Thistle’ genocide play to run at CSUSM
Thistle’ genocide play to run at CSUSM
Production is one of 17 plays that examines mass killings and U.S. relationship to tragedies
Written by Pam Kragen
12:01 a.m., Nov. 1, 2012
Updated 11:21 a.m. , Oct. 31, 2012
“Thistle,” a play about a 1981 mass murder in El Salvador, will run for two performances in San Marcos this weekend before moving to New York for a festival of dramas inspired by 20th century genocides.
The play is being staged Saturday at Cal State San Marcos. Directed by Tom Dugdale, “Thistle” features CSUSM theater professor Judy Bauerlein and visiting artist Sayda Trujillo, as well as San Diego actor Erika Beth Phillips. “Thistle” has been workshopped on campus over the last year by members of the Third Space Theatre Collective.
“Thistle” is one of 17 plays by Erik Ehn that make up “Soulographie: Our Genocides.” The play cycle examines genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, East Africa and the U.S. (the Tulsa race riots of 1921), as well as America’s relationship with these tragedies. Theater groups in the U.S., Poland and Africa are producing the 17 plays in their home cities this fall, and this month more than 80 artists from around the world will travel to New York for a Soulographie festival Nov. 11-18 at the La MaMa theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Bauerlein said the entire “Thistle” team is heading to New York and is excited about the performances there.
“Thistle” is based on the recorded testimony of Rufina Amaya Marquez, who was the sole survivor of a mass killing on Dec. 11, 1981, by Salvadoran troops in the town of El Mozote, El Salvador. From her hiding place in a crabapple tree, Marquez watched as every inhabitant of her town was killed and incinerated, including her husband and four of her children, ages 9 to 8 months. Horrific reports of the massacre included accounts of mass rapes of young girls and women, men beheaded, women and children machine-gunned and left to rot in the sun, and young children bayoneted and hung from trees with their throats slit. The remains of more than 800 victims were later identified.
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