Why The Red Paint is the most important play you’ll see this year

I was privileged to see a dress rehearsal of The Red Paint following my interview with writer and director, Nika Salazar ’16. I must admit, it was not what I expected. And, frankly, I couldn’t be happier with it.

The show, although at times heavy-handed or overstated, connects with everyone who watches. Although the emphasis is placed implicitly on the Latinx community, it is just as important for the white community, because a lot of us simply don’t think about shit that goes down within minority communities.

The opening dialogue between an unnamed white teenage boy, played by Conor Sweeney ’18 and Xochitl, a Latina girl played by Elise Harmon ’17, introduces a raw, failing teenage romance, culminating in his admitting he cut down the flower they planted together. With this heartbreak, we are thrust into the collective memory of Xochitl and her father, Juan Salazar, named after the director’s own father, played by Richard Flores ’16.

Elise Harmon ’17 and Richard Flores ’16. Photo credit: Elise Harmon

A massive clock hangs over the center stage, attempting to somehow pull us through a convoluted timeline, partially dramatically presented, partially metaphorically so. Three girls in flower pots describe the emotional abuse suffered in their Chicano household, being demonized for their gender, explaining they were given “lies and hate” for being disappointments in their household. Immediately, white audience members will feel the sheer tension as the girls convey emotions of Latina women too real to ignore but too foreign to fully understand.

This separation of experience between Latinx and white communities is furthered in every scene thereafter, with depictions of domestic abuse, emotional belittlement, and police brutality. One particular scene included Xochitl and her sister spilling red paint from a ladder, while saying “You taught us to question, and now we question you.” Juan, discovering his red paint spilled on the ground, beats his son Miguel for the transgression, then discovers after the act was in fact done by the girls. He stands a distance away, but as he raises his hand up, the girls recoil and scream. Terror and anger hit the audience, and in doing so they stir ideas of cycles of violence within minority groups.

Finally, a story is told that gives Latinx people representation and conveys parts of culture, pride, individuality, and camaraderie. The same story masterfully combines representation with an ingenious, atemporal progression and relationships that are no doubt based off real life, but do not at all seem contrived.

In one particularly poignant scene, the teenager, after witnessing a police officer beat a Latino man, claims, “If I knew him, I’d fight for him. But he’s not worth it.” As a white person, I normally don’t realize that that is precisely how I want to think. But this play brings the “red paint,” the cycles of violence and normalization thereof, to view.

In the words of Martin Niemoeller, “First, they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then, they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then, they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”