The San Diego Union-Tribune, Arts + Culture, 7/4/2021

TRAVEL Stories of women and people of color are gaining prominence at Colonial Williamsburg. E13 SECTION E

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

THE AMERICAN ARTIST

This Independence Day, San Diego artists share their stories about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness E2–E9

K.C. ALFRED U-T PHOTOS

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“I was so overwhelmed finding my tribe, but this time, it wasn’t just theater people but theater people who looked like me and who understood what it meant to be an Asian actor in this impenetrable industry.”

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Kim Montelibano Heil

Old Globe’s new associate producer wants to use her experience and background to help artists thrive

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BY PAM KRAGEN

im Montelibano Heil wasn’t born in America, but she believes her quarter-century of work in U.S. theaters, her Asian heritage and her global perspective have prepared her to help usher in the next generation of American actors who will better reflect this nation’s diversity.

In May, the 46-year-old Spring Valley resident announced on social media that she’s pursuing her dream of launching The Nuance, her own casting and consulting agency that will focus on helping people of color pursue careers in the arts. Last month, she also accepted a newly created position as associate producer at the Old Globe. Meanwhile, she will continue working at San Diego Repertory Theatre, where she has served as associate producer and casting director since 2017. She also recently joined the Casting Society of America, which led to a job earlier this year as casting director for a new musical adaptation of the Chinese film “Farewell My Concubine.”

Montelibano Heil said the pandemic gave her the breathing room to begin tying together all of the threads of her training, career and interests. But it took a tragedy, her brother’s suicide, to clarify the vision for her future.

“What grief does is it forces you to stop doing the things that are no longer productive and pay attention to the things that really do matter. I feel like I would take all of it back if I could have my brother again,” she said. “But he would be proud of me. If this is a result of grief, it’s his gift, his life and what he did for me.”

Born in the Philippines to Filipino parents, Montelibano Heil was in second grade when her family moved to Indonesia. There, she attended the Jakarta Intercultural School, a private prep school for international expats. On the plus side, she grew up seeing wealth and privilege evenly distributed among children of all ethnicities. But on the downside, she was exposed to racist stereotypes for Asian women that

prized pale skin tones and Eurocentric facial features.

After graduating from high school in Jakarta in 1992, she got her green card and moved to Malibu to attend Pepperdine University. Her passions were theater and dance, but as the child of Asian immigrant parents, she felt pressured to pursue a more stable career like finance, engineering or science. Reluctantly, she studied psychology, because she was always curious about people, but once she graduated, she hated the jobs she was offered in the field.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do beyond being around theater people, but that was so taboo,” she said. “I was trying to be an adult, but my dad saw I was unhappy. He could see I wasn’t living my best life.”

So, with her father’s blessing, she auditioned for an unpaid role in a community theater production in Los Angeles. That led her to East West Players, a then-small company that has since become one of the

premier Asian American theaters in America. Over the next five years, she performed with and volunteered for the company, which was devoted to ending the racist portrayals of Asians in television and film.

“They gave me a community,” she said. “I was so overwhelmed finding my tribe, but this time, it wasn’t just theater people but theater people who looked like me and who understood what it meant to be an Asian actor in this impenetrable industry.”

In August 2001, she moved to Manhattan to attend New York University for a master’s degree in performance studies. A month later, the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred.

She said the tragedy gave the students in her class a sense of unity and purpose.

“It gave the whole experience this urgency and heightened importance,” she said. “It wasn’t just about storytelling but about trying to elevate the audience in a way that you’d been elevated as an artist.”

During her time in New York, she gave up acting to focus on theater administration. She worked for the Asian American theater company Second Generation and for Broadway producers Arielle Tepper Madover and Bill Haber. She also met her future husband, actor Jason Heil, and during a 2003 holiday visit to her parents’ home in Chula Vista, they decided to move to San Diego. Within weeks of arriving in 2004, she landed a job at the Old Globe as an artistic and literary associate. Over nine years there, she moved up to the role of education programs manager.

In 2013, she was hired as education director at San Diego Junior Theatre. And three years later, she moved to San Diego Repertory Theatre. Not long after she arrived at the Rep, Montelibano Heil’s brother took his own life in 2017. She coped with her grief by distraction, listening for hours and hours to educational podcasts.

Meet the artist Profession: Associate producer and casting director, San Diego Repertory Theatre; associate producer, the Old Globe Age: 46 Birthplace: Philippines Favorite movie scene: Hearing the familiar click of women moving mahjong tiles around a board in the opening scene of “The Joy Luck Club” caused her to weep because she felt “seen” as an Asian woman.

What’s next: Launch of The Nuance, a casting agency that will focus on representing Black, Indigenous and people of color artists Online: Instagram: @thenuance2020; thenuance2020.com

“They brought me back to that place of growing up in Indonesia where I was absorbing all these cultures around me,” she said. “It led me to recognize how unique my perspective was, not just as a woman but as a mother, a person of color and someone who has developed a very keen sense of how people are motivated by culture, community and their own identities.”

Empowered by this realization, Montelibano Heil began working with fellow advocates like La Jolla Playhouse producing director Eric Keen-Louie to teach, highlight and encourage the importance of culturally appropriate casting. That work led to the development of The Nuance, which Montelibano Heil initially launched in May 2020 on Instagram: @thenuance2020.

Over the past year, she has posted more than three dozen interviews with artists of color in theater, music and the arts who are proving that it’s possible to make a living in their chosen field. From that launchpad, she hopes to establish The Nuance agency within the next 12 months.

Montelibano Heil said it could take a decade for true diversity to thoroughly percolate through the industry, but she’s optimistic it will happen by the time her and Heil’s two theater-loving children — Katrina, 15, and Tristan, 12 — are grown. Her confidence comes from having seen the leaps that youth organizations like San Diego Junior Theater have made in casting diverse actors of differing abilities.

“Theater has always been for youth a place of liberation, where they can be authentically themselves,” she said. “Somehow there’s just been a disconnect between the inclusion that happens organically and naturally in youth theater and professional theater. There’s a way to do this. I just think some people can’t quite see it yet.” pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

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SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“Art saved my life.

If I wasn’t doing art, I’m not sure I’d even have a place to live.”

Ted Washington

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Poet, musician and playwright aims to give artists space and support to keep their creative spirits alive

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BY SETH COMBS

ed Washington does his best to stay in the background. He actually prides himself on it.

“I’ve never really been into the ‘self ’ too much,” Washington says over coffee in North Park. “That’s what allows me to do things like hosting the poetry nights, because I don’t really need to be in the spotlight. Even when I do music, I have a dancer and I sit behind a keyboard. I’m hidden. I only get up and do something every now and then.”

But for someone who may be considered a Renaissance man, that can sometimes be hard to do. He is, all at once, a musician, playwright, visual artist, publisher, comic book creator (“Horn Dog”) and, perhaps most noticeably, a poet and champion of spoken-word community. So yes, he has his proverbial pen in a lot of different wells.

“No, I don’t feel like I’ve mastered anything,” Washington says. “Some people say to me, ‘Oh, you’re a Renaissance man,’ and I don’t even know what that is. Things just find me. I began writing just to get stuff out of my own mind.”

Humble to a fault, Washington is certainly known for one thing: being a champion of others — the guy who is always showing up to people’s shows or encouraging newcomers to read their poetry in front of a crowd.

His own publishing company, Puna Press, which he initially started to publish his own work, has published nearly a dozen local poets, and his

bimonthly Palabra open-mic night has provided hundreds of poets a safe space to read their works.

“That is, without a doubt, what I try to do,” Washington says. “And for something like Palabra, I really want to make it comfortable, especially for those who’ve never done it before, because I myself was always uncertain. So I want to give that support to where they can come into that space and feel that support.”

In many ways, Washington’s nurturing of the local scene could be seen as his attempt at paying it forward. He recounts the incidental

encounters over the years that were just enough to keep his creative spirit alive — the bartender who bought one of his drawings or the friend who picked up a piece of his poetry off the floor and told him to publish it. Washington says creative people need this kind of communal support precisely because America can be such a difficult place to make a living as an artist.

“As far as being an artist or a creative in America, that is the danger in this country — the idea that you have to be commercial to be successful,” Washington says. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“I feel supported by the community, because they always give me the opportunity to get my work out there, but the idea of being supported by America, absolutely not,” Washington continues. “I don’t think America as a whole has any support for individual artists unless you get to a certain level where other people can make money off of you. If other people can make money off your art, then they’ll support you.”

Born and raised in what was then a very “racially divided” St. Louis, Washington says he didn’t always know he wanted to be a creative.

After graduating from Southwest Missouri State, he moved out to Denver with friends but couldn’t stand the winters and eventually ended up in Venice Beach, where he says he experienced homelessness

Meet the artist Profession: Musician, playwright, visual artist, publisher, comic book creator, and poet and champion of spokenword community Age: “Please do not include. I need there to be some mystery.”

Birthplace: St. Louis Prolific artist: Washington has also written a libretto and has performed at La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival.

He’s written two plays and hopes to produce one (“The Last Roll,” about the last roll of toilet paper) this year.

What’s next: The return of in-person Palabra open-mic nights and recording an album with his band Pruitt Igoe Online: punapress.com

for the first time.

He eventually moved to San Diego in the late ’80s and says he was partying a lot before falling into the art scene after a server spotted him drawing at the bar and ended up purchasing one of the sketches.

“Art saved my life. If I wasn’t doing art, I’m not sure I’d even have a place to live,” says Washington.

“When I started focusing on art, my entire life radically changed. I started doing art, I got myself together, and even with the poetry, that came from me reading so much to get ideas for art.”

And that’s Ted Washington in a nutshell: While he has published his own books and become one of the most recognizable voices in the local poetry scene, he still sees his greatest accomplishment as being in the background, offering encouraging words, and letting others be saved by the art like he was.

“The only part that I might play in that is that I do believe in progression,” Washington adds. “I do believe that I can remind them that if you are successful at something, you can either change it or move it forward. To keep repeating yourself, that’s the danger zone for a lot of artists and writers. You can find success, but are you willing to alter it, to change it, to step away from it, because that’s necessary for growth.”

Combs is a freelance writer.

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“To me, my music is already American music — it’s part of the music of the future.”

Wu Man

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Borders and genres blur in the hands of the internationally acclaimed master musician

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BY GEORGE VARGA

efore she became the world’s most accomplished and innovative pipa player, Wu Man had a bright future in her native China on the fourstring instrument, which dates back more than 2,000 years. A bright but artistically limited future.

“I would not have this career, as I do right now, if I’d stayed in China,” said the 58-year-old

Carlsbad resident.

“If I still lived in China, I could not have this experience of crossing borders and boundaries. There would be no way I could do that.”

The borders and boundaries Wu Man regularly crosses with dizzying speed are both geographic and stylistic.

The world traveler’s numerous collaborators cover an unusually broad range of genres and approaches. They include such diverse artists as the Kronos Quartet, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, English folk music troubadour Martin Simpson, Pulitzer Prizewinning jazz-and-beyond visionary Henry Threadgill, the Yo-Yo Ma-led Silk Road Ensemble and the mariachi band Son de San Diego. She has also worked with famed film composer Hans Zimmer, Russian conductor Yuri Bashmet and such internationally acclaimed San Diego-based artists as Lei Liang, Steven Schick and Mark Dresser.

