More than twenty years ago, Ofelia Medina helped make Frida Kahlo a bit more worldly famous playing the title role in Frida, naturaleza viva—the acclaimed first feature film about the then-somehow-underrated Mexican painter.

Now Medina is back with Frida once again, this time theater being the medium and with Frida a zillion times more famous. And in an extraordinary effort that speaks to Medina’s power and vision, she’s also bringing to the stage the life of another great compatriot of hers, the writer Rosario Castellanos—who like the rebellious painter of the bushy eyebrows—valiantly challenged the times in which she lived.
Medina will be incarnating both Kahlo the painter and Castellanos the poet in two different plays at The New Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Face of the World Festival, an effort that brings international class acts to the refurbished venue in the heart of a dynamic downtown on revival mode.

Intimamente, Rosario de Chiapas is a poetic-musical performance based on poems by Castellanos, one of the most influential Mexican writers in the past century.

Time is too long for life;
For knowledge not enough.
What have we come for, night, heart of night?
Dream that we do not die
And, at times, for a moment, wake."
—From “Nocturne”

“In my humble opinion, Rosario Castellanos is the richest, most beautiful feminine contemporary voice in Spanish (language literature),” says Medina, sporting a Indian blouse in gray tones, a bright blue rebozo, jeans and wearing a pair of soda bottle caps handcrafted into colorful earrings with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Medina seems intent to spread the word of and about the respected poetess and author who died three decades ago but whose works still resonate today.
Written and directed by Medina herself, Intimately, Rosario of Chiapas is based on Castellanos’ poetry book Poesía no eres tú, a collection published two years before her death in 1974. The monologue is accompanied by original music by Jimena Gimenez Cacho.

You are not poetry
Because if you existed,
I too must exist. And that’s a lie…
—From “You are not poetry”

Although the poet was born into a well-to-do family in Distrito Federal and not in the southern Mexican state as the play’s title might suggest, Castellanos’ childhood was spent near her family’s vast ranch in Chiapas.
She studied literature and philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the nation’s capital, where she would later teach. Her master thesis Sobre cultura femenina, or On Feminine Culture, in 1950 questioned the place and role of women in Mexico’s society and the arts and is considered by many as a call to feminist self-awareness in a country notorious for machismo.
She was a Rockefeller scholar at the Centro Mexicano de Escritores in the 50s, a decade that would also see fellows like the younger Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Homero Aridjis and other famous writers pass through the doors of the prestigious literary institute.

We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive….
—From “Destiny”

Castellanos eloquent works show, on the one hand, a dark, sad side revolving around solitude, death and painful loving; on the other hand are social causes as recurring themes.

The plight of the Indians of Chiapas figured prominently in the works and life of Castellanos. Her two novels Balún Canán and Oficio de Tinieblas depict Indian uprising against centuries of abuses, exploitation and racial and cultural discrimination that still go on nowadays.

“Rosario was a visionary,” says Medina. “It seems that since the 1960s she foresaw the Indians would rebel and become an example” in the fight against injustice, she adds in an allusion to the indigenous Zapatista arm struggle in Chiapas that erupted in 1994 and which Medina has always fervently supported. “In fact, Rosario went back to Chiapas to work with the Indian communities. She spoke tzetzal.” Castellanos worked with the National Indigenous Institute and a theatre company that promoted literacy in Indian communities. Tzetzal is a Maya dialect.
One poem that Medina highlights is “Memorial de Tlatelolco,” about the government-sanctioned killings of hundreds of university students that held protests during the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968.

….And who saw that brief, vivid flash of light?
Who is the one who kills?
Who are the ones who breathe their last; who die?...
—From “Memorial of Tlatelolco”

Medina felt drawn by Castellanos’ poetic cadence. “First, it’s simply the sound. Then one starts to understand the message and a philosophy about life, a point of view that is brave, intelligent, challenging, critical,” she says. “She was one of the first women who dared to intelligently question (the status quo), just like Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz did in her times,” she adds referring to Mexico’s literary giant and nun from the seventeenth century.

