Providence Journal Editorial
The title means "yellow" in Portuguese but the recent production of Amarelo, by New Bedford's Culture*Park, was pure gold.
The play follows the physical and emotional journey of a young woman from the island of St. Michael in the Azores to New Bedford and the American experience. The play, written in English by New Bedford native Paulo Pereira, and directed by Patricia Thomas, appeared breifly at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. The smoothly written work was smoothly directed and finely acted by an effective cast led by Susan Perfetto, of Providence, as the imigri. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, the production was uniformly endearing. It's two performances in a small venue was too short. The production ought to be presented again, perhaps in New Bedford, marketed regionally__aiming promotion particularly at Fall River, East Providence and Providence and eagerly shared with a much larger audience.
By coincidence, Artworks! at Dover Street, the innovative studio/gallery non-profit group that has seized New Bedford's cultural scene by its artistic nose and lead by example, is about to stage its own Azorean experience. June will highlight crafts of the Azores through both photographsby John Robson and individual stations devoted to Azorean lace, baskets, textile waevings and those incredible cornhusk dolls. The opening will coincide with what New Bedford calls its Portuguese Days.
There�s a major cultural coup in the waiting for the right hands to pull it together. Perhaps Culture*Park, the City of New Bedford, teh New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce, Artworks!, the Zeiterion Theatre, the Prince Henry Society and Portuguesae and Azorean cicvic groups throughout the region will view a staging of Amarelo in conjunction with the exhibit and the festival as an overdue celebration of a culturally rich heritage so vital to southern New England, yet too often ignored. The production is ready to go. The shared themes form a whole mcuh greater than its individual components. Whether rendered in Portuguese or in English, a suitable translation of this confluence of circumstances is opportunity knocking.