Photo: The leads of In My Father's House, Svea Kennedy (standing) and Levi Lobo (seated), by Kane Productions
Jacalyn “Jackie” Kane moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico,in 2023, and war broke out between Israel and Gaza a few months later. Jackie had written a play 30 years ago about a love story across ethnic/religious lines during the violence of Los Angeles in the 1990s.
The Spirit said “It’s time,” so she dusted off the script and searched for a theater toco-produce the play. Santa Fe was the perfect place for her vision. Her production company, Kane Productions, had produced numerous musical shows in New York and Los Angeles, but producing plays was new to her.
Her play, In My Father’s House, opens at Teatro Paraguas in October 2024. Teatro Paraguas aims to use as much local talent at possible in its productions. An earlier version of In My Father’s House was as a two-character play about Alana Rubinstein, a young Jewish-American woman from Beverly Hills, and Angel,24-year-old Mexican-American man from East LA, who’s baby brother has just been killed in street violence. Ms. Kane had presented it in the 1990s at a short play festival. She later expanded it to include their parents’ generation.
Jaclyn Kane lived in Los Angeles for 24 years and was there for the 1992 Rodney King LA riots. The revenge killings and “drive-byes” of LA gang culture were a common sight on LA local news from the 1970s until some times after the 1992 riots. Jackie said she sat in the back of an LA church near Olivera Street full of mothers and grandmother wailing for children lost to gang violence.
“My friend’s mother organized a truce between the Bloods and Crips by having them meet in her house.” This brave woman told the rival gang leaders to use walkie-talkies(in the pre-cell phone universe) to communicate with each other to prevent incidents from escalating into a “new round of revenge killings.”
Alana, the play’s protagonist, is still residing at home with her parents, and her father’s distress at seeing his daughter possibly leave their ancestral Jewish faith, hence the title, In My Father’s House.
Jackie Kane is Jewish herself. Her paternal grandfather played clarinet for the Czar’s palace band in Russia, hiding his Jewishness from the Czar’s own anti-Jewish enforcers. With the overthrow of the Czar and the Bolsheviks targeting the former palace staff (and Jews as well), he sneaked out of Russia and came to the United States.
Ms. Kane’s connection to Latinx culture goes back to her New York days, when she worked with music promoter David Maldonado and performers like Celia Cruz, Willie Colon and Ruben Blades. In Los Angeles, of course, Mexican-Americans are an essential part of the fabric of daily life. Her move to Santa Fe felt like a natural progression.
The Ancestors’ Calling In Santa Fe, New Mexico
Jackie moved to Santa Fe in 2023, inspired by a close friend (who is a Native American actor) who insisted for years that “I’d love the abundance of Native culture, art and beauty, and that I’d feel at home. I visited for years and embraced it all.”
Jacalyn Kane, is after all, Distracted by Beauty in All Forms.
I asked Ms. Kane what about Santa Fe’s culture had been a surprise. Her answer: “The Sephardic Jewish community.” Large numbers of Spanish, or Sephardic, Jews had emigrated to New Mexico in the 1500swith other Spaniards. As Spain had outlawed Judaism in 1492, these New Mexican Jews (as did many others in the Spanish empire) had hidden their religious heritage from outsiders. In recent years, they started to openly celebrate it and embraced Ms. Kane herself.
For Ms. Kane this was an unexpected revelation. It had been an artistic decision, 30 years ago, to give the fictional Alana Rubinstein a Sephardic Jewish mother, who offers Alana the spiritual practice of Kabbalah as an alternative to the more patriarchal mainstream Judaism, hinted at by the title. It was serendipitous that the ancestors called Ms. Kane to a community of hidden Spanish-speaking Jews to bring her story to life.
Several Sephardic women perform in the live production. Ms. Kane notes that, even in supposedly patriarchal faiths, there is a matriarchy at work behind the scenes ,describing her own mother as a peacemaker in a family of strong-willed individuals.
For this reason, in one scene with a protest vigil, she decided to have the local Sephardic Hispana women cast members sing live rather than play a tape.
Teatro Paraguas aims to employ as much local talent as possible with roots in the region and its local cultures. The male lead, Angel, is played by Levi Lobo, who is of Apache and Argentinian descent. Alana is played by Svea Kennedy, who turned out to have a Jewish mom, though that was not the reason for hiring her.
Los Angeles and New Mexico both have layers of cultures and genocides embedded in their soil. In My Father’s House explores what happens when the buried layers erupt to the surface.
In My Father’s House runs from October 3-20 at Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The production company is Kane Productions, www.Kaneproductions.com
Svea Kennedy as Alana and Levi Lobo as Angel in In My Father's House,
photo by Kane Productions
This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to CA vs Hate
