Playwright & Director's Notes
"I wrote the first draft of The Refugee Hotel at the turn of the millennium, almost a decade ago. Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in England had opened an enormous wound in the exile community, and there were spontaneous gatherings where deeply personal stories about the coup were shared. It had always been okay to talk about the
suffering of “the people”, but not about one’s own. It was like the suffering of so many Chileans who had remained silent about their own experiences with torture and exile was validated with Pinochet’s arrest. Around that time, my uncle Nelson, the first Chilean refugee in Vancouver, drank himself to death. It was these two epic events that led me to write The Refugee Hotel, a play which is ultimately about love and its power to heal.
I developed The Refugee Hotel during my residency at The Vancouver Playhouse. I would like to thank Glynis Leyshon, Brian Quirt, Elizabeth Dancoes, and Pier Carlo Talenti for invaluable dramaturgical support. I would like to thank the 2002 Banff Playrites Colony, where I completed the third draft of the play. The Playwrights’ Theatre Centre in Vancouver offered a week-long workshop of the play; a heartfelt thanks to them as well. The Factory Theatre’s Cross Currents Festival, The Arts Club Theatre’s
REACT Festival (Vancouver), The Mark Taper Forum’s New Works Festival (Los Angeles) have all held public readings of different drafts of the play. I am grateful to all of them.
I would like to thank Marilo Nunez for her unwavering belief in this play and for seeing it through to its world premiere. I think I speak for both of us when I say that The Refugee Hotel is an homage to our parents, who arrived in Canada with nothing but the clothes on their backs and small children in tow. Marilo and I were those small children, and we both spent our first days in Canada at refugee hotels.
It takes a village to make a play. In the case of The Refugee Hotel, there are dozens of actors, directors, producers, and dramaturges who have contributed their enormous skill, talent, and passion to each draft of this play. Without them, the final draft would not be what it is today.
My directorial vision for the play has been inspired by the paintings of Ecuadorian master Oswaldo Guayasamin, whose work I was introduced to as a child and had a profound effect on me.
I would like to dedicate The Refugee Hotel to my late stepfather Bob Everton, who was one of three Canadians imprisoned in Santiago’s National Stadium after the coup, and to my late Uncle Nelson. Bob never gave up. Nelson never forgot.
To my parents, Carmen Rodriguez and Jose Aguirre, who left everything and fought against all odds to provide a new life for my sister Alejandra and I. This is for you."
- CARMEN AGUIRRE
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Artistic Director's Notes
I first met Carmen in 1999. Ten years ago. I was producing and starring in her one-woman show, Chile Con Carne. I knew then that there was something special about Carmen’s work. The quality of the writing was superior, the topics she was writing about encompassed a unique perspective. I felt then and now that her writing, her plays needed to be brought to a broad audience of theatregoers. It was during Chile Con Carne that the seeds were planted for what is today Alameda Theatre Company. We have come full circle. Here we are, ten years later and I am producing another of Carmen’s great plays, only this time we’ve gone big. Bigger. The biggest show no one wanted to produce.
The Refugee Hotel is a very personal story to me. When I first read it, I was sitting outside the steps of a Toronto theatre. I remember the sun shining down on me and the wind blowing in my hair. I remember these things because the words became imprinted in me like a sense memory. I will never forget the first time I read the play. I cried, I shook and I laughed. I was reading my story. It was like looking through an old photo album. The nostalgia enveloped me completely. The story of my parents and our community was in these pages. But more deeply than that, the play’s power was universal as it touched the core of my humanity…we all need love and a sense of community to survive. Every single one of us.
I dedicate this production to my husband Peter and my daughters Emma and Stella; and to my parents, who arrived here from Chile in 1974 with dreams of a better world for their children. To the exiles and refugees of the world, this play is for you with the sincerest hope that one day, one day soon, the grand avenues of the world will open and you will walk free.
- MARILO NUNEZ
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