Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Teatro Vista

Highly Recommended - Chicago Sun Times. Highly Recommended - Chicago Reader

"Fat and intimacy. Those are the principal subjects of Luis Alfaro's gently surreal tragicomedy "Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner," now in a beautifully realized Midwest premiere by Teatro Vista, the Latino company celebrating its 15th anniversary this season.


9/10/2005 - 10/16/05

Thu-Sat 8p, Sat 5pm, Sun 4p


"Fat and intimacy. Those are the principal subjects of Luis Alfaro's gently surreal tragicomedy "Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner," now in a beautifully realized Midwest premiere by Teatro Vista, the Latino company celebrating its 15th anniversary this season. Alfaro is certainly not the first to connect the dots between food, sex and the quest for love. But there is something about his take on the subject -- and his subtle use of the magic realism style -- that sidesteps the pop psychology found on so many talk shows and in so many magazine stories. Instead, he transforms it all into a drama of crushing sadness, black humor and surprising theatricality. And actress Sandra Marquez (so memorable in her recent role as a Latina nanny in "Living Out") demonstrates her impressive directing skills as she captures the play's delicate balance between hope and despair, and deploys her superb cast of four to ideal effect. To begin with, there are two sisters. Minerva (the brave and unwavering Diana Campos) is a wife and mother who gradually grows more and more disfigured and immobile as she gorges on everything in sight, including her favorite marshmallow confections, Sno Balls. Alice (the high-spirited Sandra Delgado) is the slim, self-involved beauty whose hunger is for sex rather than food, although, like Minerva, her true quest is for love. Minerva's husband, Al (winningly underplayed by the very touching Tony Sancho) is a decent, somewhat oblivious everyman who probably would prefer that his wife were thinner, but who continues to love her even as she expands beyond obesity. He only regrets that his sex life vanishes as his wife's waistline expands -- a fact he confides to Alice in several hilarious and edgily suggestive scenes. As for Alice's new boyfriend, Officer Fernandez (Joe Minoso, perfectly on target), he is as terrified of commitment as she has always been, and while he loves the wild sex she offers, he cannot deal with her commanding spirit. Ironically, he is the one man who has allowed her to open herself up. Minerva ultimately grows so fat that she begins to float into the ether -- a phenomenon heartbreakingly rendered as she is at first tethered to her sister's wrist by a string, and then, dressed in a pink fat suit (Christine Pascual's marvelous invention), she ascends the Coney Island roller-coaster ramp of designer Brian Sidney Bembridge's clever set. The writing -- poignant, poetic and funny throughout -- is matched at every turn by this winning production" - Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times 9/30/05

"A fat-camp failure continues to pack on the pounds in this sharp, sweet, serious show. Eventually Minerva (Diana Campos) is literally so puffed up she floats above her loving but ineffective husband (Tony Sancho) and concerned yet self-absorbed sister (Sandra Delgado). Minerva is relieved to be free, and they realize too late what she means to them. What makes Luis Alfaro’s play, directed by Sandra Marquez for Teatro Vista, so enjoyable is its balance of whimsy and weight emotional issues: this 90-minute show is very funny yet soberly examines Minerva’s food lust and inner sadness, presenting deft observations on marriage, sisterhood and dating. The talented cast delivers realistic, affecting performances, giving warmth to Alfaro’s consideration of consumption, complacency and committment" - Jen Goddu 9/23/05

"To celebrate 15 years of theatre in Chicago, Teatro Vista, "theatre with a view," is performing the Midwest premiere of "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner". It is written by acclaimed playwright Luis Alfaro and directed by a Chicago actress. The play is about two sisters seeking to fill the voids in their lives through instant gratification. The play is directed by Jefferson Award-nominated actress Sandra Marquez. "I think the message is about intimacy, true intimacy, and trying to figure things out, finding how to take care of yourself and how to balance helping other people," said Sandra Marquez, "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner" director. Lead role actress Minerva has been fighting her weight her entire life and makes fun of it and of herself, but she always puts her family first. Minerva is played by Diana Campos who has performed throughout the world. The women in my life have taken care of everybody and then have had to find some way to feel their own void," said Diana Campos, "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner" actress. Co-founder Edward Torres says Teatro Vista is the only Hispanic equity theater in the Midwest and is committed to sharing and celebrating the riches of Latino culture. "When we started doing theater it was difficult to get some major roles & lots of new writers and opportunities to do things," said Edward Torres, Teatro Vista co-founder. "If we waited for other companies to hire us we would work maybe once every several years," said Marquez. All of these actors have performed at the Goodman, Steppenwolf and other theaters throughout Chicago, but added they still need their community to support Teatro Vista" - Teresa Guitterez, WLS-TV Chicago 10/4/05

