Adaptation of beloved teen novel is close to playwright's heart
Imagine being asked to adapt for the stage a novel taught in classrooms across the country and translated worldwide, knowing it was written by a well-known author who would give you feedback.
And imagine the book had very little in the way of dialogue ...
Two years ago, Hallie Gordon, director of Steppenwolf for Young Adults, took playwright Tanya Saracho out for coffee to pitch the idea that she adapt "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros. Saracho said "no."
The book, Saracho explains, "has puffs of images. It's not even a full drawn-out picture, so how do you dramatize that for the stage?"
Gordon asked again, and again Saracho's response was "no." "I was saying no with a smile, so I don't think she believed me!" Saracho says.
But then came the final pitch, to work on the project for the book's 25th anniversary.
Saracho relented. She started work by reading and rereading the first chapter about 50 times, especially going over the first line of the book, "We didn't always live on Mango Street," again and again.
The breakthrough came when she saw the rhythm, she says.
"It came to me that it's music," she says. "I called Hallie and I told her 'It's music!' I don't think she understood what I was saying, but I did. That's when it started."
Saracho ended up writing lyrics for several songs which became an integral part of her adaptation. She combined some characters, and set the story against the backdrop of the late 1970s.
Saracho, 33, lives in Chicago, and Cisneros, 55, in Texas. The two spoke a few times, and Saracho says she quickly realized that being in awe of Cisneros somewhat hindered her own creative process.
"If you see us together, you see how geeky I am around her. I didn't even know what to say," Saracho says. "That was not letting me get out of my own head."
At first, Cisneros wasn't too into the idea of dramatizing the dialogue, says Saracho. The book's main character is Esperanza Cordero, a Mexican-American 12-year-old who grows up in Chicago and who doesn't talk much, but observes a lot, she says.
In the end, Saracho said she had to go with her vision, making the "big, bold" choices required of most stage adaptations.
"(The play) is an interpretation of 'The House on Mango Street,'" she said. "I don't know how well I have achieved that for (Cisneros)."
Saracho read "The House on Mango Street" twice in her youth, the first time at about age 12 as an ESL student in Texas and the second time in high school.
The first time, she says, she didn't quite understand it all, but she liked the way the words sounded. The second time, Esperanza's story hit her with full force, resonating deep within her adolescent sensibilities.
"It's a coming-of-age story, and I saw myself and my mom and dad in it, even if Esperanza and I were not from the same background because I'm from a small Texas town," she says.
Saracho attended Boston University and moved to Chicago about seven years ago. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Teatro Luna, Chicago's all-Latina theater ensemble, and a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and Teatro Vista. Her plays include "Our Lady of the Underpass," "Jarred: A Hoodoo Comedy" and "Kita y Fernanda."
She is particularly proud that Steppenwolf's adaptation of "The House on Mango Street" has an all-Latino cast, she says. She and lead actor Sandra Delgado, who plays Esperanza, share the same attachment to the book and often cry together on stage, much to the bewilderment of the younger actors, she says.
"I am so attached to Esperanza now," Saracho says. "There will be a lot of youth coming to see it, and I hope they see themselves in it."
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