This year alone, Wu Man has

released two albums that further attest to her tireless devotion to exploring new creative vistas.

“Flow” teams her with Japan’s Kojiro Umezaki, a virtuoso on the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute. “Distant Mountains,” which was recorded at the 2018 Morgenland Festival in Osnabrück, Germany, is a collaboration with China’s Wu Wei, who plays a polyphonic woodwind instrument called the shen.

Much like Wu Man herself, both albums showcase music that is steeped in tradition and proudly forward-looking, building on the past to create fresh new artistic possibilities.

“If I look back on the past 30

years, I have definitely been a real workaholic,” said Wu Man, who will reunite with the Silk Road Ensemble in November.

“But it’s not intentional. It’s more that I’m driven because I don’t play a familiar instrument like the violin or piano. Because I play the pipa, an instrument from China that originated in Western and Central Asia, I needed extra time — maybe double — to work. For me, music is a lifetime process.”

That process began when she was a preteen prodigy on her lutelike instrument.

At 13, Wu Man became a student at Beijing’s prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, where she was the first person to ever earn a master’s degree in pipa. She also earned a slew of national honors. A career in China as a performer and music professor beckoned.

But a life in academia held no appeal. Neither did playing concerts that focused on traditional pipa music and left little room for innovation or bold collaborations with musicians from around the world.

Wu Man happily moved from China to Connecticut in 1990, when her husband, Peng Wang, began working on his doctorate in chemistry at Yale University in New Haven.

She laughed when asked how much English she spoke at the time.

“It was, well, zero!” Wu Man said.

“I was like: ‘OK, here we are. And if

Meet the artist Profession: Pipa music master Age: 58 Birthplace: Hangzhou, China Education: Began studying, at age 13, at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first person to ever earn a master’s degree in pipa.

Honors: Honorary Doctor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music on May 23.

Language lessons: Wu Man taught herself how to speak English by watching “I Love Lucy” and other American TV shows.

What’s next: On Feb. 11 and 12, Wu Man will be the featured soloist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

Online: wumanpipa.org

we encounter anything difficult, we’ll just go for it.’ I felt like a sponge — not only in New Haven, but in New York City, where I went every weekend for concerts and to meet friends.”

She and her husband relocated to Boston, where he had a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was there that she befriended Paris-born cello icon Yo-Yo Ma. The two performed the world premiere of composer Bright Sheng’s “Three Songs for Pipa and Violoncello” at the White House in 1999.

Wu Man and her husband became naturalized U.S. citizens in 2000, two years after the birth of their son, Vincent. They moved to Carlsbad in 2004 after her husband accepted a job here. In the years since then, her work has grown ever more daring and adventuresome.

“To me, my music is already American music — it’s part of the music of the future,” said Wu Man, who is spending part of the summer teaching in China.

“I feel like, in the future, there will be nobody to close their doors. It will definitely be about going out and creating something together. It doesn’t matter what instrument you play or if you are a painter, an actor or a dancer, we probably will work together.

“Anyone with a creative mind will always be my role model.” george.varga@sduniontribune.com

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

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SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“I’ve always felt that Japanese Americans approached adversity very well.”

K.C. ALFRED U-T; PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE JAPANESE FRIENDSHIP GARDEN

Roy Sekigahama

Volunteer usher’s first full-length play, based on his family, highlights the resilience of Japanese American people

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BY PAM KRAGEN

ver the past five years, San Diego theater audiences at hundreds of performances have found their seats with the help of Roy Sekigahama, a retired stock market researcher turned volunteer usher.

But early next year, the 63-year-old Hillcrest resident will be the guest of honor at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, which is producing the world premiere of his first full-length play, “Desert Rock Garden.” It’s the story of a young girl and an old man who form an unlikely friendship while living inside a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Sekigahama — a third-generation American whose grandparents immigrated from Japan — says the play’s characters may be fictional, but the stories that inspired it are not.

During the war, Sekigahama’s parents, aunts and uncles were all interned at the Topaz Internment Camp in Delta, Utah. Afterward, they returned to the strawberry fields where they’d worked as tenant farmers before the war. Growing up, Sekigahama said, his father and other family members didn’t dwell on their painful experiences from the camp because they couldn’t change the past. Instead they moved forward to make new memories, which he said is the Japanese way. So when writing “Desert Rock Garden,” he wanted the play to be filled with heart, humanity and even humor.

“When I think about plays I’ve seen about the camps, they were

always negative and complaining. I would like to do it from the other point of view, where you showcase something positive about my race.

In my play, I was hoping to show some resilience and how you can overcome a bad situation,” he said.

Sekigahama doesn’t remember much about his early childhood in Fremont. He was 6 years old when his father, who by that time was selling Simmons mattresses to hotels, moved their family to the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Fremont had been a largely White city, but Hawaii had a large Asian population, so for the first time in his life, Sekigahama felt like he fit in at school and in the neighborhood.

But when he was 9 years old, his

mother died, a grief that he said he never fully processed. Then when he was 12, his father moved the family — which includes an older brother and two sisters — back to Fremont.

There, he was one of only three Asian Americans in his high school, but he made many friends and doesn’t remember experiencing any discrimination. Later, he earned a degree in math and statistics from the University of California Berkeley, worked for a while as a computer programmer, and then went to graduate school, where he earned a master’s degree in business administration. After graduating, he got a temporary job in Japan working as a financial researcher for a Japanese investment banking firm that traded European stocks. He enjoyed his life there so much, he ended up staying for 18 years. When the Great Recession hit Japan in 2009, he moved back to the U.S. and took early retirement in San Diego, where his partner’s parents live.

In 2016, Sekigahama started volunteering his time at the Lambda Archives of San Diego, a collection of materials related to local LGBTQ history. Its next-door neighbor is Diversionary Theatre, where he started volunteering as well, and eventually became an usher. Later he also became an usher for the Old Globe and San Diego Symphony. In 2019, he either ushered or attended nearly 400 shows countywide.

Back in the 1980s, Sekigahama attended a playwriting class

Meet the artist Profession: Playwright, volunteer usher Age: 63 Birthplace: Fremont Big-time arts supporter: In 2019, Sekigahama attended or volunteered as an usher at nearly 400 shows in San Diego County.

What’s next: At New Village Arts, the early 2022 world premiere of “Desert Rock Garden,” directed by Albert Park

through UCLA. At the first meeting, the teacher told him and one of his Japanese American friends to drop the class because, in her experience, Asians don’t accept criticism well.

They both stayed in the class, and Sekigahama earned an A, but the teacher failed his friend after he turned in a play whose title included a slur often used to refer to Asian people.

In 2017, Sekigahama decided to try again and joined a playwriting group in San Diego, from which a number of play scripts emerged.

Since then he has written two fulllength plays and six short plays. A handful of these scripts have had readings in the past two years at local new-play festivals, including “The Ghosts From the Pali,” a semi-autobiographical play about a young boy in Hawaii who is haunted by the spirit voice of his late mother. Sekigahama said he hopes that more of his scripts will find their way to production because he feels they tell a different and important story about Japanese Americans like himself.

“I’ve always felt that Japanese Americans approached adversity very well,” he said. “When I was living in Japan during the Kobe earthquake, people would be interviewed, and instead of having all these sob stories, they would say we’re too busy to worry about these things, we need to work. They took that situation and tried to make the best of it.” pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“Early motherhood can be a very isolating experience here in the U.S. In India and Europe, there are a lot of people around, the family and the community.”

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Chitra Gopalakrishnan

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Painter explores the joys and isolation of motherhood in America and the trauma women face

BY SETH COMBS

t’s all too easy to look at the work of Chitra Gopalakrishnan and think it’s simply a bold, declarative celebration of femininity and motherhood. A vibrant mix of surrealism, portraiture and figurative styles, paintings such as “Army of One,” “The Mothers” and “Prickly Pear Cactus” work in themes of feminine resilience and strength.

Dig a little deeper, however, and the work of Gopalakrishnan, with its anthropomorphism and spiked armor imagery, reveals itself to also be working in threads of isolationism, protectionism and even the traumas that women often face.

“Early motherhood can be a very isolating experience here in the U.S.,” Gopalakrishnan says. “In India and Europe, there are a lot of people around, the family and the community.”

She points to “Prickly Pear Cactus” as an example of the dualities of her work.

“The spikes, for example, came about from really looking at the extraordinary strength motherhood brings out in women,” Gopalakrishnan says. “Motherhood is one of the most amazing experiences, but it’s also incredibly hard.

So I don’t want the painting to glorify motherhood and leave out the extraordinary sacrifices women have to make to be in that glory.”

In a country where self-sacrifice

and self-determination are as ingrained as the “Pledge of Allegiance,” it makes sense that many Americans would view maternity, and the emotions that come with it, as something that is experienced internally.

“Being a new mother, especially if you’re in the United States, it gave me a lot of content,” says Gopalakrishnan, who began painting around 2017, the time her own child turned 3 years old. “These conversations of vulnerability, of trauma, recovery and belief in yourself — some are so fundamental and basic, but they’re also extremely personal. I was trying to find a way out, how to process them and how to talk about them with the community.”

The paintings can also be seen as

an extension of Gopalakrishnan’s lifelong commitment to “design in the service of something.” She has worked as a graphic designer for most of her life, using her skills to create imagery for organizations devoted to causes such as muscular dystrophy representation and arts programs in prisons.

“Whether it’s branding, a logo, a video, my work has always been a service of something,” Gopalakrishnan says. “I love painting, but for me, it doesn’t work to be painting just for the sake of painting. I enjoy people who do that, but for me, I’m not able to function like that, because of the way I’ve been trained.”

In many ways, that training began at an early age. Gopalakrishnan grew up in India, but her family moved to Kuwait when she was 10.

With few options for higher education in Kuwait, she attended college in Paris, where she eventually received a master’s degree in graphic design. She says that the interdisciplinary program, which also emphasized animation, photography and typography, was very intense but that it helped shape her work ethic.

Still, she often felt isolated whenever she moved, and these feelings were often manifested in her creative endeavors and her eventual art practice.

“Because I’ve lived a very finite number of years in multiple places,

Meet the artist Profession: Graphic designer and artist Age: 40 Birthplace: Ahmedabad, India

Beyond art: In addition to her art and graphic design work, Gopalakrishnan cofounded Kara Weaves (karaweaves.com), a fair-trade social marketing project to promote textile weaver co-operatives in southern India.

What’s next: Just proposed a San Diego Design Week collaboration with House of Resilience, a local housing program for transgender women of color.

Online: chitraaa.com

I’ve found myself on the outside of every culture that I’m affiliated to,” says Gopalakrishnan, who moved to the U.S. in 2009 after a stint working as a graphic designer in New Delhi.

“I feel more at home here because I’ve lived here the longest. And the work is like that; the story can be about a certain person, but the experience is possibly universal. I just want to touch on that.”

