Camden Fringe: Isabel Quiroz on Cherry Sour

Isabel Quiroz on performing the same character in two languages and BEING INSPIRED BY THE PEOPLE OF HER CHILDHOOD

Cherry Sour and the Tragedy of the Pink Flamingo is a one woman show adaptation and translation. Originally produced in Mexico, it received an Honorific Mention by the National Prize for Playwrights Manuel Herrera in 2019. Isabel Quiroz talked to Red Bus Londinium ahead of its Camden Fringe run.

Red Bus: Cherry Sour began life in Mexico. What has changed about the piece, or about how you perform it, in adapting and translating it for London audiences?

Isabel Quiroz: This piece was originally written to be portrayed by 2 actors and a live band. Cherry Sour’s life is full of tragedies, and her own life becomes a secret as a way to overcome her violent past, until she meets Johnny Flamingo, the lead singer of The Pink Flamingos who exposes her to the world.”The Pink Flamingos” are the soundtrack that builds the universe of the play, and a different way of telling Cherry’s life. A less tragic one.

This play was produced in Mexico during covid times and had several performances until I moved to the UK. When I decided to adapt it into English, the big question was how to produce it. In an attempt to make it more accessible for Fringe venues and easier to move, as one of my main goals was to take it to festivals, me and my Assistant Director, Rae Keefer, took the decision to adapt it as a one woman show, keeping the soundtrack and the voice of Johnny Flamingo as it is an element that defines the structure and the identity of the play, but also that triggers Cherry Sour into telling her story.
As a performer, it has been a unique challenge to portray the same character in different languages. As I had the chance of previously doing it with a live band, it helped me to build a strong background for my performance. The character is the same but at the same time it’s not, each Cherry has its own voice and its own rhythm, especially as one is telling the whole story alone on the stage, and we get to see the whole universe of the original play through her eyes.

Red Bus: The play is framed entirely within a police interrogation room. What does that setting allow you to do dramatically that a more conventional structure wouldn’t?
Isabel Quiroz: Cherry Sour is a character that is invisible to society, she hides from the world to protect her own loneliness. Putting this type or character in this frame, allows me to tell her story, with no filter, “the truth in this place, doesn’t matter”, she says when being interrogated. She takes the decision to speak up because that’s the only chance she has to be heard, and most likely the only chance for her to actually tell her story. I needed to give her a spot so she could recount a story that probably she has never told to anyone (maybe just to Johnny Flamingo).

Red Bus: You’ve kept Spanish in the script as slang and identity rather than translating it fully. How do you think about what an English-speaking audience needs to understand versus what should simply be felt?

Isabel Quiroz: The script has gone through different stages, especially to explore this communication between languages and what can be said in Spanish that people can understand without knowing the language. As a person who’s living mainly speaking english, I can relate to the fact that words in spanish pop out without controlling it. Mainly when emotions are involved, or when expressing complex feelings, or anger. I think that’s what we wanted to explore with Cherry, giving more power to her emotions, letting words to come out whatever the language, this is so helpful if we have in mind that what happens in the show is the recounting of Cherry’s past. Some of the most powerful moments in the play are songs sung in spanish. Not because of what they say, as they’re tragic, but because we play with actions that connect with the emotions translating the songs.

Red Bus: As writer, director and sole performer, how do you separate those roles day to day, and does one usually take over when you’re deep in rehearsal?
Isabel Quiroz: I try to not mix any of the roles I have in this production. The script has always been my core when developing this piece, but this is a story that is character lead, so the most important thing for me has been the construction of Cherry Sour’s world and her story telling. The changes in the script have happened after developing and exploring the character’s movement and voice. As a stage director, I had a clear picture of the visual concept for the play, which includes the stage movement and as there’s no big set, the transformation of the space throughout each scene, but everything is put in order to explore and enhance Cherry’s voice. Having onboard Rae Keefer as assistant director, whom I’ve worked for a long time now, has made a big difference in all the choices taken in rehearsals, as she was part of the process since this play was translated and then turned into a one woman show, so she knows the world of the play beyond of what it’s written.
I think the playwright always wants to take over, but she’s there to continue going deeper in Cherry Sour’s world!

Red Bus: Teatro Glam&Roll draws on noir cinema, 1970s glam and Latin American magic realism. How did those influences come together for this particular story?
Isabel Quiroz: This play was inspired by news I read in the newspapers and people that were living in my street when I was young woman living in Mexico. The real life behind the play, is the empty streets in the middle of the night where big shadows scare you and anything can happen in the darkness, but in that darkness that provokes danger, the colours can take over as well. Cherry Sour is a dark play, a world where crime and violence is normal, but the presence of the Pink Flamingos turn everything into a glam rock concert, with glitter and pink colour, wanting to take over that dark world, not necessarily for the best but at least enough to overcome the fears, and with music, to give Cherry the courage to talk about her own world, as a mean of survival and resistance.

CHERRY SOUR and the Tragedy of the Pink Flamingo will be playing at Rosemary Branch Theatre on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 August at 7 pm.

Age recommendation: 16+
Duration: 60 minutes

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