This is one of the nineteen plays participating in the national play festival Encuentro 2024, sponsored by the Latino Theater Company (LTC) at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC) from October 24 to November 10.

Latino Theater Company presents

Written by Gricelda Silva, Indigo Rael, and Caroline Reck; additional writing by Jesus I. Valles, Connor Hopkins
Directed by Caroline Reck
Glass Half Full Theatre│Austin, Texas

Yamel Cucuy is the story of a girl on the precipice of adulthood, contending with the physical and metaphysical violence of borders. Yamel is hunted by immigration agents while haunted by specters from Mexican folklore. On the shadowy frontier between life and death, she forges her own spirit of courage and wisdom. Set to an original score of indigenous percussion, Yamel Cucuy blends sophisticated puppetry with live actors and draws upon frightening folk tales and modern horror movies to create a terrifying psychological landscape of pitfalls both legal and spiritual.

CONTENT WARNING:Subtle reference to sexual assault, image of gun and violence in shadow puppetry, language, death.

For more on the Glass Half Full Theatre in Austin, Texas, visit HERE.

Reflections

My mother, who was from the Dominican Republic, used to scare us with a story about a girl who was buried alive and whose hair became the roots that would grow out of the ground to capture those children who were bad. Or at least that’s the memory that haunted me for years as a child. As I aged, I would learn to outgrow that fear and succumb to new ones. From the nightmares of ghosts and vampires to evil people who terrorize you in abandoned buildings to those who have badges and terrorize you in the city’s streets, fear can engulf you, paralyze you, and make you more vulnerable and a target. They can smell the fear.

I thought about the fear that has engulfed so many over this past week as I watched Yamel Cucuy. Without giving away the ending, I walked out knowing we all have a choice when faced with our worst demons, ghosts, real and imagined. We can surrender to them and be paralyzed by them, allowing them to overwhelm us and terrorize us so that we do nothing but shrivel up and slink off into nothingness. Or we call up every bit of our being, that pool of courage and resistance that dwells inside of us, whether it’s from an innate need to survive or just that we are fed up and won’t take it anymore.

The next four years will be a test for all of us. You surrender and die, or you resist the demons and ghosts and destroy them from your being.