Her more recent paintings were shown at a solo exhibition at Hill Street Country Club in Oceanside under the title “Augmented Realities.” Much of the works also included an accompanying AR animation feature, which she says adds “a certain amount of magic” to the viewing experience.

Wherever Gopalakrishnan takes her work next, she just hopes that it will continue to spark dialogue about topics that are too often ignored in American culture.

“There’s always a bit of anxiety and nervousness when it comes to work like this, but over time I began to hear from women who said they felt really represented in the work,” Gopalakrishnan says. “They feel like their stories are being told, because, to be honest, not a lot of the stories in my paintings are my own stories. They are my understanding of the lived experiences of the women around me.”

Combs is a freelance writer.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

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SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“I wanted to remember my life here in case we ever had to leave the country, whether it was for political reasons or just in general.”

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Beto Soto

Photographer uses his talent to share stories of undocumented immigrants in the LGBTQ+ community

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BY SETH COMBS

t’s beautiful to see what photography can do beyond just documenting. It can be a tool to remember one’s culture.”

When Beto Soto was growing up, he often reached for a camera to document his culture. To hear him tell it, it wasn’t so much to have visual reminders of milestones such as birthdays and holidays. Rather, he wanted something tangible to help him remember home in case he ever had to leave.

“I wanted to remember my life here in case we ever had to leave the country, whether it was for political reasons or just in general,” Soto remembers. “I reached for a camera for that reason: to document my life in high school and how I lived in the U.S. It just stuck with me.”

Soto was around 6 years old when his family immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. He learned of his undocumented status when, as a teenager, his father told him that college might not be an option because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. The fact that Soto was also gay only complicated matters further, and he says he often felt like he was living in “two closets.”

But he found an outlet in photography and a supportive community at the AjA Project, a local arts nonprofit devoted to serving youth in underrepresented communities. He credits his time at AjA for helping him to discover “other avenues to follow” when it came to his photog-

raphy.

“They really developed my eye when it came to documenting,” Soto says. “My focus had always been on portrait-style pictures, and it still is, but more of in a documentary way.”

This focus is on full display in his “Undocuqueer” project, a series of portraits and essays showcasing undocumented Americans within the LGBTQ+ community. After receiving his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in 2016, as well as receiving a fellowship from the Open Society Foundations, Soto began the photo series after attending conferences in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was

there that he first learned about the term “undocuqueer.”

“Before that, I really didn’t know how to explain both identities to people or even just mention that I’m both,” Soto remembers. “When I saw the work of (artist) Julio Salgado, I was fully inspired to think, ‘Hey, there’s probably more of us out there who are going through this process of finding access, even without having DACA status.’ ” The resulting photos that Soto shot once back in San Diego are, at their very essence, a boldly defiant American statement in more ways than one. The initial iteration of the “Undocuqueer” series involved Soto photographing his subjects in their home and outdoors, as well as interviewing them about their experiences living in the U.S. His intention all along was to create not only something that was educational, but also something that queer, undocumented people could see and know they’re not alone.

“There was always a long conversation about that, and everyone who got involved was clear of what the consequences might be like,” Soto continues. “I think what inspired them is for their experiences to be documented, to be heard and seen, so that it might inspire others who are also going through that … to give a blueprint of what you can do and what resources are out there while

Meet the artist Profession: Photographer Age: 27 Birthplace: Nayarit, Mexico Dreaming big: Soto initially had aspirations to be a fashion photographer, soaking up reality shows like “America’s Next Top Model.”

What’s next: He is currently working on the second issue of a zine titled “Flamboyant,” a collection of portraits and interviews with LGBTQ+ friends living through the pandemic.

Online: betosoto photo.com

you’re adapting to adulthood.”

Some of this work was featured in a pop-up exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Arts in 2018, and while Soto is currently busy on other projects, he wants to continue with the “Undocuqueer” project, possibly expanding it into films and written stories. (Full disclosure: Soto was recently picked as a contributor for The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Social Justice Reporting Project, though this article was planned before his assignment.)

“Right now, I’m looking for funding to create more work, because we need to survive as artists,” Soto says. “We want to go to L.A. and New York to expand the stories to there.”

He’s also come full circle in that he’s now an educator at the AjA Project, hoping to give back a little of what he was given when he was young.

“I feel like with AjA, it provides tools to them to explore this culture, this American culture,” Soto says.

“When I came from Mexico to the U.S., I was always questioning so much. Why do people do this? Why is this like this? It can be scary and traumatic at times, so the beautiful thing that we can do is not judge our students. Whatever they create goes, and it’s valid. We can assure them that it’s a safe space.”

Combs is a freelance writer.

E8

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“Back home, we would say the USA is the land of opportunity — the land where dreams come true.

It’s a lot of people’s dream to come here.”

Jaroslav Richters

K.C. ALFRED U-T

In the land of opportunity, a young Russian ballet dancer finds freedom on and off the stage

T

BY MICHAEL JAMES ROCHA

here’s a certain freedom that comes with stepping onto a stage — a sense of total abandon stemming from letting creative energy flow freely.

Jaroslav Richters discovered that freedom early at the age of 6. That’s when he fell in love with ballet. Even then, he knew it would play a role in his life — just how big a role, he wasn’t sure yet.

“In Russian families, it’s kind of tradition to put your kids through cultural education like music and the arts, and my mom signed me up for ballet classes,” says Richters, who has seven brothers and sisters — full and half siblings — who live in the United States, Russia and the Czech Republic.

It didn’t take long for him to realize just how much he enjoyed it all — performing onstage, making a connection with audiences, telling stories through movement.

From his home in Pilsen, Czech Republic, where he was born, Richters would go on from that first ballet class to eight years of rigorous ballet training at the Dance Conservatory in Prague, about 60 miles east of Pilsen.

There were nearly 40 students when he first began, but only 14 graduated. Richters was one of them.

“You were basically training to become a professional dancer,” he says of the diligent regimen he subscribed to while growing up.

Later, he would receive an offer he couldn’t refuse: a scholarship to the Kirov Academy of Ballet, a private school in Washington, D.C., that would pay for his tuition.

To pay for living expenses, including his dormitory, he worked at the school, cleaning studios and the cafeteria.

“Back home, we would say the

USA is the land of opportunity — the land where dreams come true.

It’s a lot of people’s dream to come here,” says Richters, who now lives in Carmel Valley. “It was exciting because it’s a whole new world.”

Richters is now 23 and living that dream — the American dream. He completed two years in the Kirov Academy’s pre-professional program and then set his sights on starting a career in ballet.

“I was auditioning for different companies around the USA,” he says. “I went to New York for auditions with companies who brought their tryouts to the East Coast.

Then I researched companies all over the country and found one in San Diego, and they took me on.”

That company was City Ballet of San Diego, where he was brought on as an apprentice two years ago and last year was promoted to company member. Like many in the performing arts, Richters found his career stalled by the coronavirus pandemic. As the arts world slowly reopens —

City Ballet has some summer performances planned — he’s choosing to look ahead and not dwell too much on what he and countless artists like him lost this past year.

“With COVID, it was pretty challenging, but we pushed through,” says Richters, referring to City Ballet.

Under the leadership of artistic director Steven Wistrich and resident choreographers Elizabeth Wistrich and Geoff Gonzalez, the company regrouped last year and, with the aid of new technology and professional filmmaking equipment, produced numerous online shows, including the worldpremiere production of “Raymonda,” which closed its 2020-21 season, aptly titled “Season Like No Other.”

“For me, the last year was hard, but we are almost back,” he says.

“Soon we’ll be able to do what we love and missed.”

And what exactly did he miss?

“For me,” Richters says, “mainly, it’s the ability to perform onstage and experiencing that most enjoyable and rewarding moment when people are cheering and responding to what you’re doing onstage. I miss that.”

The past 14 months forced many performing artists to step out of their comfort zone. And that included Richters.

“It took lots of training alone at home in your kitchen — or wherever you could find space — to stay in shape and improving to keep up your technique,” he says, “and make sure that we continue to commit to doing what we love. We have to keep pushing because it’s an important part of our nature as humans — to keep pushing through.”

There have been glimpses of the performing arts returning here

Meet the artist Profession: Company member, City Ballet of San Diego Age: 23 Birthplace: Pilsen, Czech Republic Achievements: In 2018, he competed in the Tanzolymp International Festival in Berlin and captured third prize in the Classical Pas de Deux category.

He was a finalist that same year in the Youth America Grand Prix in New York and the Korean International Ballet Competition.

Why “The Nutcracker” is a favorite: “It was one of the first ballets I danced as a kid back in Pilsen, and here in the USA, it is a big tradition for most of the ballet companies to have ‘Nutcracker’ in their seasons.” It’s special, he says, because that’s when “families, which usually do not go to see ballet, come and enjoy our performances.”

When he’s not dancing: When he’s not performing ballet, Richters can be found hiking or skiing — basically anything that allows him to “spend time in nature.” He’s also busy honing his photography and video skills.

What’s next: City Ballet’s “On the Move,” 7:30 p.m.

July 23-24 at the Horton Grand Theatre Online: Instagram: @j.richters_photography; cityballet.org

and there — like last winter’s outdoor ballet production at the Del Mar Fairgrounds titled “A Masquerade Nutcracker,” which was performed live and filmed for streaming.

Richters danced two roles in “A Masquerade Nutcracker” and, with Gonzalez, helped film the production. Richters, Gonzalez said last December, was his “No. 1” when it came to managing multiple camera shots.

Like many performing artists, Richters quickly discovered that shifting to filmed productions presented its own set of challenges: “You are dancing for yourself with no feedback from an audience, and we judge ourselves very harshly,” Richters, whose long list of interests include photography and surfing, told the Union-Tribune last December.

“Not every step is perfect, so we edit how we want it to look. At some point, you start to get tired, so you have to make yourself do it perfectly the first or second time.”

For now, Richters is counting the days until he and his fellow dancers can return to the stage.

Will there be nerves?

“I think everyone gets nervous to some extent,” he says. “I’ve learned to transform that nervousness into excitement. ... It’s not good to go nervous onstage, so you find ways to turn that into something else — something positive.”

On this Independence Day, Richters is grateful for what America offers artists like himself.

“I didn’t come from a place of freedom like America.”

A place like America, where he’s free to pursue his dreams — on and off the stage. michael.rocha@sduniontribune.com

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

E9

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

★ ★ ★ THE AMERICAN ARTIST ★ ★ ★

“It’s very important that everything I do has an intention and that my values, morals and principles are reflected in my art and whatever I devote my energy to.”

Brisa Lauren

K.C. ALFRED U-T

Musician and community organizer will head the San Diego Black Workers Center when it opens in August

M

BY GEORGE VARGA

aking music and engaging in social and political activism are vital equals for Brisa Lauren, who is blossoming anew as both a singer-songwriter and a devoted champion for equality.

“They go hand in hand for me,” said the San Diego native, who is the statewide civic engagement director for the United Domestic Workers and a 2021 San Diego Music Awards nominee.

“For me, it’s very important that everything I do has an intention and that my values, morals and principles are reflected in my art and whatever I devote my energy to.”

