Scenes behind the scenes at the Theatre Guild

The Theatre Guild of Ancon wouldn't survive without community support, and that
public backing couldn't be realized without volunteers working in the box office

Scenes from Come Blow Your Horn by the Theater Guild of Ancon
a review and photos by Eric Jackson

Come Blow Your Horn
Directed by Carlos Williams
Produced by Gale Cellucci
Starring Varoon Anand,
Amit Nathani,
Kimberly Hall,
Rita Banús,
Ed Ward, and
Diana Luz Parada
With about a dozen Theatre Guild members
and volunteers doing the many other things
that had to be done to put on this show

This summer production by the Theatre Guild represented the changes that have come to Panama's English-language theater scene taking their place in a long running continuum.

The Guild doing Neil Simon again? Well, that's canonical and part of the local tradition. Come Blow Your Horn is a 1950s work, a well enough known play to bring out a certain part of the regular audience, and also from the actors' perspective familiar enough to measure one's performance. The Guild, you see, exists not only to entertain the larger English-speaking community but also for members of the smaller English-language theater community to sharpen and exhibit their skills.

The two central figures in a new generation of talent that has come to the Guild, Varoon Anand and Amit Nathani, played the leading roles of the Baker brothers. Guild veteran Ed Ward played their domineering wax fruit baron father. Psychologist Rita Banús made her acting debut in this show, while Kimberly Hall is an experienced young actress playing with the Guild for the first time. Diana Luz Parada, the quintessential Jewish mother in Come Blow Your Horn, has played in Ancon a bunch of times and is even more experienced in Panama's Spanish-language theater scene. The most noteworthy Guild veterans in this production, however, were not on stage. Come Blow Your Horn represented the emergence from "retirement" of director Carlos Williams and producer Gale Cellucci, and their experienced guiding hands showed.

This play was a reflection of its time in the mid-50s when it was written, but today looks like this amazing time warp. The Wayback Machine takes us to about 1956 and the bachelor pad of Alan Baker (Varoon Anand), a 30-year-old dedicated to partying and the avoidance of commitment or responsibility in all spheres of life. His 21-year-old brother Buddy (Amit Nathani) comes to seek refuge from what has become an unbearable parental nest. Peggy Evans (Kimberly Hall) is the foxy but dense blonde in search of a casting couch that will make her a star, while Connie Dayton (Rita Banús) is not at all dizzy --- just in hot pursuit of Alan Baker. And then you have Ed Ward and Diana Luz Parada and the long suffering --- and insufferable --- Mr. and Mrs. Baker.

The wax fruit industry, and the lives of the characters, would never be the same afterwards.

That one of the brothers later guided the company into plastics and became the inspiration for Frank Zappa must forever remain an unconfirmed and improbable rumor.

That this intergenerational effort has the Theatre Guild back on its customary track even as it ventures off into new directions was easily confirmed by what people who went to the play could see. It was well acted, well directed and well produced all the way around, and a sign of the Guild's health.

On all the technical and support jobs, however, most of those involved wore more than one hat. The Guild needs all sorts of help, from skilled set designers and builders to electrical, sound and lighting people, to unskilled or semi-skilled volunteers to do countless other tasks. You don't need to have any aptitude for or desire to participate in acting to pitch in for this key institution of Panama's English-speaking community.