Ceasar: The Culmination of 15 years at Casa 0101

By John Farrell

It is a dream come true, but it took 15 years to be realized.

Playwright Josefina López (Real Women have Curves) started the Casa 0101 theater in her Boyle Heights neighborhood 15 years ago with some of her college scholarship.

The theater has grown with the neighborhood. When it was first opened in a little store-front its success was problematic. More than a decade later the neighborhood on First Street in Boyle Heights has changed: the Metro Gold Line goes to a station two blocks away, the Boyle Heights City Hall is at the other end of the block and a very modern police station is across the street from the new theater premises. (The old Casa 0101 is still used for smaller productions, but the new theater, with an art gallery in the lobby, is state of the art.)

But that success was only part of the dream. López, Mexican immigrant, grew up with the classics. She always wanted to bring Shakespeare to her community. The opening night of Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar fulfilled that dream. Directed by Robert Beltrán, it features a mostly Latino cast in the tragedy, but with more than few differences. Brutus, Lucius and Antony are played by young women actors and the play is set ambiguously in a world that can be seen as Roman or thought of as contemporary.

That’s one difference. Another is that Beltrán and his actors took their time learning classical Shakespearean language and performance techniques. The actors spent eight months learning iambic pentameter, pronunciation and how to convey the complicated politics of the Shakespeare play. That technical brilliance shows. You never think of the woman (Rachel González as Brutus, Jasmin Iraheta as Lucius and Lauren Ballesteros as Anthony) as anything but the characters the portray. They are as convincing and direct as anyone who has played these classical roles.

The play is called Julius Caesar but Caesar is a secondary role (played with a magisterial presence and in a military uniform by Vance Valencia). The star is Brutus, the man who decides he must assassinate Caesar to preserve the Roman republic. González is magnetic as Brutus. You have to watch her as her emotions are continually suppressed. Every time she begins to let her feelings show through she manages to keep her cool, even as she prepares to commit suicide at the play’s end. Ballesteros is more emotional as Antony, a person who was known for his slightly playboy-ish side. (He appears in Antony and Cleopatra, another Shakespeare play, in a more romantic role.)

Fidel Gómez is convincing as Cassius, though he doesn’t quite have that lean and hungry look Shakespeare conjured up for him. Linda López, who plays Portia, is convincing in the role of Brutus’ wife. Danny Mora is effective as Casca. Young Octavius is played with interesting effect by Karlo Ishibashi.

Beltrán plays the action on a series of platforms designed by Cesar Retana-Holguin, simple and effective with graffiti-like red and black screens behind. Costumes, designed by Ábel Alvarado, are a mixture of contemporary clothes and toga-like cloaks that are simple and non-intrusive. Casa 0101 is a small theater. He has the actors approach the audience to speak their lines. They are aided by body mics, but they speak Shakespeare’s language so clearly, so effortlessly, with respect and relish, that the mics are unnecessary. Beltrán has directed them in simplicity of action, too, and there is never any wasted action. This is a play about thought, even though the bloody action was probably emphasized (you had to keep the groundlings happy), when it was originally produced, 400 years ago.

Fifteen years is a long while to wait. The hope is that López, having had a success with this production, will not wait quite so long for her next Shakespearean experiment. This production suggests that there is a willing cast of actors and, if it succeeds, an audience for the classics in Boyle Heights, just as there is in Long Beach and San Pedro.