Music preceded activism by nearly two decades for this 33-yearold singer-songwriter. The daughter of a Black father and Latina mother, Lauren grew up in North Park and Mira Mesa.

She began performing in choirs as a child and immediately felt comfortable being in the spotlight.

Thanks to her father’s work as a freelance music producer, Lauren was able to observe R&B recording sessions here firsthand. Her epiphany came in 2004 when she heard Lauryn Hill’s landmark 1998 solo debut album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”

“I was 16 and had been onstage for years but had never written my own songs until I heard ‘Miseducation,’ ” recalled Lauren, who does

not use her full name, Brisa Lauren Johnson, for her musical pursuits.

“Lauryn Hill’s lyrics and the rawness of what she was saying, on top of her vocals and live instrumentation, really pushed me to use music as a form of common expression. Of course, when I started, my songs were not extremely mature.

But then I began working with different rhyme structures, melodies and harmonies.”

From 2014 to last year, Lauren was in the Kendrick Dial-led San Diego band The Lyrical Groove, which won a 2013 San Diego Music Award in the Best Hip-Hop category. She released her accomplished debut solo album, “In Her Stillness,” last November.

“The coronavirus pandemic

slowed us down and The Lyrical Groove had to cancel shows we had booked,” Lauren said.

“But I had already been working on a solo project and looking to finally release my songs and create my own vision. So, when our shows got canceled, it gave me more energy to put my time into my first solo project. Once that came out, I realized I really loved being the architect of my own sound and my own art.”

Her interest in social and political issues started in 2010, when she was a student at Mesa College.

Lauren was pregnant at the time with her son, Josiah, now 11.

“I decided to take a class called ‘The Black Family,’ and it opened up my mind to the truth about my Black history that the K-to-12 school system didn’t teach me,” she recalled.

“I decided to take every Black studies class I could, including one called ‘Black Politics,’ and I kind of accidentally ended up getting an associate degree in African-American/Black studies.”

Lauren enrolled at Point Loma Nazarene University in 2012, a year before she began working as a community outreach organizer for United Domestic Workers. She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from PLNU in 2014.

From 2015 to 2017, Lauren was the civic engagement manager for Alliance San Diego, a community empowerment organization that

Meet the artist Profession: Musician and community organizer Age: 33 Birthplace: San Diego First band: The Lyrical Groove (2014-2020) Education: Associate degree in African American/Black studies from Mesa College (2012); bachelor’s degree in political science and government from Point Loma Nazarene University (2014) Debut solo album: “In Her Stillness” (2020) Early start: Her passion for performing began when she was 3 years old and started singing along to “The Little Mermaid” as she swung her arms and flipped her hair. “That’s when my family knew I wanted to be a singer.”

What’s next: Public debut as a solo artist at the San Diego Music Awards on Aug. 24 Online: brisalauren. com/this-is-brisa

promotes justice and social change by building coalitions.

She became the statewide civic engagement director for United Domestic Workers in 2017. In August, Lauren will become the director of nascent San Diego Black Workers Center. On Aug. 24, she will make her public debut as a solo artist at this year’s edition of the San Diego Music Awards at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay. She is nominated in the Best R&B, Funk or Soul Album category.

“San Diego has given so much to me, and now I’m raising my own family here. So to be acknowledged and nominated for this award means a lot to me because this is home,” Lauren said. “Music is the release for me. It’s a way of breathing that builds the fire for me to go into the next day and do the work I do.

“I believe that music and art have been used for so long as an accessory to social and political movements. Film, music, poetry, painting, dance, theater are not cultural ‘accessories.’ They are anchors. They motivate people to change their perspectives and ideologies, to open up their minds and plant seeds for positive change.

“That’s why I want whatever I do to have a sense of purpose that is rooted in something that is authentic to me.” george.varga@sduniontribune.com

E10

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

WHAT’S NEW

“Dead by Dawn” by Paul Doiron (Minotaur): Over the years, “dangerous people have tried and failed to murder me,” says Maine game warden Mike Bowditch. But this investigation “may be the way it ends.” In a breathtaking opening scene, Bowditch’s jeep is snared by spikes deliberately set on a treacherous cliff road. The jeep plummets into the frozen Androscoggin River. The story cuts between Bowditch trying to survive the night while getting chased through the wilderness (“an obstacle course” of deadwood, ice jams and glacial boulders) and the events that may have set up his death by dawn. This novel is a tour de force of energy, plotting and pulse-racing suspense.

“Walking Through Needles” by Heather Levy (Polis): Eric Walker doesn’t want to relive the day in 1994 when he walked “deep into the woods” in Oklahoma wielding a knife, yet the memory comes in “white flashes of fear.” He hears Sam, his stepsister, sobbing, sees the “gushing blood.” Many of their wounds have healed, but scars remain — that is, until 2009, when the police find Sam’s stepfather’s white Chevy pickup submerged in a pond. Eric and Sam’s shared secrets and their dark childhoods are slowly laid bare. Eric “fit the narrative of the troubled son,” and Sam wants to save him.

“Walking Through Needles” is an astonishing debut that openly explores sexual violence and its legacies on a woman’s body and her mind.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS Fiction 1. “The President’s Daughter”

by Bill Clinton and James Patterson (Little, Brown) 2. “The Maidens” by Alex Michaelides (Celadon) 3. “The Last Thing He Told Me”

by Laura Dave (Simon & Schuster) 4. “Sooley” by John Grisham (Doubleday) 5. “Golden Girl” by Elin Hilderbrand (Little, Brown) 6. “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig (Viking) 7. “Malibu Rising” by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine) 8. “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir (Ballantine) 9. “The Other Black Girl” by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria) 10. “Tom Clancy: Target Acquired”

by Don Bentley (Putnam)

Nonfiction 1. “Killing the Mob”

by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (St. Martin’s) 2. “Live Your Life”

by Amanda Kloots with Anna Kloots (Harper) 3. “The Bomber Mafia”

by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown) 4. “Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey (Crown) 5. “What Happened to You?”

by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey (Flatiron) 6. “The Premonition” by Michael Lewis (Norton) 7. “In the Heights: Finding Home”

by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes and Jeremy McCarter (Random House) 8. “How the Word is Passed”

by Clint Smith (Little, Brown) 9. “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle (Dial) 10. “On Juneteenth”

by Annette Gordon-Reed (Liveright)

WARWICK’S TOP SELLERS 1. “Malibu Rising” by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2. “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman 3. “The Beekeeper of Aleppo” by Christy Lefteri 4. “The Maidens” by Alex Michaelides 5. “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell

CALENDAR MYSTERIOUS GALAXY, (619) 539-7137 Online: mystgalaxy.com Virtual event with Laura Sebastian (“Half Sick of Shadows”) in conversation with Alexandra Bracken (“Lore”), 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Virtual event with Elizabeth Lim (“Six Crimson Cranes”) in conversation with Namina Forna (“The Gilded Ones”), 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Virtual event with Max Barry (“The 22 Murders of Madison May”) in conversation with David Yoon, 7 p.m. Thursday.

Virtual event with Neil Sharpson (“When the Sparrow Falls”) in conversation with Cory Doctorow, 2 p.m.

Saturday.

SAN DIEGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, (619) 236-5800 Online: sandiego.librarymarket.com/events Virtual event with R.D. Kardon (“Angel Flight”), 2 p.m.

Saturday. Registration required.

WARWICK’S, (858) 454-0347 Online: warwicks.com Virtual event with J’nell Ciesielski (“The Ice Swan”) in conversation with Rachel Mcmillan, 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Virtual event, in partnership with Harper Collins, with Christina Baker Kline (“The Exiles”) in conversation with host John Searles and other guests, 4 p.m.

Wednesday.

Virtual event with Connor Sullivan (“Sleeping Bear”) in conversation with Matthew Quirk, 4 p.m. Thursday.

LAUREL SAGER

Nathan Harris, author of “The Sweetness of Water,” deftly explores hope and conflicts arising from sudden freedom.

‘Sweetness of Water’ is a stunning debut Mourning father and two newly freed men try to find their way in the American South

BY RON CHARLES

‘T

he Sweetness of Water,” the latest Oprah’s Book Club pick, unfolds in Georgia during the murky twilight of the Civil War. Union soldiers have marched through the state telling enslaved Black people they’re free, but that freedom exists in the ruins of a White society seething with resentment, determined to maintain its superiority.

That this powerful book is Nathan Harris’ debut novel is remarkable; that he’s only 29 is miraculous. His prose is burnished with an antique patina that evokes the mid-19th century. And he explores this liminal moment in our history with extraordinary sensitivity to the range of responses from Black and White Americans contending with a revolutionary ideal of personhood.

The story opens in a fugue of mourning. George Walker is wandering through his 200-acre wood. A Northerner brought to Georgia decades ago as a child, George never developed any sympathy for the Southern cause. But the end of the War Between the States brings him no joy. He’s just received word that his only son, who enlisted with the Confederacy, was killed in the final weeks of battle. He reportedly died in a moment of panic, running “toward the Union line as though they might pity his screams of terror, might see him through the glut of smoke and grant his surrender and not shoot him down with the rest.”

Now the father’s shame is compounded. “Who was the bigger coward,” he wonders, “the boy for dying without courage, or George for not being able to tell the boy’s own mother that she would never see her son again?”

RECOMMENDED READS

“The Sweetness of Water”

by Nathan Harris (Little, Brown, 2021; 363 pages) Just as George realizes that he’s somehow become lost on his own property, he runs into two Black men, Landry and Prentiss, brothers born and raised on a neighbor’s farm.

Far from town, it’s a tense encounter, neither side knowing what to expect from the other. The Black men have been so recently freed that they still reflexively identify themselves by their owner.

“We’re Mr. Morton’s,” one of them announces. “Well, was.”

“You could go anywhere,” George tells the brothers.

“We plan to,” Prentiss says.

“It’s just nice.”

“What’s that?”

“To be left alone for a time,” Prentiss says. “Ain’t that why you’re out here yourself, Mr. Walker?”

In this strange collision of bereavement and emancipation, an unlikely friendship germinates. George is desperate to distract himself from the death of his only child. After years of leisurely isolation, he craves a project, something to

leave behind as evidence of his own existence. And so, in that moment, he conceives a bold plan to begin peanut farming, and he will hire these two freedmen to work for him.

For their part, the brothers have no intention of remaining in this place stained with bondage. “Their lives could now begin,” the narrator says, “and it was time to craft them in whatever way they saw fit.” But Harris gives a visceral sense of the complications of liberty.

Landry and Prentiss have never traveled outside the boundaries of Mr. Morton’s farm. They have no map, no food, no friends and no expectation of employment in a ruined state already awash with idled Confederate soldiers. What’s worse, Mr. Morton routinely beat Landry so brutally that the young man is now mute. He’s a striking example of Harris’ ability to suggest the vast canvas of trauma with just the careful depiction of one man’s ordeal.

Caught in the extremity of their sudden freedom, Prentiss and Landry reluctantly agree to work for George on his quixotic peanut farm. All of this is drawn with gorgeous fidelity to these cautious characters, struggling to remake the world, or at least this little patch of it.

