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Women of Ciudad Juárez. By Cristina Michaus. Dir. Dr. Jimmy A. Noriega. Bud Walton Theatre/Missouri Southern State University: Joplin, MO. 26 January 2017.
Mujeres de Ciudad Juárez (Women of Ciudad Juárez) by Mexican actor, playwright, and activist Cristina Michaus started eleven years ago as a one-woman show to bring awareness to the seemingly-unnoticed femicide in the bordertown of Juárez. In 2013, the play was translated into English and directed by Dr. Jimmy A. Noriega and his theatre company Teatro Travieso (Troublemaker Theatre). The company was founded in 2012 and has toured three productions to date: Encuentro: Peru!!, Women of Ciudad Juárez, and Joto!: Confessions of a Mexican Outcast. The group's main focus is to create positive change in the world through theatre. Women of Ciudad Juárez was invited for a four-night run (January 25-28, 2017) at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, MO. These performances started the fourth year of the production's tour, which has now been performed in 20 different locations in the U.S., Canada, Belgium, and Columbia. The show continues to tour.
Since 1993, women-ages 18 months to 89 years-have been slaughtered and left to rot in the desert with little to no attention from the government or community arond them. Ciudad Juárez has become a safe haven for criminals to carry out unspeakable acts of violence on women without much recourse. Women are attacked as they ride dark buses home at night or walk to work in the factories. The women are easy prey as they're often alone, tired, and unarmed. These women don't seem to matter at all. The play is a call to action-sign the petition, call your senators, tell your friends. But, more importantly, it looks to remember, honor, and value the souls of these forgotten women. These mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends were murdered and abandoned, but they haven't been forgotten by their loved ones. And, because of the production, they are memorialized by strangers in other cities and countries who have now heard their stories. The production looks to unsettle the audience- to call to their attention the atrocities that continue to go unsolved and unpunished by a corrupt government. Women of Ciudad Juárez takes the power from those who refuse to act and gives it to...