This festival swims, bounces, dives, and spins around the theme of identity. Who is who? Where did the little ball go? What are the new borders in this stage of globalization? Where does race end and culture begin? In recent years, several Mexican taquerías have opened in China and there’s a Starbucks on every corner of the world. As franchises dominate, are values becoming standardized? Can we now only speak of economic borders? Collaborating with a country as multicultural as the United States sparks these reflections. Who are American artists? Is it definable? Who are Mexican artists? Can a national identity be standardized and exported? Who among us is lonelier? Do Mexicans complain more? As a ranchera music fanatic, I’d rather not get lost in that thicket… and instead ask myself: is it true that people from Jalisco never back down? Is that the secret behind tequila’s global success? Who are the artists from Jalisco? As we begin this new binational adventure, I suddenly found myself lost…

We’re staging a play by a Chinese-American author and have invited a New York-based director of Croatian descent… I started analyzing the surnames of our Mexican artists. Villarreal? Surely of Spanish origin… and mestizo somewhere along the line. Viqueira? Things start to get more enigmatic. I noticed that Viqueira looks Chinese, and that Glenda, our production assistant, also has Asian features (I think from a Japanese great-grandmother); then I found out Morgana, our set designer, is half Anglo-Saxon, and that Nicolás, our literary advisor, has a percentage of Black ancestry. So before going mad, I decided to abandon that path and change the question…

What is moral or immoral in this world? Are there emotional quality control standards approved by some global organization? Can we speak of emotional equality? Are we all intrigued by the same things? For example: why can’t a coffee just be a coffee anymore? Why does it have to come as espresso, Americano, cappuccino, mochaccino, latte, with sprinkles, without sprinkles, with cream, lactose-free, semi-lactose-free, light, semi-light, etc… Why can’t love just be love? Why does it have to come in the form of dating, casual, fling, affair, marriage, cohabitation, ex, etc…? What has happened to the world? Is our soul being globalized?

One of our plays suggests that everything we are is the result of a fish’s misjudgment—thinking air was breathable and stepping out… I agree. And I conclude that theater remains the ideal place to ask all the questions in the world.

AURORA CANO.