As American as apple pie, the immigrant story tells of the brave souls who leave their home to mark a new beginning. Through their own efforts, they manage to transform not only themselves but also the world around them.
It’s a modern classic, beholding the best humanity has to offer. Yet, is it too good to be true?
Written and directed by Communication sophomore Lux Vargas and produced by Vibrant Colors Collective, “La Ventanita” honors this narrative while offering its own ghostly insight: that something critical may forever have been lost in the move.
Vargas’ play, performed four times on May 9 and 10, revolves around a Hispanic community in Miami during the summer of 2021. The primary setting is the play’s namesake, a ventanita, or a small walk-up restaurant, owned by Renata (Communication junior Rachel Ramirez). Her business supports Ines (SESP junior Stephany Martinez), a college-bound teenager anxious to move away, and Genesis (Communication freshman Iris Luz Hernandez), Ines’ similar-aged cousin who recently immigrated from Cuba and feels hesitant about her future.
The first act of “La Ventanita” follows their individual storylines. Renata, a Cuban immigrant herself, has worked and owned the ventanita for decades but faces financial pressure to sell the place. Ines is spending her last summer before moving to college working at Renata’s ventanita. Genesis contemplates her recent move to Miami while beginning a romance with Camila (Communication freshman Juno Azuz Zacher), a quick-witted Mexican American girl Genesis meets at the ventanita.
The story’s central pivot comes with the Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) protests which occurred mainly in Cuba and South Florida in July 2021. Discontent with the Cuban government’s response to COVID-19 and the dipping economy led many Cubans to flood into the streets demanding redress.
As the characters become embroiled in Patria y Vida, the play grinds to a halt.
Renata’s ventanita becomes a hub for demonstrators in the Little Havana neighborhood. After several days of constant activity, Renata passes out from exhaustion and enters a dream. Live music from the Latin Music Ensemble blares through the set as the cast breaks out in dance. Renata wanders around her dream in a daze, and eventually the dancers stop dancing one-by-one and raise signs reading “tenemos hambre” (“we are hungry”) and “Patria y Vida.” A cacophony of ambient protest sounds and police sirens pile on top of the music, making the set almost unbearably loud.
The dream sequence is where the play’s true meaning finally begins to unfold. Renata looks upon the scene in awe, enchanted by — but somehow unable to join — the bodily frenzy. As the noise grows raucous, the melancholic dream actually seems more like a terrible nightmare. The first act characterizes Renata as apolitical, but this sequence shows that her avoidance is not so cheaply settled.
(Allen You/The Daily Northwestern)
In the second act, the focus shifts to Genesis. She begins volunteering at the ventanita, keeping her underlying motivations to herself until a crucial scene where she opens up to Camila, and her rationale unravels.
She tells Camila that although the Cuban people were “good,” Cuba didn’t constitute “a life” but rather a “spirit of struggle.” Genesis believes she will never return, since things won’t get better on the island. Camila thinks the political struggles can salvage hope, but Genesis can only muster a disingenuine affirmation.
Genesis resigns herself, realizing she has it good in Miami. If she commits herself to Cuban liberation, she will only end up like her historical counterparts: brutally damaged. She would rather escape than confront such impending doom. This is not only physical but psychological, as Genesis has to disassociate from her past for it to not taint her future.
The play’s most important moment comes when Genesis concocts a mango rendition of Renata’s coffee to add to the ventanita’s menu. Renata says the menu has not changed since she started working there, but Genesis insists. Symbolically, Genesis finally attempts to mark progress in her world — her own recipe for success.
As the summer winds down, hurricane season blows in. Ines flies out to college early in order to beat the storms. The characters presumably go back to their lives as normal. By the end of the play, only one destiny has changed: In the final scene, Genesis shows up to the ventanita, and Renata welcomes her to her first day at work. It’s not that Genesis was able to move on, but she was able to move forward. That is no easy feat.
“La Ventanita” grasps the open possibility of the immigrant’s move — a liberty many take for granted. But it also grapples honestly with impossibility, the repressed desire for things left behind forever. Camila places her faith in the power of “the people” while Genesis’ is resigned, not from a lack of trying, but rather the honest confession that Cuba’s fate is beyond her control.
Each catastrophic failure of “the people” seems to affirm Genesis’s fatalism; history appears an unbearable sight.
If read against the grain, the immigrant story becomes a graveyard of dreams, the beginning of the end. It tells of the defeated individual leaving a ruined place and settling for a sense of peace. But a storm still rages behind them; when the winds of progress catch their sails, perhaps it’s just best to be blown away.
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