Ms. De La Luz

“Aché” A Wise (cracking) Latina Makes Her Way Onstage

NEW YORK CITY (By Larry Rohter, NYT) July 22, 2009 — In the lexicon of Santeria, “aché” is the term applied to the life force, or to vital energy and good vibes. That word turns up in Caridad De La Luz’s new Off Broadway production, “Boogie Rican Blvd., the Musical,” but in a larger sense Ms. De La Luz herself seems to embody and be guided by those qualities, both onstage and off.

Certainly the impression she transmits in person is one of irrepressible, ebullient energy and talent, perhaps a bit unruly at times, as the Santeria gods themselves are said to be. At 36, Ms. De La Luz has already been a community organizer, poet, singer-songwriter, comedian and actress, with a recent stint as a model in a Levi jeans campaign featuring “my derrière and my poetry,” as she put it.

“When I first met Caridad, what I noticed, right after her looks, because she is quite beautiful, was her charisma and very forceful energy,” said Judith Escalona, a director, writer and producer who also teaches film and television at City College. “She exemplifies in many ways the Nuyorican woman of her generation, someone who is proud of her transnational heritage, which is articulated in her performances and work. Aché speaks through her.”

“Boogie Rican Blvd.,” at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater through July 26, is a showcase and vehicle for all that and more. Ms. De La Luz not only wrote the play, which offers an often humorous look at the complicated life of three generations of a Puerto Rican family in the Bronx, but also portrays seven different characters. She sings, raps and dances.

“There is a little bit of me” in every character in the musical, Ms. De La Luz said. “I am a boogie Rican from the boogie-down Bronx.”

Two roles Ms. De La Luz plays in this, her first venture into a conventional theatrical production, are male. Don José, dressed in baggy shorts, sandals and a Roberto Clemente baseball jersey, is a bodega owner and patriarch of the Pacheco family, while Pito is a boastful would-be rapper and street tough who has impregnated one of Don José’s three daughters — all of whom Ms. De La Luz also plays.

“That is a gigantic undertaking that only the most skillful and experienced actresses dare to do, so I was flabbergasted when I saw her performance,” Miriam Colón, a doyenne of Latina actresses in New York, said. “But then again, she knows these characters very well and evidently has spent a lot of time observing their behavior and attitudes, because she interprets these very recognizable barrio types with a lot of compassion and tenderness.”

Ms. De La Luz was born and raised in the Soundview section of the Bronx and attended Murry Bergtraum High School before studying literature and theater arts at the State University of New York, Binghamton. She continues to live in her old neighborhood, next door to her parents, because, she explained, she values her roots and the inspiration they offer.

“I’ve written some of my best poems on the 6 train,” she said.

Ms. De La Luz spoke as the Senate was holding hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who attended elementary school in Soundview. Ms. De La Luz expressed pride and admiration at seeing a fellow Nuyorican rise so high, saying, “She’s a boogie Rican from the Bronx too, and it’s about time someone born and raised where I’m from” achieved that kind of public prominence.

The trajectory that brought Ms. De La Luz to the stage is unusual. From 1996 to 1998, she worked as a community organizer in another Bronx neighborhood, Hunts Point, focusing on issues like drug abuse, dropout prevention, teenage pregnancy and AIDS, and it was during those years, which she calls “extremely influential,” that she began, initially in poetic form, to develop the characters who now populate her work.

“I never thought of it as a career,” she said of those first artistic efforts. “It was just something that made me feel good, that felt natural, like a calling, but was also a release, a healing.”

A decade ago she began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village, where she adopted the persona of La Bruja — the Witch — a nickname that has stuck. Initially she recited her poems. Sometimes, she did short comedic sketches and songs in which she portrayed characters like Marta, a gum-chewing Puerto Rican princess from Long Island who is conflicted about her cultural identity.

“Caridad quickly showed herself to have multitalented capabilities, strong both on content and delivery, in areas that don’t necessarily coexist in every performer,” said Daniel Gallant, the cafe’s executive director.

Ms. De La Luz’s best-known poem is probably “WTC,” which she wrote in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and performed on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam.” The poem consists entirely of three-word phrases using words beginning with those letters; it starts with “What’s the cause/Work to connect/Wish to change/Want to cry” and incorporates the refrain “Wish time could/Wash this clean.”

Even now, after roles in movies like “Down to the Bone” and Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” and in programs for HBO and the History Channel, Ms. De La Luz refers to herself as a “poetician.”

“I love being silly,” she said, but “Boogie Rican Blvd.” also contains what she calls “a glaze” of serious and pointed political and social commentary.

“The media looks to have Latinas talk about sexual things, which is a very safe stereotype for them to have,” she said. “The attitude is ‘That’s what Latinas should be saying.’ But that’s not what I want to do.”

The current version of “Boogie Rican Blvd.,” which evolved from a one-woman monologue Ms. De La Luz first presented in 2002, “still needs a lot of work,” she said. But she and the musical’s director, Nelson Vásquez, said that the recent successes of “In the Heights” and the revival of “West Side Story” have persuaded them that with a little bit of polishing and revamping, it could also find a place on Broadway.

In the meantime Ms. De La Luz is finishing up a new CD, for release on Halloween. Called “4 Witch It Stands,” it will feature the same mixture of hip-hop, reggaetón and other Latin beats that were present on her three previous discs.

In Spanish Caridad De La Luz means “charity of the light.” That is her real name, she said, not something she chose for show business, and it has given her a sense of mission, convincing her that, no matter what the art form she chooses, her role in life is “giving light and love and energy to people.”

“It’s all rooted in heart and soul and aché,” she added. “Out of that comes everything.”