Prentiss is determined that he and his brother shall not fall victim to the old model of exploitation. And George imagines that he can, through the force of his own idealism, create an oasis based on the principle of a living wage offered without regard to the color of a man’s skin.

If George is naive, there’s nothing naive about Nathan Harris or the story he tells.

Much of the early section of the novel explores the way the loss of their son drives George and his wife into separate silos of grief. The labor that offers

solace to George is not available to his wife, who must simply endure the pain alone.

But “The Sweetness of Water” quickly accelerates beyond the Walkers’ lamentation or Prentiss’ satisfaction with his new employer. And soon Harris weaves in another dramatic subplot involving the clandestine affection of two former Confederate soldiers, who have no context in which to understand their desires nor any opportunity to express their love openly.

Harris stacks the kindling of this plot deliberately, and the moment a spark alights, the whole structure begins to burn hot. Old secrets and passions reassert themselves, and George learns that his determination to treat a pair of Black men with respect is an affront that his neighbors cannot abide.

What’s most impressive about Harris’ novel is how he attends to the lives of these peculiar people while capturing the tectonic tensions at play in the American South. In scenes set in town, we see that even as Union military administrators try to assert their control, defeated White Georgians are already conspiring to reconstruct the old racial hierarchy through a system of slave wages and vigilante justice. Then, as now, horrible compromises are tolerated in the name of a peace that is no peace for some.

As an author, Harris eventually exercises a kind of fiery Old Testament justice, which is at once satisfying and terrifying. But if this is an era — and a genre — that has no room for encouragement, “The Sweetness of Water” is finally willing to carve out a little oasis of hope.

Charles writes for The Washington Post.

Welcome to our literary circle, in which San Diegans pass the (printed) word on books

Melissa Giffen

Seth Marko

Job: Youth Services Librarian, Scripps Miramar Ranch Library, San Diego Public Library

Job: Owner, The Book Catapult

She recommends: “See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love” by Valarie Kaur (One World, 2020; 389 pages) Why? Valarie Kaur’s gift for words and storytelling are used to deliver a powerful and timely memoir about being an American Sikh from California’s Central Valley who discovers and uses her own voice to fight against injustice and hatred following 9/11. From a college road trip to capture the post-9/11 Sikh experience in film, to activism and protests, to beyond law school, Kaur has deeply connected with questions about citizenship, racism and communal love while grappling with the best and worst of the American experience. Along her journey, she’s developed what she calls her “manifesto of revolutionary love” — based in a love for others, opponents and ourselves that can transform our communities through wonder, care and resilience. Kaur’s intimate look inside her own story — coupled with her practical and compassionate teachings — leaves readers feeling connected to, and inspired by, the storyteller.

He recommends: “Summer Solstice” by Nina MacLaughlin (Black Sparrow Press, 2020; 72 pages) Why? Who doesn’t love summer?

We’re just a bit past the solstice now, with days at their longest as we reach the furthest point from the darkness of winter. Days of corn on the cob, sand between the toes, fireflies, ice cream, summer camp. Nina MacLaughlin, author of the excellent memoir “Hammer Head” and the novel “Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung,” has put together a gem of a little book — just 60 pages of concise, languid, beautiful prose: a meditation on all things summer. A pocket-size beauty with French flaps and a letter press cover, published by the equally excellent and tiny Black Sparrow Press. One of those books that will surprise and delight as you stretch out in your hammock with your lemonade for the afternoon.

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

E11

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

POEM

MY COUNTRY, WHAT OF THEE (A LIFE IN RHYME)

By George Constantine Silides Sr. Liberty’s light did shine on Emma’s words Her beacon sent them far and wide And so two souls did heed the call She from women held in thrall, and thus decried He from strife that Europe’s hatreds had inspired Citizens of this great land they did become They and their neighbors, every one Poor they were in assets gold But the air of freedom made them bold And so this writer was begun Whose tale herein is lightly spun Part of each day my father with me did spend While mother both of us with love did tend Read! Read! My father to me did rail Here, grit plus knowledge cannot fail And so I did, much to my joy Plus wits about me that I did employ Church, home and school were my domain Good years they were, but not again When upon our World war’s terror did descend With kith and kin, America we swore ever to defend A man did I become in time Joys and sorrows, both were mine I labored here, I labored there As need and fortune did declare Small fame was mine from time to time And just as quickly gone from mind Upon me many years have now been heaped And such knowing that I had has all been reaped My small mark I’d placed upon the world

CAKEWATCH Today: Actor Eva Marie Saint is 97. Actor Gina Lollobrigida is 94. Actor Ed Bernard (“Police Woman,” “White Shadow”) is 82. Actor Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu in “It’s A Wonderful Life”) is 81.

Singer Annette Beard of Martha and the Vandellas is 78. TV personality Geraldo Rivera is 78. Percussionist Ralph Johnson of Earth, Wind and Fire is 70.

Percussionist Domingo Ortiz of Widespread Panic is 69. Singer John Waite is 69. Guitarist Kirk Pengilly of INXS is 63.

Steel guitarist Teddy Carr (Ricochet) is 61. DJ Zonka (Big Audio Dynamite) is 59. Singer Michael Sweet of Stryper is 58. Bassist Matt Malley (Counting Crows) is 58. Actor Tracy Letts (“Homeland”) is 56. Actor-comedian Al Madrigal (“Gary Unmarried,” “The Daily Show”) is 50. Actor John Lloyd Young (“Jersey Boys”) is 46. Singer Stephen “Ste” McNally of BBMak is 43. Actor Becki Newton (“Ugly Betty”) is 43.

Actor Mo McRae (“Sons of Anarchy”) is 39. Reality star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino (“Jersey Shore”) is 39. Singer Melanie Fiona is 38.

Monday: Musician Robbie Robertson is 78. Musician Huey Lewis is 71. Country keyboardist Charles Ventre of River Road is 69. Singer Marc Cohn is 62.

Actor Dorien Wilson (“The Parkers,” “Sister, Sister”) is 59. Actor Edie Falco (“Nurse Jackie,” “The Sopranos”) is 58.

Actor Kathryn Erbe (“Law and Order: Criminal Intent”) is 56. Rapper RZA of Wu-Tang Clan is 52. Singer Joe is 48.

Drummer Bengt Lagerberg of The Cardigans is 48. Rapper Bizarre of D12 is 45. Rapper Royce da 5’9” is 44.

Musician Jason Wade of Lifehouse is 41.

Musician Dave Haywood of Lady A is 39. Bassist Nick O’Malley of Arctic Monkeys is 36. Actor Jason Dolley (“Cory in the House”) is 30.

Tuesday: Singer Gene Chandler is 81.

Country singer Jeannie Seely is 81.

Actor Burt Ward (“Batman”) is 76. Actor Fred Dryer is 75. Actor Sylvester Stallone is 75. Actor Shelley Hack (TV’s “Charlie’s Angels”) is 74. Actor Allyce Beasley (“Moonlighting”) is 70. Actor Geoffrey Rush is 70. Actor Grant Goodeve (“Eight is Enough”) is 69.

Singer Nanci Griffith is 68. Jazz trumpeter Rick Braun is 66. Actor Casey Sander (“Grace Under Fire”) is 66.

Actor Jennifer Saunders (“Absolutely Fabulous”) is 63. Drummer John Keeble of Spandau Ballet is 62. Actor Pip Torrens (“The Crown”) is 61. Actor Brian Posehn (“Just Shoot Me”) is 55. Actor Robb Derringer (“Days of Our Lives”) is 54. “CBS This Morning” co-host John Dickerson is 53. Rapper Inspectah Deck of Wu-Tang Clan is 51. NBC Sports correspondent and former “Good Morning America” host Josh Elliott is 50. Rapper 50 Cent is 46. Actors Tia and Tamera (“Sister, Sister”) are 43. Comedian Kevin Hart is 42.

Drummer Chris Wood of Bastille is 36. Actor Jeremy Suarez (“Bernie Mac”) is 31.

Wednesday: Bandleader Doc Severinsen is 94. Drummer Ringo Starr is 81.

Singer-guitarist Warren Entner of the Grass Roots is 78. Actor Joe Spano is 75. Singer David Hodo (the construction worker) of The Village People is 74.

Country singer Linda Williams is 74.

Actor Shelley Duvall is 72. Actor Roz

Theater Notebook and Virtually Speaking will return next week.

GETTY IMAGES

Peace now would be my lot, so I was told Not yet! Not yet! The Furies cried For in our Land much mischief does betide Hatred and division their ugly heads do rear Here in this Land I hold so dear My God, your God, his God, theirs This I hear mid wrath and bile Thus His good name they do revile My skin, your skin, his skin, theirs This and more do many blare Where is the brotherhood we were to share?

Lawlessness and riot now run wild And Liberty to do is thus defiled The Flag I did, and still salute A rag it is to loutish brute I fain would hide from this assault But that is not the way I have been taught So now, my friends, for me do pray As I go, again, to face the fray George Constantine Silides Sr., a civil engineer and former Alaska state senator, now lives with his wife, Dorothy, in Escondido. He is 99.

Ryan (“Amen”) is 70. Actor Billy Campbell (“Once and Again”) is 62.

Bassist Mark White of the Spin Doctors is 59. Singer-songwriter Vonda Shepard (“Ally McBeal”) is 58. Comedian Jim Gaffigan is 55. Bassist Ricky Kinchen of Mint Condition is 55. Actor Amy Carlson (“Blue Bloods”) is 53. Actor Jorja Fox (“CSI”) is 53. Actor Cree Summer (“A Different World”) is 52. Actor Kirsten Vangsness (“Criminal Minds”) is 49.

Actor Troy Garity (“Barbershop”) is 48.

Actor Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”) is 45.

Actor Hamish Linklater (“The New Adventures of Old Christine”) is 45.

Rapper Cassidy is 39. Actor Ross Malinger (“Sleepless in Seattle”) is 37.

Comedian Luke Null (“Saturday Night Live”) is 31. Singer Ally Hernandez of Fifth Harmony (“The X Factor”) is 28.

Drummer Ashton Irwin of 5 Seconds of Summer is 27. Country singer Maddie Marlow of Maddie and Tae is 26.

Thursday: Singer Steve Lawrence is 86.

Drummer Jaimoe Johanson of The Allman Brothers is 77. Actor Jeffrey Tambor is 77. Actor Kim Darby is 74.

Actor Jonelle Allen (“Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”) is 73. Children’s singer Raffi is 73. Actor Anjelica Huston is 70.

Actor Kevin Bacon is 63. Country singer Toby Keith is 60. Guitarist Graham Jones of Haircut 100 is 60. Keyboardist Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode is 60.

Singer Joan Osborne is 59. Actor Rocky Carroll (“NCIS”) is 58. Actor Michael B. Silver (“Instinct,” “NYPD Blue”) is 54.

Actor Billy Crudup (“Almost Famous”) is 53. Actor Michael Weatherly (“NCIS,” “Dark Angel”) is 53. Singer Beck is 51.

