to be found is a young Mexican-American man in California, and so the great novel’s journey is reversed as the two travel from migrant camps in California back toward Oklahoma. Solis has written and directed more than 20 plays and has produced three others at OSF. He is one of OSF’s most produced living playwrights, according to the playbill. Solis also adapted Steinbeck’s “The Pastures of Heaven.” Solis became involved with the National Steinbeck Center and was commissioned in 2013 to drive the “Mother Road” with two other artists, a group of staff and a film crew. He said the group caravaned as close to Route 66 as possible from Oklahoma to California, making stops along the way for research. “It still exists in some towns, but in many places it’s just an access road now,” Solis said. His job was to experience the trip, the people connected to the history of the Dust Bowl and the migrant camps, and to create an artistic response to be shown at the Steinbeck Festival the following year. He said he didn’t know what he would write, maybe a long poem. One artist created a gallery exhibit and the other artist created a documentary about the trip. “They didn’t care what I wrote as long as I wrote something,” Solis said. “I knew the Steinbeck Center didn’t have a theater. I knew they couldn’t produce a play, but that’s what I do.” During the last of about 80 interviews with various people along the way, it clicked for him. He said during each interview he had a list of questions to get people talking, mostly focused on the book and the 1940 film adaptation. Most people had heard of it but had never read the book or seen the movie — except for one man who had whole passages memorized. Solis met the man at the Arvin Migrant Center outside of Bakersfield. The center, a location in the book, was built for Dust Bowl refugees, but it now houses migrant workers from Mexico. The young man grew up there with his mother and is now a spoken-word artist, muralist, roofer, carpenter and construction worker. The young man told Solis, “I am Tom Joad. This story is about me. We, the people that live here, are the new Okies. We are the new Okies, and this novel is about me, my life.” And so it was, or at least Solis made sure the play was. “That made me think, what if there is a Latino man who is a direct descendant of Tom Joad, a blood relative?” Solis said. “What if there is a Joad who stayed in Oklahoma? What if he’s dying of cancer and needs to find a Joad? What if this Joad is of Mexican descent? What does it say about America?” He said after he saw the crowd’s reaction at the first reading at the Steinbeck Festival, he knew he had a good piece. “I felt that I was onto something,” Solis said. “I felt that I was saying something in line with Mr. Steinbeck about my culture, about who I was and who I am, who we are and what we’re going through today. I felt that there was an utterly contemporary message that still resonated with the themes and ideas and story of ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ “More than ever I feel incumbent to take a stand,” Solis said. “I never thought of myself as a political writer. My intent is to tell a good story and present universal stories, but I guess politics are in there. This time I feel like I need to take a stand. These are times that you can’t be neutral, because we’re being nullified, demonized and treated like animals, and we have to take a stand. We have to say something about it.” He said he believes inspiration can be found anywhere once it’s tapped. “I think that the best stories are already written and are already inside of us, and we just have to listen to them,” Solis said. “There’s always an impulse that is calling. I hear voices like ghosts it starts there, but it often needs a catalyst. You just have to have your antennae out and then you find the vehicle. You find the thing that is a spark, ‘OK, this is what my ghost can ride in on.’” Solis’ commission for the road trip was spurred by the book’s 75th anniversary. Solis said at one point in the trip an alert was put out looking for any Dust Bowl survivors. He said about 40 showed up, all in their 90s, and some people even recognized each other after not seeing one another since the migrant camps. “Some of them haven’t seen each other since they were 5 or 6, and they met again,” Solis said. “It was so special and very powerful.” The group even had the chance to help lift off hot air balloons at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. The play will run in the Angus Bowmer Theatre through Oct. 26. Solis described the set as simple but elegant. “You could perform it right there in the street,” he said, gesturing to a small, empty parking lot. “I would love to see this produced in other, rural communities.” He said having its world premiere at OSF is satisfying. His first play produced at OSF was “El Paso Blue” in 1999. “I had always intended in my heart for it to be produced here, and if it would be the world premiere that would be the icing on the cake,” Solis said. “This is where I live now. This is my home.” OSF’s fifth artistic director, Bill Rauch, is the director of the play. This is Rauch’s last season at OSF. Solis is currently conducting research for his next piece exploring Flamenco dancing. He said he’s interested in the similarities between Arabic and Latino cultures. “We look so much alike, but we couldn’t be any more different,” Solis said. In addition to the numerous plays Solis has produced, he also served as one of three cultural consultants and voiced a minor character for the Pixar movie “Coco.” Solis’ book “Retablos” was published last October. It was recommended by the New York Times and NBC News, and was included on the 2018 Best Books list by Buzzfeed. The book is a collection of “stories from a life lived along the border” focusing on the singular moments of “trauma and transformation” that shaped him into who he is today. Solis said the few book events he’s had in the Rogue Valley have sold out. He’ll be interviewed in front of a live audience at 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 8, at Carpenter Hall, 44 S. Pioneer St., as part of Ashland New Plays Festivals’ Theatre Talk. To learn more about Solis, his book and other works, see his website at octaviosolis.net . To learn more about “Mother Road,” and to buy tickets, see osfashland.org/MotherRoad . Contact Tidings reporter Caitlin Fowlkes at [email protected] or 541-776-4496. Follow her on Twitter @cfowlkes6. { }In Octavio Solis' "Mother Road" Mark Murphey (William Joad) drives Tony Sancho (Martín Jodes) during a trip from California to Oklahoma.{ } Photo by Jenny Graham. The Ensemble of Mother Road, a world-premiere play written by Octavio Solis and directed by Bill Rauch, will perform in the Angus Bowmer Theatre through October 26, 2019. Photo by Jenny Graham.