Darkness.  The spotlight was on a solo guitar player.  The first measures of his singular, electric guitar filled the space and washed over the room.  The hair on my arms stood up.  A stirring and collective lift occurred as the reverberating and forward moving tones, reminiscent of Gustavo Santaolalla’s score in The Motorcycle Diaries, drew us into the present scene together, and summoned us to transition as participants and travelers on the potent journeys presented in El año que nací (The Year I Was Born).

El año en que naci, by Lola Arias, was a fabulous play.

It was a very well structured story with brushes of music, colors, diversity and the use of a sarcastic humor to convey collective pain that defines a generation in that far corner of South America, Chile.

I am writing this while also reading in horror about the current terrorist attacks at Westgate mall in Nairobi.  I’m literally stunned, and am alternately pouring over every photo I can find and keep turning my computer off in shocked sadness. Obviously I can’t really comprehend what is happening.  And then I remember the shootings less then a week ago at the Navy Yard that seem to have shuffled out of the news cycle.  And Syria. 

I can’t take it.

"Revelatory" and "compelling": two words used by The Seattle Times to describe El año en que nací . Read the review here.

My first experience of it was reading a biography of Trotsky. I was fourteen and I had taken a deep interest in figuring out just what was this "evil empire" I kept hearing about from my Hollywood-trained POTUS.