Country singer Drew Womack of Sons of the Desert is 51. Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco is 48. Guitarist Stephen Mason of Jars of Clay is 46. Actor Milo Ventimiglia (“This Is Us,” “Gilmore Girls”) is 44. Actor Lance Gross (“House of Payne”) is 40. Actor Sophia Bush (“Chicago P.D.,” “One Tree Hill”) is 39. Guitarist Jamie Cook of Arctic Monkeys is 36. Actor Maya Hawke (“Little Women,” “Stranger Things”) is 23. Actor Jaden Smith (“The Pursuit of Happyness”) is 23.

Friday: Singer-actor Ed Ames of The Ames Brothers is 94. Actor Richard Roundtree is 79. Singer Dee Dee Kenniebrew of The Crystals is 76. Actor Chris Cooper is 70. TV personalityturned-musician John Tesh is 69.

Country singer David Ball is 68. Business leader Kevin O’Leary (“Shark

Tank”) is 67. Singer Debbie Sledge of Sister Sledge is 67. Actor Jimmy Smits is 66. Actor Tom Hanks is 65. Singer Marc Almond of Soft Cell is 64. Actor Kelly McGillis is 64. Singer Jim Kerr of Simple Minds is 63. Singer Courtney Love is 57. Bassist Frank Bello of Anthrax is 56. Actor David O’Hara (“The District”) is 56. Actor Pamela Adlon (“Louie”) is 55. Actor Scott Grimes (“ER,” “Party of Five”) is 50.

Musician Jack White is 46. Singerguitarist Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse is 46. Actor Fred Savage is 45. Singer Dan Estrin of Hoobastank is 45. Actor Linda Park (“Star Trek: Enterprise”) is 43. Singer-actor Kiely Williams of 3LW (“Cheetah Girls” films) is 35. Actor Mitchel Musso (“Phineas and Ferb,” “Hannah Montana”) is 30. Actor Georgie Henley (“The Chronicles of Narnia”) is 26.

Saturday: Actor William Smithers (“Dallas,” “Peyton Place”) is 94. Singer Mavis Staples is 82. Actor Mills Watson (“B.J. and the Bear,” “Lobo”) is 81.

Actor Robert Pine (“CHiPS”) is 80.

Guitarist Jerry Miller of Moby Grape is 78. Folk singer Arlo Guthrie is 74.

Bassist Dave Smalley of The Raspberries is 72. Singer Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is 67. Banjo player Bela Fleck of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is 63. Actor Fiona Shaw (“True Blood,” “Harry Potter” films) is 63. Drummer Shaw Wilson of BR549 is 61. Country singer Ken Mellons is 56. Guitarist Peter DiStefano of Porno for Pyros is 56. Actor Alec Mapa (“Ugly Betty,” “Half & Half”) is 56.

Actor Gale Harold (“Hellcats”) is 52.

Country singer Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts is 51.

Actor Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”) is 49.

Singer Imelda May is 47. Actor Adrian Grenier (“Entourage,” “Cecil B. DeMented”) is 45. Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) is 44. Actor Gwendoline Yeo (“Desperate Housewives”) is 44. Actor Thomas Ian Nicholas (“American Pie”) is 41. Singer Jessica Simpson is 41. Bassist John Spiker of Filter is 40. Actor Heather Hemmens (“Hellcats”) is 37. Rappersinger Angel Haze is 30. Singer Perrie Edwards of Little Mix is 28.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WATCH THE

TONIGHT 8PM KATHLEEN BADE RAOUL MARTINEZ

E12

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

challenge when the restaurant is closed for Chef Ramsay’s daughter’s 21st birthday party.

BEST B ETS Sunday “Barbary Coast”: getTV, 5 p.m. Six years after making his intergalactic name as Captain Kirk on the original “Star Trek,” William Shatner traded his green commanderclass shirt for an armoire full of outfits on the 1975-76 series “Barbary Coast.” Shatner plays undercover government agent Jeff Cable on the Western dramedy, donning countless getups as he attempts to clean up the famed San Francisco den of thieves in the late 19th century, one fake nose at a time. “On paper, it looked really good — all those disguises, and different characters,” recalls the now 90-year-old Shatner.

“And indeed it was — for a while.” When ABC canceled the series after 13 episodes, “there was a collective sigh of relief,” Shatner admits. Although it took his skin weeks to heal from the prosthetics, he has fond memories. “Running to set, and everybody laughing, applauding or whistling, gave me more energy than I should have had.”

“Baywatch”: H&I, 6 p.m. From 1990, it’s the series’ biggest shocker: Lifeguard Jill (Shawn Weatherly) is attacked when a sleazy restaurant owner sponsors a shark derby — and the beaches remain open.

“Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular”: NBC, 8 p.m.

Live (tape delayed). This 45th annual celebration returns after a “reimagined” version due to the pandemic last year.

The event will once again illuminate the Big Apple skyline with an electrifying light show full of bursting colors and jubilant music. This year, the celebration is honoring America’s everyday heroes from across the country and the resilient spirit within us all.

For the first time in Macy’s Fireworks history, a drone light show will be featured. Renée Elise Goldsberry and Ryan Eggold host the event. Performers that were announced

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ABC CBS NBC FOX CW MYTV KPBS KUSI UCSD AZTC TELE UNIV A&E AMC ANIM BET BRAVO

CMT COM CTN DISC E! ESPN

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“Mental Samurai”: Fox, 9 p.m. Tuesday Host Rob Lowe welcomes a valedictorian, a former NFL player, an Army veteran, a CEO and a veterinarian to take the Circle of Samurai challenge in tonight’s new episode.

at press time are Blake Shelton, Jonas Brothers, Black Pumas, Coldplay, OneRepublic and Reba McEntire. The event runs two hours; an hourlong encore presentation will immediately follow.

“A Capitol Fourth 2021”: KPBS, 8 p.m. Live (tape delayed). Celebrate America’s 245th birthday with a starstudded musical extravaganza.

The 41st edition of this Independence Day celebration features performances by top stars from pop, country, R&B, classical and Broadway, capped off with patriotic classics and a spectacular fireworks display over the iconic Washington, D.C., skyline. An encore presentation immediately follows.

“The One and Only Dick Gregory”: Showtime, 9 p.m.

Kevin Hart and Lena Waithe are executive producers of this documentary feature about comedy legend and activist Dick Gregory. Featuring archival footage of his early career as a comedian, the film is

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bookended with Gregory’s own voice just before his death in 2017, reflecting on the impact of his life on the world as a self-described “agitator.” Hart, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes, W. Kamau Bell and others discuss Gregory’s paradigm-shifting significance on the art of comedy and culture. The film features original music by Black Thought of the Grammywinning hip-hop band the Roots.

before getting there, you need to start at the beginning with “The Godfather” (1972) starring Marlon Brando, followed by “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) with Pacino in the lead, then “Coda” in prime time.

Monday “The Godfather” Marathon: AMC, beginning at 1 p.m. This 12-hour classic film marathon includes the AMC premiere of “The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone” (2020), Francis Ford Coppola’s remastering of his 1990 “The Godfather, Part III.” Coppola’s newest take opens in Italy with Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) meeting up with the archbishop to legitimize his family and their reputation, and includes several other tweaks to the original. But

9:00

9:30

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“All American”: The CW, 8 p.m. Ready to get out of town for a few days, Spencer (Daniel Ezra), Olivia (Samantha Logan), Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) and Simone (guest star Geffri Maya) decide to visit Simone’s aunt Amara (guest star Kelly Jenrette) at her HBCU in Atlanta, where she is a journalism professor.

While enjoying herself, Simone has a run-in with a star baseball athlete named Damon (guest star Peyton Alex Smith), who she learns has his own reasons for being on campus.

Meanwhile, Amara is on to a big story involving her college and takes a risk that could make her unpopular.

“Hell’s Kitchen: Young Guns”: Fox, 8 p.m. In the new episode “A Ramsay Birthday in Hell!,” the chefs take on a new type of

10:30

11:00

11:30

The Chase Three new contes- To Tell the Truth Angela 10News at Sports XTRA tants compete.

Kinsey; Alyssa Edwards.

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Movie: “Uncle Drew” (5:30) Movie: “Boo! A Madea Halloween” ›› (2016, Comedy) Tyler Perry. Madea Martin (CC) Martin “Holi- Martin (CC) ›› (2018) Kyrie Irving. (CC) fends off ghosts, ghouls and zombies on Halloween. (PG-13) (CC) day Blues” Movie: “American Pie” (6:00) Movie: “American Pie 2” ›› (2001) Jason Biggs. Friends Movie: “American Wedding” (10:02) ›› (2003, Comedy) rent a summerhouse on Lake Michigan and chase girls. (R) Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan. (R) (CC) ››› (1999) Jason Biggs.

Movie: “Ghostbusters” ››› (1984, Comedy) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd.

Movie: “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” ›› (1994, Comedy) “Ace VenFour paranormal investigators battle mischievous ghouls. (PG) (CC) Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox. (PG-13) (CC) tura” Movie: “We’re the Millers” Movie: “Just Go With It” ›› (2011, Romance-Comedy) Adam Sandler, South Park South Park South Park (5:30) ›› (2013) (R) (CC) Jennifer Aniston. A man’s careless lie spins out of control. (PG-13) (CC) “More Crap” “Board Girls” (CC) County Connection County Connection Board of Supervisors

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Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives The Great Food Truck Race Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives “Summer Spectacular” (CC) “Delivery Nightmare” (N) “Fun in the Sun” (CC) Funky joints in New Orleans.

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Crime “Little Boy Lost” sor is gunned down.

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“Execution Enigma” (CC) Yellowstone (6:48) “Resur- Yellowstone (7:55) John and Yellowstone The Duttons Yellowstone The feud with Movie: “Open Range” ››› PARMT rection Day” (CC) Rip seek revenge. (CC) gear up for a final fight. the Becks comes to a head. (2003) Robert Duvall.

Movie: “1776” (7:15) ››› (1972, Musical Comedy) William Daniels, Howard da Silva. A Movie: “Mockery” (10:15) › (1927, Drama) “Paris, TexTCM song-filled portrait of America’s founding fathers. (PG) (CC) Lon Chaney, Ricardo Cortez. (NR) as” (1984) Movie: “Star Wars: Return Movie: “Star Wars: Return of Movie: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ››› (2015, Science Fiction) Harrison Ford, TNT of the Jedi” (10:58) ››› the Jedi” (5:02) ››› (PG) Mark Hamill. Han Solo and his allies face a new threat from Kylo Ren. (PG-13) (CC) Mountain Monsters “The Mountain Monsters A mon- Mountain Monsters The team Mountain Monsters “By the Mountain Monsters “Enter TRAVEL Wolves of West Virginia” ster lurks in Tygart Valley. tracks a beast. (N) Fire: The Grassman” (N) The Dark Forest” (CC) Law & Order: Special Vic- Law & Order: Special Vic- Law & Order: Special Vic- Law & Order: Special Vic- Law & Order: Special VicUSA tims Unit “Forgiving Rollins” tims Unit “Imposter” tims Unit “Broken Rhymes” tims Unit “Next Chapter” tims Unit (CC)

FOOD

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives “All-American All-Stars” Movie: “Captain America: The First Avenger” (5:15) Home Town Ben and Erin re-imagine damaged home.

