Challenging people’s thoughts on theater, gentrification

The original concept and execution of a show like “Taxilandia: San Diego” was already something that challenges the way people think about and understand theater. Then, South Bay-based artist and organizer Bernardo Mazón Daher further built on the disruption in that work.

“Taxilandia” is a mobile theater production created, developed and directed by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez and based on conversations during nine years of driving a taxi cab in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood in New York City. The Oye Group, Jimenez's production company, works with theater companies across the country to develop local versions of the show, which is how Daher came to write and perform the San Diego show. As part of the La Jolla Playhouse's Without Walls program, Daher plays “Sal” and takes three passengers for a 90-minute ride through National City, Chula Vista and San Ysidro to share the ways his beloved neighborhoods are changing.

Daher and Jimenez took some time to talk about their reimagining of “Taxilandia” in San Diego, of how the nonprofit theater model can generate greater support and agency for local artists, and how the show can continue beyond its official Nov. 6 closing. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lisa-deaderickstaff.html.)

Q:

Bernardo, I'm curious about how you first learned of “Taxilandia,” and then what appealed to you about being involved in the San Diego show?

Daher: I was in the back of my pop's bodega warehouse in San Ysidro and we had just moved. The business had been displaced, he was priced out, and we were getting this new place up to being functional, up to code. I had not hung my hat as an artist, but a few years had passed where I'd stopped going to leadership meetings at the [La Jolla] Playhouse and I stopped accepting teaching contracts or hunting for jobs because of a number of factors: my family needed me to support them; for health; financially, I was taking on a new family and had a partner with two daughters. Then, the pandemic happened and I found that I could not be everywhere at once, so I was doing less art. I got an email from the Playhouse that said, “You're going to want to talk to this man,” and I just read his name was Flako Jimenez and that was enough for me. I couldn't make full assumptions because we got people out here in this field who are far away from where they grew up, who they grew up with, and their truth, so there was some air of caution, but the first conversation we had, Flako was so real.

Q:

What was involved in the development process for this San Diego version of the show?

Daher: As Flako said, I challenged the process. I know that there is a kind of unity that is all of the areas of the South Bay, even though I wouldn't use the word “diversity” because I feel like that's really watered down what life is like here because west Chula [Vista] is very different from east Chula. Of course, the narrative of being first generation or an immigrant narrative is also totally different. So, I thought of how, growing up, in my life I felt a direct connection to so many of the different areas because of what was the day-to-day — whether it was going to work versus going to school, going to a friend's house or riding public transit and such. The combination of all of that felt like, with this one opportunity, it was going to hurt to zone in on one particular area of the South Bay that I grew up in.

Q:

The show is described as “a decolonial franchise.” What does this mean?

Jimenez: We are trying to make sure that the artists own everything, even if it's that the “Taxilandia” franchise is owned by the Oye Group and myself, the writing is still theirs.

We also understand that the nonprofit model in theater spaces is that you usually present for three weeks. If the sauce is good, they'll give you an extra two weeks or a month, but then, after that, we need to find your piece another home. It can't just be here forever, right? “Taxilandia” respects the nonprofit model of the theater having to have the three-week turnaround because it's all happening in a car. We're really challenging the institution to keep promoting this show after the “wow” moment of it. The show closes Nov. 6, and this is still a great way for people who are gentrifying into that theater space to get to know a real community, so now we challenge those institutions to keep promoting the show so the artists can now make money in their own car. It's a way of being able to not just displace the theater space or challenging them to rework the whole model; we know that it's not going to happen overnight. For now, we're asking them to respect this new model that we've created that lets the local own all.

Q:

What kinds of questions have come to mind for you as you see the ways that National City, Chula Vista and San Ysidro are changing? What are some of the social stigmas you've noticed in those changes?

Daher: Every city, and parts within the city, is experiencing its own kind of change. What's happening with Third Avenue in downtown Chula is so different than the work at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro. From my friends and collaborators in the community, I often hear an immediate resentment because of this narrative that I think we've been systematically taught to consume, that any kind of change is bad and it's going to lead to displacement. Of course, it often does, but the work that is neighborhood preservation or neighborhood empowerment will involve construction or redevelopment. So, as much as we're talking about gentrification in this interview, we minimize it in the conversation in the car. One of the things that this route does is show us that panorama of how neighborhoods are changing all around the South Bay, and not necessarily saying how each of them is good or bad.

lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com