The Western Stage Receives
Second Award Recommendation from
The National Endowment for the Arts

Salinas, CA 93901-1628
December 23, 2003

The Western Stage received its first grant from the National Endowment of the Arts last year, which went to support the adaptation and production of Victor Villaseñor’s national bestseller Rain of Gold. This new relationship with the NEA marked a milestone for TWS.

As artistic director Jon Patrick Selover noted, “it is national recognition of the work we do in this community. It is not just the money received, but also the approval an award like this signifies that makes it so important. It affirms that the work produced at TWS is of substantial cultural value to the community and to the nation.”

So, as TWS celebrates its 30^th Anniversary serving the Central Coast, the staff and board of directors are proud to announce that the NEA is continuing its relationship with The Western Stage, and is recommending another award to develop a new theatrical piece, tentatively titled Salinas Stories.

Although the ideas are in early gestation, the vision guiding the project was born out of a question posed to Selover by the board of directors when he was interviewing for the position of artistic director in 2001.

“If you had an unlimited budget, what play would you do?”

Selover explains that he does not think about theatre in that way. The budget would not factor into his choice of material. What was born out of this question, however, was an idea that had been germinating in his imagination for several years.

According to Selover, “Salinas is an interestingly diverse model of the lab that is this country.” He should know. In the nearly twenty years since joining TWS, Selover has worked on several plays that have documented the experience of the people of the Salinas Valley. Selover has come to the conclusion that every important social and political event in the state of California has had a direct impact on Salinas, and visa-versa. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers union called attention to the inequities experienced by thousands of field workers in the agriculture industry. Many migrants from Oklahoma settled in Salinas to escape the ravages of the “dust bowl”. During World War II, the rodeo grounds on North Main Street served to detain Japanese-Americans who were eventually interned. These incidents and more demonstrate how Salinas has been a part of some of the most historical moments in the state and nation.

“I want us to create an oral history of this valley,” says Selover.

It will begin by focusing on what NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation”, those who lived in Salinas between the Great Depression and World War II. “We’re losing these voices,” says Selover. “They’re about to sink below the surface.”

With the help of director Lorenzo Aragon (Rain of Gold ’03), Selover hopes to invite those who are still with us to the theater to share their first person accounts of life in the Salinas valley between these pivotal years. Aragon will utilize “playback theatre” technique and a student improvisational group to collect stories from participants and transform them into short vignettes. It is hoped the process will spark memories and stimulate dialogue and evolve a theatrical compilation. Yet, the idea at this point is not to produce a play, but to create an on-going process that will archive the oral history of Salinas. Selover does not want this to “end in a box”, but would rather see it continue to grow and morph into a whole series of projects celebrating Salinas’s rich heritage.

(Some details of the projects listed in this announcement are subject to change, contingent upon prior Endowment approval.)

Dan Tarker, Literary Associate