America the Story of Us The rise of modern cities. (CC) Chicago Fire Cruz decides to make a confession. (CC) Academic League

“Shark Beach With Chris Hemsworth”: Nat Geo, 9 p.m.

This one-hour SharkFest special follows actor Chris Hemsworth as he uncovers the science of shark behavior and learns how humans and the ocean’s top predator can safely coexist. His journey begins in his own backyard, the East Coast of Australia, to better understand different species of sharks while also exploring new ways to help avoid shark-human encounters. The special features top shark experts, including renowned diver, ocean photographer and filmmaker Valerie Taylor. The 85-year-old Taylor takes Hemsworth for a dive, where he experiences firsthand her awe of nurse sharks and more.

“POV”: KPBS, 10 p.m. This 90-minute documentary follows New Orleans’ fight over Confederate monuments and America’s troubled romance with the “Lost Cause.” In 2015, director CJ Hunt was filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four Confederate monuments. But when that removal was halted by death threats, CJ set out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.

Tuesday “The Flash”: The CW, 8 p.m.

John Diggle (guest star David Ramsey) arrives in Central City with a weapon to help Barry (Grant Gustin) stop the Godspeed War. Meanwhile, Allegra (Kayla Compton) and Ultraviolet’s (guest star Alexa Barajas Plante) new bond is put to the ultimate test, while Joe (Jesse L. Martin) and Kristen Kramer (guest star Carmen Moore) are hunted by a former colleague of hers.

“Lego Masters”: Fox, 8 p.m. In the new episode “One Floating Brick,” teams attempt to defy gravity when they create a build of their choosing from the foundation of one floating Lego brick.

“An Animal Saved My Life”: A&E, 9 p.m. New series.

Hosted by Curt Menefee, this new series highlights acts of heroism by animals where they risk their own lives to save a human.

“Survivalists”: BYUtv, 9 p.m.

Season finale. The survival series in which two families are transplanted from the comfort of their own homes to the rugged wilderness of Idaho concludes its second season. “$50K Three Ways”: HGTV, 10 p.m. Between a backyard with no privacy, a tiny home office and a dated kitchen, two homeowners have their pick of which rooms to renovate in their first and forever home.

Given the house’s age and condition, Tiffany Brooks will have to work to keep them on budget.

Wednesday “Big Brother”: CBS, 8 p.m.

Season premiere. The iconic, often chaotic series returns for Season 23 with all new houseguests and Julie Chen Moonves back as host.

“Kung Fu”: The CW, 8 p.m.

Nicky (Olivia Liang) and Henry (Eddie Liu) follow a lead that brings them to a K-pop concert in Las Vegas ... and on a collision course with Zhilan (guest star Yvonne Chapman) and Kerwin (guest star Ludi Lin).

Elsewhere, Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) make a major decision about the restaurant.

“Two Steps Home”: HGTV, 9 p.m. A woman and her dog need Jon and Mary Tjon-JoePin’s help upgrading to a bigger home. To get top dollar for her current bungalow, Mary must preserve its classic charm and update the confusing layout, while Jon makes some pet-friendly renovations to her new place.

“Love Island”: CBS, 9:30 p.m.

Season premiere. Season 3 of the romantic competition series debuts tonight with a 90-minute premiere. This season takes place in the sun-drenched Hawaiian Islands with an all-new cast of Islanders looking for love.

Arielle Vandenberg returns as host.

Thursday “Beat Shazam”: Fox, 8 p.m.

Host Jamie Foxx surprises everyone by doubling the prize to a staggering $2 million in tonight’s new episode “Two Million Dollar Challenge!”

“Grown-ish”: Freeform, 8 p.m. Season premiere. Zoey (Yara Shahidi) and the gang head to Mexico for a summer getaway filled with drinking games, new hookups, some relationship drama and even a wedding.

“Christina on the Coast”: HGTV, 9 p.m. When Christina Haack’s contractor brings her a new project, she signs on to find out the new homeowners have little in common with design and must find a compromise between modern and rustic. Meanwhile, Christina also works at warp speed to style a San Diego beach house.

“Good Girls”: NBC, 9 p.m. Rio (Manny Montana) inserts himself in the girls’ new business to Beth’s (Christina Hendricks) dismay, while Phoebe (Lauren Lapkus) discovers a bombshell in the case and returns to Detroit.

“Croc That Ate Jaws”: Nat Geo, 10 p.m. From mysterious severed heads and ambush attacks to mob hunts and standoffs, this SharkFest special explores what happens when two of the deadliest predators on the planet go head-to-head.

“Impractical Jokers”: truTV, 10 p.m. New episodes. Cable’s No. 1 unscripted comedy series returns with new episodes beginning tonight. The series follows lifelong friends — Sal, Joe, Q and Murr (The Tenderloins) — as they compete to embarrass each other with a series of hilarious and outrageous antics.

Friday “Secret Celebrity Renovation”: CBS, 8 p.m. New series. This new one-hour series gives celebrities in sports, music and entertainment the chance to gift a surprise home renovation to a meaningful person who helped guide them to success. Some of those participating in making these heartfelt gifts include Paula Abdul, Wayne Brady, Boomer Esiason, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, “Survivor” winner “Boston” Rob Mariano, NBA All-Star Chris Paul, Pro Football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith and more. The series also features the design team of home improvement contractor and television personality Jason Cameron and interior designer Sabrina Soto.

“Gossip Girl”: The CW, 8 p.m.

This is a special broadcast of the premiere episode of the new “Gossip Girl” revival that debuted yesterday on the HBO Max streaming service. Following tonight’s airing, this episode will be available to stream on The CW’s free digital platforms (The CW app and cwtv.com). Subsequent new episodes of “Gossip Girl” will continue on HBO Max. “My Lottery Dream Home”: HGTV, 9 p.m. Six months after tragically losing a husband and father to unexpected illness, Charity and her daughters April and Cassidy are given a million dollars of comfort thanks to a scratch ticket.

Ready to find their forever dream home in the small town of Leechburg, Pa., David Bromstad leads the way one silly walk after another. Hearingimpaired April teaches David how to sign and tries to take the biggest rooms in every house, even if mom has other plans.

Saturday “Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty”: BBC America, 8 p.m. Season finale. Season 1 of this new addition to the Meerkat Manor saga concludes with “The Outcast,” in which evicted Sencha is thrown a lifeline in the form of attractive rover Lilac.

“Vacation House Rules”: HGTV, 8 p.m. Contractor Scott McGillivray and designer Debra Salmoni put their skills to the test to get homeowners Ellie and Clark the dream home they’ve always wanted. From water damage to foundation issues, it takes a total renovation to turn this neglected cabin in the woods into a waterfront oasis, perfect for vacation fun and rental potential.

E13

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

TRAVEL

JULIA RENDLEMAN PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

A carriage ride through Colonial Williamsburg. Through its performances, the living history museum has been reckoning with the harsher realities of Colonial life.

Staging a broader history

Performers in Colonial Williamsburg commit to a more diverse perspective as the living museum emerges from the pandemic shutdown

O

BY PETER MARKS

n the streets of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia — one of the world’s premier living-history museums — Emily James cuts a formidable figure.

Portraying Edith Cumbo, a free woman of color who walked these byways in the 18th century, James tries daily to convey to tourists the humiliations and contradictions Cumbo lived with. ■ “I’m restricted,” she explains to a group of mask-wearing visitors on a walking tour one late-April morning.

“Because the laws didn’t say ‘free’ or ‘enslaved.’ They said ‘Negroes.’ ” ■ James has been embodying Cumbo in this mile-by-half-mile historic area for a decade, in a career in “actor interpretation” spanning 34 years. Though she has always loved the work, it has taken on deeper resonance of late.

Colonial Williamsburg — a place where theater lives, too — is grappling with more determination than ever with the harsher realities of its past.

That’s particularly true with the lives of its Black inhabitants, most of whom were enslaved and formed the majority of its population in the 1700s.

It is through performance of various kinds that this bastion of history is seeking to raise awareness of Williamsburg’s legacy, one far more diverse than visitors heard about in the early days of the historic restoration, opened in 1937. The instruction has gone out lately to all of Colonial Williamsburg’s dozens of actor-interpreters that the city’s slaveholding past is to figure in every tour and talk. The sense that the rosy vision of hard-working artisans and horsemen in period garb requires more context pervades this extraordinary pocket of history.

“We’ve shifted in how we think of things,” said Beth Kelly, Colonial Williamsburg’s vice president of education, research and historical interpretation. “Our research was always done with an Anglican-European point of view.

Everything is grounded now in the 18th century — and the truth.”

To a degree astonishing to a visitor whose decades-old memories of Williamsburg run to aproned staffers churning butter, this center of Colonial exhibition uses the tools of the arts to convey that truth. The coronavirus forced the closing in April 2020 of the site and its 604 structures, 88 of them original. It reopened in June with safety protocols that are still in place: I wore a mask as required on all tours, for instance, and sat apart from others at public talks and performances. (The rules, oddly enough, can’t be enforced on the pedestrianonly streets running through the Colonial area because they come under the city’s jurisdiction; the site and its 1,800 employees are under the auspices of the nonprofit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.)

But even with the workarounds, theater of one sort or another is happening everywhere you look. Over there on the Charlton Stage, under a canopy of trees, Katharine Pittman is dressed in Martha Washington’s finery, recounting the first first lady’s first marriage, in Williamsburg. Across the way in the Hennage Auditorium, Kurt Smith is portraying Thomas Jefferson and Robert Weathers assorted other

Emily James, who portrays Edith Cumbo, says it takes five years before Williamsburg interpreters can truly inhabit their characters.

characters, from Jefferson’s father to philosopher John Locke, in “Pursuing Happiness,” a 30-minute play about the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

And in the middle of town, on the Play House Stage — which sits on the remnants of what is believed to be the first theater of Colonial America — members of the resident Jug Broke Theater Company are performing “Ladies of Llangollen.” Claire Wittman’s drama, which includes new lyrics to 18th-century songs, is the first in the foundation’s history to feature a romance between women.

“Your happiness is my only aim,” Wittman’s Eleanor says to her fellow poet and lover, Sarah, played by Alyssa Elkins. “I don’t want a husband,” Sarah replies. “I want you.”

Think about it: In the midst of contemporary reckonings about the rights of women and people of color, Williamsburg is giving guests — who number about 550,000 in a normal year — the historical backstories. It’s quite daring, and not everyone who attends seems to like it: The half-hour “Ladies of Llangollen” was as discreet as an afternoon tea party, but at least one family in attendance seemed to take umbrage. The instant the characters spoke of their mutual affection, the family sprang from their bench in the socially distanced outdoor playhouse and walked out.

Many more of the 50 or so spectators, though, appeared to appreciate the play, giving its quartet of actors a hearty ovation. “I came many, many times as a child,” said Theta Miller, visiting from Lynchburg, Va., with another theatergoer, Mike Tabony. “The last five years, there has been so much glorious interpretation like this.”

