How do you say ‘bowl’ in Spanish? As producer and playwright Faith Talamantez explains in her play How to Say Bowl in Spanish, there is no singular correct way; many people just say “bowl.” As cultures meld, their languages borrow from each other constantly, and it is much more difficult to separate the two than to simply accept what they’ve come together.
The one-night debut of Faith Talamantez’s original play How to Say Bowl in Spanish at Santa Barbara’s Center Stage Theater on May 24 was an intimate examination of racial politics during the first presidency of Donald Trump. Opening to the sounds of Childish Gambino’s “This is America,” How to Say Bowl in Spanish follows Maria, an unsure high school senior facing racial discrimination as the only Mexican student in her Spanish class while her father, Oscar, crosses the U.S./Mexico border and is unable to re-enter the country due to tightening regulations. Over the border of a split stage, Maria jumps back and forth between her family home and her comically discriminatory Spanish class with a cast of characters that includes Profesora Alvarez, her Trump-obsessed teacher; Mackenzie, the star student claiming a heritage that isn’t hers for a scholarship; and Roman, the football jock who unironically presents a basketball with Kobe Bryant’s face taped to it as an ofrenda. Meanwhile in Maria’s family home, the absence of her father creates a growing difficulty in connecting to her identity as distance grows between Maria and her well-intentioned, but white, mother.
How to Say Bowl In Spanish takes a sarcastic, campy approach to conveying how conservative politics have affected the interpersonal experiences of hispanic life in America. In a play where the protagonist lacks autonomy in her day-to-day life — choosing to ignore the constant microaggressions from her teacher and classmates, and is unable to bring her family back together — Maria breaks the fourth wall and begins to confront the audience laughing at her misery.
With sharp comedic timing, the cast of How to Say Bowl in Spanish created a visceral portrayal of the daily anxiety and tension that bubbles below the surface of people of color’s lived experience with microaggressions. The play itself is ambitious and deeply vulnerable; it’s not often that one gets to see an original production make its mark with such aplomb. How to Say Bowl in Spanish is hilarious, deeply moving, and unabashedly political, and I hope to one day see it staged again.
