Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Initial publish date
- Dec 2022
- Category
- Women Authors, Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780369103796
- Publish Date
- Dec 2022
- List Price
- $19.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780369103802
- Publish Date
- Dec 2022
- List Price
- $14.99
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Description
The one thing everyone knows is that we’re all going to die. Which means our loved ones are going to die. So how can we prepare for, experience, and honour their deaths? And does that look different if we have to make the decision to end their lives for them if they’re suffering? Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias is one woman’s story that offers a space for communal grieving through a celebration of life.
Traced by the historic world events that coincide with her memories of independence and immigration, Beatriz reflects on how she spent over a decade caring for her mother—the one person she promised she’d be there for all the way until the end—as she lost her more and more to Alzheimer’s, and ultimately had to make the tough call to end her mother’s pain.
A meditation full of light that doesn’t shy away from fear of the unknown, Beatriz’s narrative comes from a vulnerable and recognizable place of love that will invite our memories and choices in to heal.
About the author
Beatriz Pizano is a playwright, director, actor, dramaturge, and the founder and artistic director of Aluna Theatre, a company that creates daring, experimental, and political theatre from a TransAmerican perspective. Beatriz has received numerous awards and nominations for her plays and was the first Latinx woman to be recognized with a Dora Mavor Moore Award and a Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for her acting in Blood Wedding. She is the author of numerous award-winning plays including a trilogy about women and war that includes For Sale, Madre, and La Comunion. She has also written a play for young audiences, La Maleta, that has been produced by Roseneath Theatre several times and has toured the USA and Ontario.
Beatriz’s writing challenges Eurocentric approaches to theatre creation. She is a fierce activist who creates spaces and opportunities for racialized artists and playwrights and was recognized in 2019 as one of TD’s Most Influential Hispanics in Canada. She was the senior playwright at Banff’s Playwrights Lab in 2019. She lives in Toronto.
Excerpt: Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias (by (author) Beatriz Pizano)
EPISODE- what kind of a daughter am I?
How do you know if someone with Alzheimer's’ is hurting?
How do you know how much are they hurting?
Julia is released from the hospital.
How do you explain to someone with advanced Alzheimer's’—who has just broken their hip—how to get into a taxi?
“Julia bend your knee, like this, so we can take you home”—HOME?—back to a nursing home!
Beat. From now on I will only be able to transport her in an ambulance.
Hospital. Ambulance. Nursing home.
How do you explain to someone with Alzheimer’s how to do physiotherapy?
Simple, right?
“Julia, put your right hand on the bar—Julia, watch me. Julia...Julia.”
Alzheimer’s is not simple.
And then the follow ups, which are a waste of time because Julia can’t do physiotherapy—but if I don’t take her to the doctor—what kind of a daughter am I?
Nursing home, ambulance, doctor, ambulance, nursing home.
Ambulance, doctor, ambulance, nursing home.
Ambulance, doctor, ambulance, nursing home.
Beat.
Julia’s teeth are rotting.
How do take someone with advanced Alzheimer's to the dentist? You don’t.
What kind of a daughter am I?
Beat.
But those are physical pains.
What about the soul?
My mother lives in constant terror. There is are no antipsychotic pills that can take her fear away.
I can’t take her fear away.
What kind of a daughter am I?
Beat.
My mother was once a lover.
We spend every holiday at the beach house. In the border between Panama and Colombia. The dividing line between two oceans.
Jorge has a ritual: when he arrives at the gate he takes off his watch.
Jorge y Julia wake up early in the mornings and sneak off for a swim in the ocean, where they make love.
And I... am introduced to a way of thinking and the revolutionary songs of Victor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, Violeta Parra---Anyone here knows these songs? If there is a latino ask them maybe to sing one?
I know that for most of you these names don’t mean much...although we Latinx artists insist in writing plays with all these songs and names in them—but for us—we dream of Las Americas—a land of peace, equity and justice for all.
We dream of individual freedom.
We dream of choices.
We dream of a better quality of life for everyone.
We dream, we dream, I dream!
A confession.
I dream of the day my mother’s calvary will end.
Beat.
Nursing home—
Ambulance—
Doctor—he tells me that most old people, like Julia, die within two years after breaking their hip.
Hope!
Ambulance.
Nursing home.
Whispering. Say these in Spanish and then put then write the translation to be projected. Maybe this can be done with cue cards.
Mamita déjate ir | Let go Julia.
?No quieres ver a papi otra vez? | Don’t you want to see Jorge—
?En el cielo? | —in heaven?
Pídele a Dios que te lleve. | Ask God to take you.
Julia opens her eyes, slaps me on the face, and goes back to sleep. Beat. Does Julia want to
live like this?
Editorial Reviews
“[Beatriz] passionately seizes the heart without any difficulty in an intriguing personal account.”
TorontoStage.com
“The storytelling, relayed in English and sometimes Spanish, is visually rich; full of a lust for life, liberty and equality; and resonating with the music of childhood and the revolution—and, ultimately, with hope and closure.”
Cate McKim, Life With More Cowbell