After the show, Wittman, Elkins and the other actors, Patrick Rooney and Rachel Eiland-Hall, talked about the opportunity to explore new content theatrically and experiencing audiences’ differing responses. As with so many subjects dramatized here, the roots of SEE HISTORY • E14

REUNION PLANS HAVE FAMILIES MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME

BY DEBRA KAMIN Jeff Belcher, 41, wouldn’t necessarily have chosen Williamsburg, Va., as the destination for his family’s first vacation since travel restrictions began to ease. But when his extended family decided to travel to the American Revolution-era town for a reunion this summer, he knew that he, his wife and their three children wouldn’t miss it.

Their group of 18, which will include his parents, his sister, his aunt and uncle, and his mother-inlaw and sister-in-law, will gather at the end of July and stay in several adjoining rented condos. There

are plans to visit historical battlefields, check out the recreations of Jamestown Settlement ships, and enjoy outdoor meals while the family’s youngest generation — eight kids in total — play together after more than a year apart.

Far-flung families are combining traveling and being together — two of the most longed-for practices during more than a year of pandemic lockdowns — into elaborate new twists on the old-fashioned family reunion. In a recent survey by Wyndham Destinations, the nation’s largest timeshare company, 75 percent of respondents said they were planning to travel for a family reunion in 2021;

in a March survey from American Express Travel, 71 percent of respondents said they planned to travel to visit loved ones they hadn’t been able to see during the pandemic, and 60 percent said a 2021 family reunion was in the works.

Properties that cater to largescale gatherings are feeling the windfall. Salamander Hotels & Resorts, which has five properties in Florida, Virginia, South Carolina and Jamaica, has had 506 family reunions already booked in 2021, accounting for $2.47 million in revenue. In 2019, they had only 368 events total, worth about $1.31 million.

Guided tours are also newly becoming more popular with families looking to reunite: Guy Young, president of Insight Vacations, launched several new small private group trips — which can be booked for as few as 12 people and include a private bus and travel director — after noting that extended families accounted for 20 percent of his business in March and April, compared with a prepandemic average of 8 percent.

“Coming out of COVID, with families separated for many months, we saw a significant increase in demand for multigenerational family travel,” Young said.

Reuniting at long last

Traveling together will also offer families a chance to reconnect offline after many months of Skype and screen time.

Esther Palevsky, 70, lives in Solon, Ohio, and hasn’t seen her 7-year-old grandson, Sylvester, since before the pandemic. So this summer, she and her husband, Mark, 71, will fly to Reno, Nev. — their first flight in more than a year — and then drive to California’s Lake Tahoe. Palevsky’s daughter, Stacey, and her son-inlaw, Ben Lewis, will drive with Sylvester from San Francisco to meet them, and the family will SEE REUNIONS • E14

E14

THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

SUNDAY • JULY 4, 2021

HISTORY FROM E13 “Ladies of Llangollen” were in research. (Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby lived together in Britain in the late 18th century.)

“It seemed to me very clear in how they wrote about each other that they were married,” Wittman said.

Opening up Williamsburg to stories like “Ladies of Llangollen” is the mission of the site’s gender and sexual diversity committee, formed by a group of interpreters and other staffers in 2019. Many of the “programs” — as the talks, tours and plays are referred to — are proposed and developed by the 53 interpreters themselves.

“There was a realization that if we’re going to commit to telling the whole story, we’re going to tell the whole story,” said historian Kelly Arehart, a member of the diversity committee. Another member, actor-interpreter Ren Tolson, said the initiative began as an effort to compile whatever information there was for the staff on gender diversity.

The rationale, Tolson explained, was so that “when they get a question, they can handle it an educated, appropriate manner. And then it kind of snowballed rapidly into, ‘Hey, there’s a lot more here than we thought there was.’ ” The imaginative richness of three-dimensional history comes through in every talk with the interpreters. “When you have a character, it’s like a marriage,” said James, whose husband, Gregory James, also worked as an interpreter until his death in 2013. The basket she balances on her head as Cumbo contains Gregory’s costume.

“It takes five years,” she added, “to really become that person.”

Many of the interpreters, who work year-round, come from formal acting or music backgrounds and stay for the financial security and stimulation; others arrive from a circuit of such historic sites as Monticello in Virginia and Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts.

Fourteen interpreters have earned the special designation of “Nationbuilders”: These include James, as Cumbo; Smith, as Jefferson; and Pittman, as Washington, who are paid to portray a single historic personage.

Other actor-interpreters play multiple parts.

Stephen Seals, who heads community outreach and program development, plays James Lafayette, an enslaved Williamsburg man who served in the Continental Army under the Marquis de Lafayette. A longtime actor, Seals is a kind of archive unto himself, his psychic shelves stocked with knowledge about Colonial Williamsburg’s evolution. At one time, as he and Kelly explained

REUNIONS FROM E13 spend several nights at an Airbnb in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It will be a new experience for the Palevskys, who prefer to take cruises when they have vacation time. Neither has ever been to Lake Tahoe, and they have limited experience with Airbnb. The location and accommodations, said Esther Palevsky, didn’t matter much. She just wants to squeeze her grandson.

“Just thinking about hugging him again, I get teary-eyed,” said Palevsky, who has been reading chapter books with Sylvester over video chat throughout the pandemic in order to stay in touch. “I’m sure I’ll see Sylvester and think about how big he looks. On the tablet, you just can’t tell.”

Sandy Pappas, the owner of Sandy Pappas Travel, said that on an average year, 5 percent of her clients are booking family reunion trips. This year, that number is already between 15 percent and 20 percent.

“I do a lot of family travel, but it’s usually just a family of four or five. Now I’m getting two adult kids and their families and grandparents, and sometimes both sets of grandparents. And everyone is spending more money because nobody ate out or traveled in 2020, so they have funds left over,” she said.

Not your old-fashioned family reunion

While the demand for travel across all sectors is high, family travel was pre-

JULIA RENDLEMAN PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Adam Canaday is a carriage driver in Colonial Williamsburg, where histories of people of color are being added to the conversation.

Alyssa Elkins (left) plays Sarah and Claire Wittman plays Eleanor in “Ladies of Llangollen,” a drama that features a romance between women.

Visitors watch as Broadus Thompson works in the blacksmith shop. over lunch one afternoon, the foundation did emphasize the working trades of the period. Those carpentry and gunsmithing shops are still popular, but there’s been an ever-evolving effort to reveal all facets of the community’s past.

“There are certain things about history that you should not avoid,” Seals said. “That is, religion — and slavery. And as an interpreter, it’s impossible not to be aware of that.”

The awareness began in earnest in 1979 when a Black staff member, Rex Ellis, recruited five other Black employees for a group that would attempt to humanize enslaved residents. They were the first interpreters.

“The first White member of the unit didn’t come until the ’80s,” Seals said.

“These stories and perspectives have been told here for 40 years, but maybe the balance has shifted in who tells the stories,” said Cheryl Ruschau, who, as director of museum theater, is responsible for the performances on the three formal stages. This spring, for instance, there are 19 programs running in reper-

tory, chosen from the dozens of scripts in the site’s archives. “My job,” she added, “is facilitating and editing.”

But because the documentation of the time weighed so heavily in the favor of the White population, the job of depicting historical Black and Native American figures required deeper and more prolonged investigation. Even now, only a handful of the Nationbuilders are Black, and, at least on the weekend in April that I toured and wandered, the non-White faces among the visitors were few.

The programming, it is hoped, will tip the scales toward an ever more diverse group of visitors — programs such as “Sentiments of American Women,” about the women of Williamsburg circa 1775. Staged by Katrinah Lewis, a director from Richmond, the 35minute play features Lindsey Foster, Zakiyyah Jackson and Michelle Smith. On a sparsely furnished outdoor stage, they give voice to women of all social strata of the time.

“She is a person,” Foster,

dicted to eventually lead the way for the industry’s rebound after a staggering collapse. Travel advisers spent most of 2020 creating socially distanced itineraries for nuclear families that were already living together during lockdown. But now, they say, the most popular type of family trip is the reunion that brings farflung relatives back into the fold.

Kate Johnson, owner of KJ Travel in Houston, says she has seen a sixfold increase in family reunion travel compared with last year, and she expects the number to continue to climb. She is also planning her own family reunion trip with 17 family members, including her daughters, their grandparents, cousins and aunts, to Disney World in Florida, in November.

“When I get requests and I see how tight availability is for accommodation, it definitely makes me feel a sense of urgency to get my own family to start planning,” she said.

Properties are leaning into the trend, rolling out packages geared toward family reunions and even hiring dedicated staff to shepherd the events.

After noticing that a nearly 20 percent spike in bookings was coming from seniors looking to reconnect with younger family, the Deer Path Inn, in Lake Forest, Ill., relaunched its Gramping Getaway Package, which includes an outdoor scavenger hunt and an afternoon tea that can be enjoyed by all ages, including little ones as well as Gram and Gramps.

Meanwhile, the Westin Cape Coral Resort at Marina Village created a new

staff position to oversee such group trips: chief reunion officer. Tosha Wollney, who was promoted to the position from her previous post of senior catering sales executive, will be busy: In 2019 the property had two family reunions, and in the last five weeks alone, they’ve booked five.

Private jets, budget-busting plans

And after using the act of planning for future travel to get many isolated families through the darkest months of the pandemic, many of the reunions on the books are truly budget-busting.

Private jet travel, which surged during the pandemic, is increasingly popular among large families.

Jessica Fisher, founder of the aviation marketplace Flyjets, said private jet bookings for families on her site have doubled since last year.

“There is this readiness to ‘move’ in safe ways among groups, especially for those who are choosing to reunite with extended family,” she said in an email.

Spending is up, as well, as families splurge on longer and more elaborate trips together than they might have prepandemic.

“During the worst of COVID, when people were unable to see their grandparents, what started happening was clients planning these epic, complex itineraries for the future,” said Brendan Drewniany, communications director for luxury-travel company Black Tomato. “The rise of multigenerational is the biggest trend we can track.”

Kamin is a freelance writer for The New York Times.

acting as narrator, says of Jackson’s enslaved Millie.

“Well, of sorts,” replies Smith, playing an enslaver of the period. “She is property.”

Jackson is accorded a moment to provide Millie’s own assessment to the audience: “I make a way,” she says, “out of no way.”

In an interview, Lewis spoke to a spiritual unease that afflicts Black actorinterpreters, always consigned to playing some manifestation of oppression.

“It is physical,” she said. “I can feel the heaviness of what happened. As Black artists in 2021, we reserve a space to create art that is not about our trauma, that is not a perpetuation of the images of white supremacy. But at Colonial Williamsburg, that is the story to tell.”

Of course, there are other stories and experiences to be shared at Colonial Williamsburg. One is a marvel of illumination: a new nighttime immersive event called CW Lights, in which the maze and gardens and lakesides and facades of the Governor’s Palace are bathed in gemstone colors

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of yellow diamond, emerald green and sapphire blue.

But it is the mind-expanding exposures to Colonial Williamsburg’s more troubling legacies that shed the most enduring light.

“I’m able to build narratives and stories in ways I couldn’t in a regular theater,” said Seals, who has played the enslaved James Lafayette for nearly five years. “To walk the same paths that James walked, I sometimes want to weep.”

To learn more, visit colonialwilliamsburg.org.

Marks is theater critic for The Washington Post.

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