Catalina La O: Ahora Conmigo salutes Puerto Rican icons through genre-busting theatre
Music, hurricanes, laughter, and loss mix in Fringe New Play winner JK JK’s filmed production
KhattieQ as Catalina La O
JK JK’s Catalina La O Presenta: Ahora Conmigo streams from November 19 to 29
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a Puerto Rican-raised punk rocker gets together with a theatre artist?
A lot of things, as it turns out--including a marriage and a collaborative, status-quo-busting queer performance company called JK JK.
But the most recent thing to come out of khattieQ and writer-director Jenny Larson’s relationship is a bilingual, genre-bending, music-driven clown cabaret-styled production called Catalina La O Presenta: Ahora Conmigo, which nabbed the 2020 Fringe New Play Prize.
Normally that priz-winner, copresented by the Playwrights Theatre Centre, would hit the live stage. But with pandemic lockdown, the fully realized live rendition is now postponed to 2022; instead, Catalina La O debuts online this week as what the duo calls a “performance film”, shot Rob Leickner and produced by Shanae Sodhi, after months of working on it with the help of dramaturge Joanna Garfinkel. Her services come care of PTC, which helps oversee the prize and the script-development it carries with it.
JK JK’s khattieQ and Jenny Larson
In the production, a Puerto Rican hurricane has forced wet and wounded singer Catalina La O to take refuge in an empty television studio, where she decides to broadcast her last show alone.
The title character’s name derives from a nickname bestowed by khattieQ’s brother and drawn from an old salsa song. But it’s become a stage persona khattieQ started developing on stages and in clubs in Austin, Texas—one inspired by Puerto Rican singing legends like Myrta Silva and Ruth Fernández, who made an impact on the artist at a young age.
“I was a curious and interesting child,” khattieQ says with a laugh over a lively conference call with Larson and Garfinkel. “I saw them acting free and being able to do things with their voices with so much emotion. I was so young that I didn’t understand what they were singing about—love—but I remember it being so moving as a child.
“They were like superheroes to me. They were belting it out, they were these powerhouse women,” the artist, whose mother loved singing their songs, continues. “I wanted to be an old-lady singer!”
For khattieQ, the strength of these old-time cabaret singers of the 1930s to ‘60s was inextricably tied to a search for identity.
“I was also very much a tomboy and I didn’t want to be a regular girl,” explains khattieQ. “Looking at regular girls, I’m like, ‘How is that gonna work? That does not compute in my brain!’”
To create the Fringe prize show, Larson and khattiQ have delved into deeper research on the Puerto Rican stars. You can see direct references in the show: for instance, in the mid-1960s, Silva, better known to her fans as “Mama Yeya”, hosted a weekly music variety TV show Una Hora Contigo (An Hour with You) on a New York City Spanish-language channel.
“When we did the research on them, we fell in love with them as well,” says Larson. “They really pushed the boundaries of identity, they had political power, they produced their own records… And they are totally unsung.”
Catalina La O gives voice to these kinds of untold Latinx women’s stories, and to their struggle and resilience, khattieQ explains: “We have to remember our people—people that made it okay for us to exist, to be able to sing our minds and speak our minds.”
That kind of resilience also reflects the performer’s own story. “In 2018, I had a big accident and I hurt my left hand so much that I couldn’t play the guitar or the drums anymore,” explains the artist, who has played as a professional musician with more than 20 bands, including serving as lead drummer for queer femme-core act The Tuna Helpers and singing for Austin-based, politically charged punk group BLXPLTN. “That meant I needed to focus on singing and expressing my creativity in other ways.”
The injury was when Catalina La O really started to grow into a theatre piece, Larson adds. “As a couple we had to deal with it creatively,” the UBC theatre alumna says, adding with a laugh: “If you’re close to me I make you work on my plays.”
Developing the work in pandemic times became an experiment in digital communication. You could even call the songs an international collaboration, with khattieQ cowriting the music with Puerto Rico-based Anton Berríos, and a last track in the show with brother Andy Boy, now based in Dallas, by remote.
But Garfinkel stresses the show is much more than a cabaret or revue, with a full story arc.
KhattieQ during punk-rock days in Austin, Texas.
“It introduces you to these real-life creators but it’s all original music—it’s not playing old favourites.,” says Garfinkel, who was also dramaturge on last year’s celebrated Fringe New Play Prize winner Mx, by Lili Robinson. “It’s the last broadcast of an amazing show, and there are laughs and grief—and you might meet khattie along the way.
“Nurturing the play, we were able to develop it from this lovely sort of jewel box to this fully developed production,” she adds.
KhattieQ explains that Puerto Rico’s cabaret icons stand for a bravery that drives Catalina La O’s story of survival. “There is strong subject matter,” the singer hints, “and there are some things I say that take a lot of courage that these women gave to me.”
Cue the production’s central storm, not so much a specific reference to 2017’s Hurrican Maria that devastated the island nation, but to a state of being that happens to speak profoundly to life in 2020, when a different kind of disaster has us all seeking refuge.
“Puerto Rico is very hurricane prone and it was kind of logical for us to use a hurricane in this play,” explains khattieQ. “It’s nature giving you no options in your life.”
Despite the storm, though, Garfinkel emphasizes there’s a lot of physical humour and laughter in the show, too.
“I’ve managed to deal with trauma with comedy,” agrees khattieQ. “That may be a Puerto Rican trait, where you laugh at it and you move forward.”
“It felt so beautiful because it was a chance to tell this story of a person alone dealing with disaster and separation from their family amid a natural disaster,” adds Larson. “That was so resonant during the pandemic. It’s turning disaster into comedy and dance and music to deal with loss.”
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