Communion hides behind a quinceañera’s dress in QUINCE

What happens when we look past the forms, and enter the realm of connecting with one another through the stories we tell.

By: Scheherazade Quiroga for BIPOC Critics Lab

The inner walls of The Bushwick Starr are unapologetically pink. They are getting ready to say goodbye. In a few weeks, they’ll close up shop at their new location in Bushwick as the theater completes the anticipated renovation of the building they bought in 2021. Before that though, they owe their colorful makeover to Camilo Quiroz-Vazquez and Ellpetha Tsivicos’ co-creation, QUINCE, the season closer for the Brooklyn based theatre.

That reads keen-seh (not kwins): the spanish word for fifteen. The all-caps title goes with the wall color– which is perhaps closer to a bright magenta–  as it sets the atmosphere for a fiesta de quinceañera honoring Cindy, a 15 year-old Chicana confronting her queer identity, family and religion on the eve of her big party.

Yes, this is an über-specific subject matter. “I’ve discovered that the more specific I get with things, the more universal they become”, says Quiroz-Vazquez, who wrote the play based on his own family’s story. “Feeling like an outsider as an immigrant is not that different from the experience of someone feeling like an outsider because they are queer. Yet, there isn’t always an intersection of those two communities.” 

As the first-generation American offsprings of immigrant Mexican and Cypriot parents, respectively, Quiroz-Vazquez and Tsivicos know all about intersections. They have merged their apparently disparate backgrounds in One Whale’s Tale, the production company behind QUINCE, which centers on generating content with an appreciation for magic and preservation of culture. They have more in common than you may think. Tsivicos includes on the list the way they were raised, growing up in a bilingual household, and “this first-generation constant conflict of never being American enough, and never being the other thing enough”. 

Their camaraderie is relaxed, and their energy welcoming and contagious, which we exploit during a walk-and-talk across Bushwick on a sunny afternoon as Tsivicos leads our path skillfully through the neighborhood.

They take their mission to heart. “If we can't invite people into our cultural traditions they're going to die, and we don't want these things to die,” she says. “Culture is not a museum piece. It's alive, it changes”, completes Quiroz-Vazquez. “A lot of immigrant groups in the United States constantly feel like their culture is under attack, that unless protected exactly as it is, it's going to disappear, which leads it to become stagnant. Then, they return to Mexico and hear: ‘Oh, we don't do that anymore’”. 

QUINCE does not pretend to instruct you on foreign culture, the LGBTQ community, or even dare explain why you should care. Instead, it gives you a taco, a drink, and a seat at the table so you can be part of the story as it unfolds in a torrent of kitchen smells, live music, flowers, magic, and a mesmerizing excess of frilly fabric dresses. And, yes, that’d be a literal taco and drink, which are included with your ticket. 

“The core is family. I don't think there's a single person on Earth without a family conflict that they can connect with,” says Quiroz-Vazquez. “Everything around it is like embellishment that gives you specificity to this time and place.” 

And family is what the atmosphere at The Bushwick Starr feels like, even in the midst of construction, and the exhaustion of tech week. From Artistic Director, Noel Allain, to members of the design team, everybody finds time to connect and chat upon my early arrival. I get a guided tour of the very instagramable QUINCE stage from Stage Manager Beatrice Perez-Arche, who is in awe of a newly painted magenta prop ladder– which does look cool. There’s hellos from passersby of neighboring businesses, and even an unexpected delivery of a home-made loaf of bread. The community is effortlessly palpable.

The connection between QUINCE and Bushwick goes back to August of 2020, when the show’s presentation at The People’s Garden became the very first live theater performance to open in the city during the pandemic. Quiroz-Vazquez’s story was originally set in Los Angeles, where he is from, but Bushwick– his current home– complemented the ideas and struggles of the characters well. “There’s literally a Quinceañera hall down the street from the theater!,” he points out.

The team describes what happened in the garden as more of a workshop. At an hour and 40 minutes the show stands longer now, and brings more depth and structure to its original characters, while adding a few more. Each has their own life and have become archetypes without being stereotypes, something on which Quiroz-Vazquez has put special care. This is also something he’ll get to personally bring to life, as he returns to his acting roots with a role during this run of play.

There’s also the food (which felt unsafe to incorporate in the Summer of 2020), and more Spanish on the table, even when Tsivicos, who doubles as the director of the show, is not herself a speaker. “If a line comes naturally in Spanish, then I want it in Spanish!” confesses Tsivicos, who speaks English, Greek and Cypriot. “The show’s language is not exclusionary, but welcoming while still being challenging. You’ll understand what is being said even if the language may occasionally not be the same you speak.”

This seems to be part of the duo’s secret plan to bring down walls and make theater appealing to new audience which, added to their truckload full of goals and hands-on duties, makes you understand why they considered going into politics at some point. “That was until I realized everything I wanted to do as a politician could be done so much more efficiently through theater”, concludes Tsivicos. She seems to be succeeding.

Tsivicos’ main wish for QUINCE is that, even if audiences don’t take anything from it, they still feel as if, for a few minutes, they stepped into a dream. As for Quiroz-Vazquez, his wish is two-fold: for those unfamiliar with the quinceañera experience or the struggles of an immigrant household, he wishes they’d walk away with a nuanced look of the conflicts and the magic they hide. For the rest, he wishes deeper thought on traditions and how we treat them. “Connecting our individual struggles makes for more communion and a stronger community”, he concludes.  

Even when that may seem deceivingly hard, just add food, music, and paint magenta all the walls if they still stand. Sounds like a party to me!

QUINCE is presented by The Bushwick Starr and One Whale’s Tale in association with ¡Oye! Group from June 2 - 26th at 419 Eldert St., Bushwick Brooklyn, Thursdays - Sundays at 8pm

Written and co-created by Camilo Quiroz-Vázquez
Directed and co-created by Ellpetha Tsivicos