Arizona and Teeter-totter

Teeter-totter

• Ronald Rael

• Architect

• Viewing the boundary as a site that severs relationships between the two countries

• They wanted to create a place where citizens across the border could connect, so they designed three bright pink ‘teeter-totters’ (see-saws) to slot into gaps in the steel border wall.

• One designer worked from Juárez in Mexico and another in El Paso, USA. For just under twenty minutes on 28 July 2019, residents of El Paso and the Anapra community in Mexico could, for the first time, unite through play.

•  And so, we thought that this would be a moment to show the world a very important reality of the border, which is that the border isn’t a desolate place where no one lives. This is a world where women live, and children live, and that we can use play as a kind of vehicle for activism.”

Arizona

• Written in 2005

• By: Juan Carlos Rubio (1967-Present)

• Writer, Director, Playwright 

• Written in Rsponse to the tightening border controls between US and Mexico

• For Juan Carlos Rubio, the play deals with “the human being and our fear of the unknown, and how violence can drive us into more violence. This is a play with many layers; it has humor, irony, drama, and tragedy. The text confronts us with the terrible realities of human beings from an ironic point of view.

• Arizona is based on a real story that I read from the newspaper,

• This play is inspired by the Minutemen project, a militia group created in the US in 2005 and defined by its members as a civil force for the defense of borders.

• The meaning- (men in a minute) – comes from the fact that they could be ready for combat in one minute. Currently, and as a consequence of the latest political situation in regard to immigration from Mexico, there has been a recurrence of civil militia groups on the border.

• In this play, George and Margaret, a married couple from Wyoming move to the border on the Arizona desert to participate of the Minutemen project.

• There is a dark humor in the play through how the stage is designed, how music and news come into play, how the melodies seem more for a musical than a tragedy.

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