cover photo
taken from Mexican Masks, University of Texas Press
cover photo design: Atleier Lebas, Los Angeles
“an
evening of considerable heat and no little roughshod beauty.
The work, poetic in concept and symbolism, is set in
the back yard of a Puerto Rican enclave in Patchogue, L I, but
also in the recent mystic past of blood rivalries and macho
Montague/Capulet feuds....”
Jerry Tallmer, New York Post
“José
Rivera's provocative, intriguing THE PROMISE...
But what's most impressive about THE PROMISE is its
brazen insistence that theater can dare to be great in the
old-fashioned meaning of the word. This play makes no apologies
for the theater, never tries to imitate film or television
conventions. It restores the stage to its transformative,
religious, spiritual origins. It believes in the theater as the
one, true sanctuary for our communal dreams, our social
nightmares, our superstitious secrets. It keeps theater's promise
to raise forbidden issues and explore taboo topics.
...THE PROMISE makes a vow in the first scene—to
offer an exotic, lush weave of the surreal and the real—which
it never betrays.”
Richard Stayton, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“José
Rivera is out of the kitchen sink and into magical
realism—that's the term the playwright uses to describe THE
PROMISE, a modern-day tale of love, death—and love beyond it...
THE PROMISE is about maturation, growth, about leaving superstition
behind. It's also very concerned with the cultural genocide that's happening in
Puerto Rico.... They learn English in school, and the indigenous folklore is not
taught....”
Janice Arkatov, Los Angeles Times
originally produced by The Los Angeles Theater Center
4 M, 3 F
I S B N: 0-88145-070-7
$9.95