"In the Luis Alfaro play "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner," a morbidly obese woman defies gravity and floats above the ground, like the misunderstood witch and power balladeer of the musical "Wicked." But Minerva, Alfaro's protagonist, isn't into hear-me-roar anthems. Gazing back on what she calls her "fat forgotten life," she experiences a more bittersweet form of satisfaction in the air, true to form for a playwright ? a good one, though this is not one of his standout plays ? whose earlier works include a domestic tragicomedy called "Bitter Homes and Gardens."Now in its Midwest premiere at the Chopin Theatre, courtesy of Teatro Vista, Alfaro's modest 2003 play concerns eating and sex, and how they feed our notions of who we are. Just back from an unsuccessful trip to a fat farm, Minerva tells her sexually ravenous sister Alice about the experience. Alice, with a sexual resume a mile long, has her own issues: She has recently started dating a cop so withholding that he tells her his first name is "Officer." The play nudges Alice's romance forward, as it nudges Minerva into greater and greater poundage until she cannot climb stairs. Then, mysteriously, she achieves liftoff, though Alfaro keeps her housebound. The floating doesn't change her life all that much. "Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner" takes its magical-realist turn matter-of-factly. The piece is delivered in a series of quick strokes and too-cutely subtitled scenes, each chapter heading a food reference ("Peanut Brittle," "Chow Fun"). Director Sandra Marquez and scenic designer Brian Sidney Bembridge locate the play on a sharply realized set resembling a section of an old roller coaster. The cast includes Diana Campos, donning a series of padded costumes, as Minerva, opposite Sandra Delgado's exuberant, reckless Alice; Tony Sancho, as Minerva's genial, befogged husband; and Joe Minoso's policeman, who doesn't know what hit him after meeting Alice. The best scene, both as written and played, arrives late: The reunion of the cop and Alice. She refuses to be dumped by him, she says, because they're going to be together and that's that. As she explains what he has been missing, in punchy, "Dragnet"-style nuggets, it's as if the cop's life were flashing before his eyes. And in those images, he can see a bright future as well" - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune 9/28/05

""Eddie never calls me during class time," Sandra Marquez says of Edward Torres, her fellow company member at Chicago's Latino-based theater Teatro Vista. Yet in the middle of the acting class she teaches at Northwestern University, Marquez looked down at her caller ID to see Torres's number. "He was calling to say Luis had been fired. And I got a sick feeling in my stomach." Luis is their L.A.-based playwright friend Luis Alfaro, and the pink-slipping in question involved the elimination of the program Alfaro headed at Center Theatre Group (which includes the Mark Taper Forum, one of the West Coast's most credible theaters). Alfaro was head of new play development, which covered four minority playwriting programs. All four got the ax. "At Teatro Vista, most of the plays going on are from those workshops," Marquez says. One such workshop-birthed play is Teatro Vista's season opener, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner, penned by Alfaro and directed by Marquez, an active Chicago stage presence. A surreal comedy about two sisters, one addicted to food and the other to shagging, the play ended up in Marquez's hands while she was appearing in another Alfaro work, the Goodman's Electricidad, part of that company's now biannual Latino Theatre Festival. Cofounded by Torres and Goodman artistic associate Henry Godinez, the 15-year-old Teatro Vista accidentally found its roots at the Goodman. "Eddie was in a play at the Goodman playing a generic native, wearing a grass skirt and a coconut bra. He looked over at Henry, who was dressed pretty much the same, and thought, 'There's got to be something more than this,'" Marquez says. Teatro Vista was the result of that frustration. Plenty's changed since then, of course. Not only is Godinez now a Goodman associate, sharing elbow room with heavyweights like Mary Zimmerman and Frank Galati, but he spearheaded the massive organization of the Latino Theatre Festival and made it an international affair. Meanwhile, Teatro Vista has risen to become one of the Midwest's most visible Latino-based theaters. So the question arises: What happens to Latino-based theaters throughout the country when their pipeline of new material is sealed off? As Marquez quickly points out, new mainstream American playwriting can't be counted on for much help. "I've been in Chicago for the last ten years, and for the first eight years I was here the standard joke among the women in [Teatro Vista] was, 'How many maids have you auditioned for this season?'" Marquez says. According to Alfaro, who originally learned the development programs were being eliminated from a writer at the Los Angeles Times, the problem is a dark forecast for increasingly out-of-touch nonprofit theaters. "L.A.'s a lot like Chicago," Alfaro says. "There's a lot of white people living in the suburbs who like seeing a certain view of the world. The problem here is that the majority of citizens in Los Angeles county are Latino, and more than 90 percent of our audiences are white." Under the new artistic leadership of Michael Ritchie (former producer of the much-respected Williamstown Theatre Festival), the development arm of the Center Theatre Group was eliminated to put less emphasis on massaging new works that usually die in the workshop stage and more focus on producing scripts that are ready to go. Difficult as it might be for a forward-thinking artist to accept, Ritchie's got a point. Plenty of playwriting development workshops produce more talk than results. But a quick glance at the next planned season for the Center Theatre Group's largest stage, the Ahmanson, reveals depressing news for anyone hoping for something more than off-white. Insult was added to injury last month when The New York Times reported that the first play of the season, the 1935 ghetto epic Dead End, required $1 million more than its allotted budget, and features a 10,000-gallon swimming pool in the orchestra pit. "There's a bunch of unpaid actors getting college credit to swim around in a pool," Alfaro notes. "And the tickets are $80." - Chris Piatt, TimeOut Chicago 9/15/05

Author
Luis Alfaro

Director
Sandra Marquez

Performers
Sandra Delgado. Joe Minoso, Tony Sancho, Diana Campos

Production
Jaclyn Holsey, Alden Vasquez, Christine Pascual, Brian Sidney Bembridge, Mikhail Fiksel, Charles Cooper, Keith Gatchel

Tags: Theater, Rest Of The World, 2005