​"Coraje"​ Review ​Gaddiel Ruiz Rivera

Seccion 116, Group 5

A Vision to the War ​Trought​ t​ hat particular spelling does not exist in English ;)
-Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:52 PM​ Theater

As part of our University affairs to ​keep​ ​promote would be a better word here -Mary E
Sefranek 2/21/10 9:42 PM​ the culture and arts, last Tuesday of January I saw the play “Coraje”.
A precious story from Teresa Hernandez that talk about the war from the different points of
view. It makes us to see far away from what the newspaper tell us every day ​yes, it really
personalized it, which, in a way, brought war "home" to us in a way newspapers can't. It made
it even more horrific by doing this, in my humble opinion. -Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:43 PM​ .
The idea of this was to take the spectator to the truths abut the war: how it affects
government, society, soldiers and their families.

The story did not empathized in character names, but to let us now exactly who they are, and
how war affects their lifestyles, their routines. A two styles artwork: monologue and dance.
With the monologues we heard the confessions and the way of think of some Puerto Ricans. In
the dances they showed us the horrors of wars, how they suffer. ​Yes, I really got this sense of
people grieving, in deep depression, battling with their emotions, and even going crazy, which,
we know, of course, is one of the outcomes of war...so many soldiers end up with psychological
disorders...and I can only imagine the psychological stress this places on families as well. In the
chair scenes, I felt the chairs were like the source of the pain...allegories for whatever was
causing the pain, which is why they were being banged around so much. The actors were trying
to "deal" with them or act out against them, or even push them away, or not let them
go...depending on the emotions they were trying to convey...what I remember distinctly, too, is
when Teresa Hernandez was climbing up and down the walls, sometimes upside down, like she
was trying to escape, find an exit, a way out. The chairs and dancing, for me, symbolized the
psychosis of war. -Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:44 PM​

It impacted me a lot! I have a lot of family members in the war, active soldiers, and in the
National Guard some women, like the first monologue said. ​I like how you personalized this and
it may habe been useful for you to elaborate a bit more. Which parts of the play made you
think of them specifically? Also, what did the first monologue say about women in the war? I
don't recall. -Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:52 PM​She said, the first woman, that even her
daugher was enlisted in the National Guard, so she is proud of the family women too because
of that, and that happens in my mother family too. Because I'm independentist they don't talk
me about that, but I beet that they wanted me to be in the Army too -Gaddiel F Ruiz Rivera
2/22/10 1:14 AM​ ​ War is one of the most stupid things that the humanity left us, a bad, social
problem we need to trash. It was for me, like performing a poetry, a silence poetry that entered
in my mind. The metaphor that the chair hides, the movements that the actors did. All of that
show us a sentimentalism that can not be understood at first ​It's true you had to feel it and
observe it and let it sink in before appreciating it completely -Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:50
PM​ .
 All was a social and political critic ​critic is a person who critiques. Critique is the word you are
aiming for.-Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:50 PM​ . I liked the irony of the beginning ​How so? What
was ironic? -Mary E Sefranek 2/21/10 9:51 PM​I think as irony the woman who said: "Como Dios
así nos manda. Hay que enlistarse en la guerra". But God does not want suffering latins or
iraquies, fighting together. It is excelent, because the mother of my cousins that assited in
battlefield talks the same things! And she is the same religious as the actress -Gaddiel F Ruiz
Rivera 2/22/10 1:11 AM​ ​ . As a poetry writer I loved the performance because it told us the
position of war but not with words, the most important was what we saw, what we felt in our
heart.

I can not end talking abut the play “Coraje” without remembering my favorite line: Everybody
has a war. Our war consist in end the actual wars, to fight for our dreams of freedom and
peace. To become human, we need to share our best feelings with the humanity, there is the
secret for a better world without war.

Well done, Gaddiel. I think there were a couple of places where you might have expanded
just a bit more on your ideas, but I am assigning you the full three points for this extra credit
assignment.