Michal Baginski

Professor Francisco Soto, Ph.D

HON 121

March 5th, 2018

Carmelita Tropicana

She has a sense of humor, multiple personas, some might even think she’s insane, and her name is Carmelita Tropicana. Carmelita Tropicana, the self-proclaimed “songbird of Cuba,” sprung up in the early 1980’s in New York. She immediately became a fixture of the East Village performance scene and created many pieces of art unique to her own style never seen before.

Alina Troyano, or as she is more commonly known as Carmelita Tropicana is a Cuban-American stage and film actress, playwright, lecturer and Latina comedian based. She was born in Cuba in 1951 and later moved to New York City in the 80s, where she made a name for herself. Ever since she was a teenager, she had an interest of doing theatre. However she had her doubts. In her book “I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing between Cultures”, Carmelita states that “As a teen I had gone to the Circle in the Square Theatre but my thespianism had been squelched the day the teacher announced the Puerto Rican Travel Co. was holding Auditions and need actors”. Carmelita takes us back to a moment in her teens where she was feeling doubt about pursuing her dream of acting (thespianism is the art or profession of acting). She continues in her book to explain how the teacher and audience was laughing at the company as if she was a comedian. Since she was a Cuban native, she thought she had no chance of making the Puerto Rican Traveling Company auditions. In sorrow, she states “I guessed I wouldn’t do theatre”.

With doubt and sadness in her mind, she was sure she wouldn’t do theatre. Until one day she found the WOW Cafe Theatre in East Village, New York. The WOW was described to host “incandescent evenings of incongruous acts”. She heard about the WOW Cafe through a few people and even read about it in a women’s news paper. Ironically, in an interview with Carmelita, she states “I went to WOW looking for girls and found something more long-lasting: theatre” (Carmelita Tropicana Unplugged: An Interview). She was intrigued to see all kinds of women, dressed in different types of clothes, and haircuts and colors. She loved it, they had her sense of humor. She claims, “The play Split Britches, written and performed by Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, and Deb Margolin, was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen”. She loved the comedy acts and found the play very inspirational. Her first time being a spectator slowly turned into a hangout destination. She would throw theme parties to pay rent and even performed in her first fashion show there.

The WOW Cafe is the beginning of a new era for Carmelita Tropicana. This beginning is what sparked her multiple personas. One of her most known personas, is Alina Troyano. People even mention her personas as if they are completely different people. In “Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture” by the Wisconsin University Press, “The persona Carmelita Tropicana was originally created as an extroverted alter ego enabling a more fearful Alina Troyano to perform. The subsequent blurring of the lines between Alina Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana reveals how identity is layered and fragmented both on stage and off”. The purpose of her multiple personas to to be able to create separate identities based on her presence of being on stage or not. On stage she was known as the fearful Alina Troyano, enabling a Latina stereotype as heterosexual bombshell, yet she is lesbian as Carmelita. Her use of multiple personas shows her skill in being able to layer her stage identity and her actual self, which is a very difficult task. She likes to say how Carmelita gave Alina her freedom, yet they are the same person. She states in her interview that, “Carmelita can go out there and say she’s a fruit. Carmelita will do anything. She’s much more adventurous. Alina isn’t.”

In a few of her performances, Carmelita is known for dressing up as a male drag. In her performance, “Memories of the Revolution”, Carmelita re-enacts her memoirs as a daughter of the Cuban Revolution before Castro with the help of the Tropicanettes and Pingalito Betancourt, whom is a bus conductor. In the act, she plays the man Pingalito Betancourt wearing male drag. She would use an accent to play the role and wore typical male clothing with a hat, cigar and glasses. Surprisingly, New York was not the only place where she was well known for her performances and art. Her plays, videos and performances have been presented at venues all around the globe. According to Wikipedia, she has performed in “The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, Centre de Cultura Contemporánea in Barcelona, the Berlin International Film Festival, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Mark Taper Forum Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles, Center for LGBTQ Studies in New York, and El Museo del Barrio in New York”.

Carmelita Tropicana directed and created a large amount of works in her life. A few are “Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is your Waffen”, “Milk of Amnesia”, “Single Wet Female”, “With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?”, and “The Box”; these are amongst a few pieces of hers where should would create and part take in the performances. Carmelita Tropicana received a large amount of attention for these pieces from scholars of queer latinidad and performance art, such as José Esteban Muñoz, whom is a scholar in the field of queer politics and queer theory. She has received a few awards throughout her life, such as the Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance in 1999, the Anonymous Was a Women in 2005 and Creative Capital award in 2016. She also received funding support from LGBT communities, the Jerome Foundation and even the Rockefeller Suitcase Fund.

Carmelita has a strong connection with New York. Ever since she had moved to the Big Apple, it was the beginning of her dreams of theatre. If she had never went to the WOW, then who knows what she would be doing at this point. Carmelita is similar to Lady Gaga, both having grown up in New York City and the Lower East side. They both came to image through their early performances in cafes and small shops in the city .The city is what sparked their careers and they both use their platform of art to raise awareness to their views of feminism and the LGBT community. Both being proud lesbians, they had very unique and uncommon styles of art. Lady Gaga did not care what others see of her and Carmelita shares the same mentality. They both have their weird, crazy sides, and having unique forms of expressing their art.

Carmelita Tropicana has been performing in New York’s Lower East side art since the early 1980s after coming from Cuba. With her outrageous and unsettling humor, and multiple personas, Alina Troyano, or Carmelita was able to make a name for herself in the performing arts industry, when she was ironically looking for women in the WOW Cafe.

 

Bibliography

Román, David, and Carmelita Tropicana. “Carmelita Tropicana Unplugged: An Interview.” TDR (1988-), vol. 39, no. 3, 1995, pp. 83–93. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1146466.

“Carmelita Tropicana.” Brooklyn Museum: Carmelita Tropicana, www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/carmelita-tropicana.

“Carmelita Tropicana.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Mar. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmelita_Tropicana.

Chávez-Silverman, Susana. Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

“ABOUT.” Carmelita Tropicana, carmelitatropicana.com/. Troyano, Alina, et al. I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing between Cultures. Beacon Press, 2000.

Troyano, Alina, et al. I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing between Cultures. Beacon Press, 2000.