Suburban native embraces her heritage in 'House on Mango Street'

Some come to acting early, some come to it late. But few people come to acting after preparing, as Mount Prospect native Mari Stratton did, for a career in opera.

Stratton, who currently appears in the Steppenwolf production of "The House on Mango Street," attended Simpson College. She planned to study opera in graduate school, but then realized she'd had a change of heart.

"Opera was not what I wanted to do," she says.

Stratton was living in Indianapolis at the time, after growing up in Mount Prospect and Des Plaines, and going to school at Elk Grove High School.

"I was involved in a lot of theater in high school," she says, "and I got myself involved in some community theater."

Stratton moved back to Chicago in 2005 and has been playing away in the local theater scene ever since.

Today she divides her time between doing comedy with the children's troupe "Barrel of Monkeys" and more serious acting at theaters like Teatro Luna and Steppenwolf.

"I began at Steppenwolf by studying in their 12-week program in the summer," Stratton says. "It is very intensive. I have never studied theater, so it was very good for me to take different theater classes."

Stratton was invited by Tanya Saracho to perform in a staged reading of an adaptation of Sandra Cisneros' quintessential novel, "The House on Mango Street," she was doing for Steppenwolf. Stratton jumped at the chance and was later cast in the stage production.

As a Latina growing up in the Northwest suburbs, she faced many of the same issues that confront the characters in Cisneros' novel.

"My family is from Mexico and Texas," Stratton says. "I have both Tejano and Mexican roots. When I was a little girl, I couldn't speak English; I learned English in school."

And like Cisneros' characters, Stratton went through a time when she was ambivalent about her heritage.

"I always felt like I didn't quite fit into the white world," she says. "When I was a little girl I remember telling people that I was Italian. I also remember being embarrassed in high school by my father's accent." Stratton remembers dying of shame when he insisted on leaving the outgoing message on the family answering machine.

Later, that same heritage proved to be a source of strength, especially when it came time for Stratton to give flesh to the characters in "The House on Mango Street."

"I play (the main character) Esperanza's mom," she says. "I also play a character named Mamacita, an immigrant from Mexico, and another character called Very Large Woman."

Stratton is pleased to be part of this production. "I think 'The House on Mango Street' is a wonderful coming-of-age story for a woman of a Latina background," she says. "It speaks to all of us young women and the things we face. We all try to fit in. We all want to do better. We all want to figure out who we are."

• "The House on Mango Street" runs through Nov. 8 at Steppenwolf Theatre's Upstairs Theater, 1650 N. Halsted Street Chicago. For tickets call (312) 335-1650 or visit the Steppenwolf Web site, www.steppenwolf.org.

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