“Rosario Castellanos is for the world of contemporary Mexico a voice critical of a fucked-up economic system, machismo and social injustice,” says Medina. “Rosario’s poetry is the closest to my heart, ideology and innermost being.”
Intimamente, Rosario de Chiapas comes to the New LATC this September after playing this summer in Mexico City and a previous stop in Cuba.

In addition to starting the 2008-2009 edition of the internationally-flavored Face of the World Festival, the play will officially launch a series of Mexican performing arts as part of an agreement between the LATC and the University of Guadalajara.
The one year pilot program will feature vanguard acts in theatre, music and dance from south of the border provided by the Mexican public university, according to Jose Luis Valenzuela, LATC’s artistic director and a drama professor at the University of California Los Angeles.

“We will be able to bring top-quality cultural and intellectually-stimulating acts from Mexico for our Los Angeles audiences,” he says, adding that most works will be in Spanish with English supertitles. If successful, the program could be expanded to Argentina, Colombia, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries. “This is just the beginning,” says Valenzuela.

Medina’s Cada quien su Frida is also part of both the Face of the World Festival and the Mexican series.

Frida’s appeal is expected to draw a very diverse audience. Hollywood made a blockbuster film about her that earned Oscars and Golden Globes. Her works carry million-dollar price tags and are on high demand, outselling even the paintings of her famous husband, Diego Rivera. Frida’s now-iconic face and paintings seem ubiquitous as they are widely reproduced in the Chicano/Latino art world, handcrafts and posters. Even fashion designers, catwalks and pop artists haven’t resisted her spell. This summer the rock band Coldplay used Frida’s phrase ‘Viva la Vida” to title their latest top-selling album.

“Frida Kahlo is the most famous woman artist on planet Earth,” declares Medina with a broad smile. She confesses her obsession with the Mexican painter started at age 11 thanks to a school trip to the artist’s Mexico City home-turned-museum. “Since I became an actress I wanted to do something about Frida,” she recalls.
Her dream came true in 1985 when she got the lead role in Paul Leduc’s Frida, naturaleza viva, a film that earned various international awards, some for Medina as best actress.

But don’t expect a stage version of the flick. Cada quien su Frida is based on the artist’s diary and the book Memoria y Razon de Diego Rivera by Cuban journalist Lolo de la Torriente.

“Just like with Rosario, Frida is a feminine force with whom I feel like I have relation, almost as if we were blood-related,” says Medina. “I’ve been working on this play for many years.”

Loosely translated as To Each Its Own Frida, it depicts three Fridas—young, agonizing and dead. Originally, the act was intended to last a few weekends at the home of the beloved actor Emilio El Indio Fernandez back in 2006. But an overwhelming success took it to bigger venues of Mexico City and later to Cuba, Denmark and Spain.

In spite of being an obvious attempt to show different aspects of Kahlo, Medina explains the play has no intention to impart another lecture about the character. “I don’t teach classes, nor do I pretend to offer a metaphor for everyone to understand. I think that each mind is a universe unto itself and everyone gets, like the title says, his or her own Frida.”

With these two plays in the USA, Medina career sort of comes full circle.
“I studied acting at Lee Strasberg’s Actor Studio” in New York, she says. In Hollywood she appeared in the 1978 film The Big Fix next to Richard Dreyfuss.

Medina doesn’t remember exactly how much she’s performed on Southern California stages. “I’ve never done theatre in Los Angeles,” she says, only to correct herself a few seconds later recalling a vaudeville act along with Adalberto Martinez a.k.a "Resortes" at the downtown’s Million Dollar Theatre. “That was a long time ago.”
But her latest theatre acts are different, she notes. “I believe that the New LATC is for the first time bringing vanguard cultural theatre” in Spanish from Mexico. She adds, “This is a historic event and I’m proud of being part of it.”

Intimamente, Rosario de Chiapas will open the Face of the World Festival on Friday, Sept. 12 and run through Sunday, Sept. 14.

Cada quien su Frida will run Nov. 7 through 9 and 14 through 16.
Other Mexican acts scheduled at the New LATC include: the band Troker; singer Jaramar Soto; Canek: A Life Size Puppet Show; and Filoctetes.

Tickets prices are $15 to $35. The theatre is located at 514 S. Spring St. in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information call (213) 489-0994, ext. 107 or visit www.thenewlatc.com.