‘MAN FROM MAGDALENA’ IS COMPELLING AND POWERFUL

MAN FROM MAGDALENA, Leona Wagner Black Box, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, March 24; second performance 7:30 p.m. March 25, tickets at 801-355-2787, 888-451-2787 or www.arttix.org 

Illegal immigration is a serious social issue for the United States and cause for real concern. Unfortunately, all too often when we hear about a group of immigrants being deported or read about them dying in the desert from dehydration on their trek north, it doesn’t make a huge impression on us. After all, we didn’t know them. We just switch TV channels or flip to the sports page to read about our favorite team’s standings.

But it should matter to us. Every one of the migrants coming into this country has a story to tell. Every one of them is real and human and not merely a statistic to be used for political purposes.

Patty Willis

That’s the thrust behind Man from Magdalena, a compelling tale of one poor migrant’s journey across the border and about his selfless act that resulted in his deportation back to his home town of Magdalena, Mexico. It is told with conviction through words and music.

When Patty Willis read about the man, Manuel Jesús Córdova Soberanes, and how he stopped on his way to Tucson to help a young boy who had been in a car accident that killed his mother, it resonated with her. She felt compelled to tell his story. What she ended up with was a powerful theater piece that explores the human soul through the eyes of several people living in the desert no man’s land on either side of the Mexico/Arizona border.

Mary Lou Prince

Written as a one-woman play, the versatile Willis — who in addition to being a writer, actor and singer, is also the minister at the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Salt Lake City — gave life to the various characters through her finely crafted and nuanced performance and infused them with depth and personality, and sometimes with wit and humor.

Mary Lou Prince’s music is direct, sincere and mesmerizing. Through simple means, often through no more than a straightforward Latin beat, she captured the scenes and characters vividly. It is a wonderful collaboration of words and music that has the power to draw the audience into the world of the migrant, or his mother and wife, or the rancher living near the border.

Joining Willis and Prince, who played the piano, were cellist Megan Titensor and singers Gloria Gardner Murdock, Nan McEntire and Brenda Voisard.

The eloquent music, the heart wrenching words and the strong performances by the six artists make Man from Magdalena impossible to forget.

There is one more performance today. Go and see it; it’s a show not to be missed.

Willis and Prince will be donating the net proceeds from these two performances to micro loan programs in Mexico and Central America to help the economic situation in these areas. To date the couple has underwritten close to $100,00 in loans through www.kiva.org.