Performance Preview
A Ranch Named Desire
Play details relationship between Tennessee Williams and lover Pancho Rodriguez
“He was a very prolific character,” says Santiago Candelaria, who plays Williams in Rancho Pancho, a play by Gregg Barrios. “Not only in his writing but just in his way of being, how he moved through what he did.” The play, presented by Camino Real Productions, and running at the National Hispanic Cultural Center through Aug. 7, explores the relationship between Williams and one of his partners, Pancho Rodriguez. “He was a compulsive worker and it sort of shows up in everything he did,” Candelaria says. “He worked compulsively, he drank compulsively, he smoked compulsively, he took pills compulsively, he had sex compulsively.”
Book Review
Shout at the Devil
A Cajun-flavored sampling of things that go bump in the night
Seed
When you think about it, post-Katrina Louisiana creates the perfect setting for a horror tale. Storm-ravaged bayous and flooded levees—along with an already prevalent culture of the supernatural—certainly make the environs of the Deep South ripe for an ill-intentioned bogeyman or two. So sets the scene for local author Ania Ahlborn's first novel, Seed, which takes the hot-ticket items of demonic possession and sinister children and tosses them into a musty, kudzu-covered Southern Gothic blender.
Art Preview
A Little Bit Spicy
Two artists paint women of the Southwest
Marie Sena’s and Nani Chacon’s art show, Picosa, puts women in the fore: The overall theme of the show is women of the Southwest. “We’re in such a unique cultural climate,” Chacon says. “We felt like that was something that needed to be celebrated and pushed to the forefront of what we’re doing—not just that we’re going to depict beautiful women, but the beautiful women of our surroundings.”
