Staying Fit
Erin Patrice O'Brien
Mambo Mouth, in 1991, was my first piece. It's about several disparate Latin people in my neighborhood, all connected by geography. I just felt like Latin people were so invisible in the media, textbooks — everywhere. We were so voiceless. And so that was my antidote: writing my first show and casting it all with Latin characters, even though I played all of them. A one-man show is the most intimate a performer can be with an audience — it's my story, my opinions, and me naked emotionally on a stage.
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I've always picked dark subjects that needed to be exorcised in American culture, Latin life, and in my own life, as a center of these shows.
I wanted to hear stories about our issues that I wasn't seeing anywhere, and for no good reason. You know, half the population wherever I go is Latino, and yet we are so aggressively absent; the exclusion is pretty pervasive. This begs some ugly questions.
Are we not talented enough? Not smart enough? Not hardworking enough? That’s [expletive].
That's why it's so important to know our heritage, so that we can't become disenfranchised. Latin people are the second-oldest ethnic group in America, after the Native Americans. We have unknown patriots who fought in the American Revolution — we are the sons and daughters of the American Revolution. Twenty thousand of us fought in the American Civil War. We had so many people participating and yet, how come I've never seen that in a Ken Burns documentary or in a Civil War movie? Why aren't we included? Why is this information being kept from us? From our kids? It’s crazy because it’s not in textbooks, and that’s my whole thing: Until we get our due credit in this country’s textbooks, these slights will continue. We’re not just bystanders or leeches on the sidelines enjoying the benefits of the Founding Fathers. We shed blood for this country — made this country from the ground up.
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