Welcome To Arroyo's (Play Review)

-1nce Again (dj1nceAgain@gmail.com)

The assimilating quality of graffiti is dutiful and ubiquitous; it is the fanciful relationship between the visual sophist and the visual arsonist. Hop on any metropolitan train system in the US and you'll see the stirring of graffiti's echoes reverberate through the tunnels of their inner city concentration camp. However, graffiti walks with an uncomfortable duality of accepted irreverence; to those who breathe in the night and exhale aerosol paint, graffiti exists as their impetuous dialectic with fleeting reality and anonymous egotism.

Kristoffer Diaz's "Welcome to Arroyo's" melds the complexity of graffiti with the lucid density of social and familial hierarchies. Set in the burgeoning Manhattan mecca of the Lower East Side, trendy lounge "Arroyo's" welcomes the audience to the burgeoning family relationship between Alejandro (Joe Minoso) and Amalia (Christina Nieves), the social deluge of Lelly (Sadieh Rifal), and the affirmation of Officer Jeter (Edgar Miguel Sanchez). These four individuals struggle with asserting their footing, Alejandro with the success of "Arroyo's"; Amalia with an understanding of who she is, as a graffiti artist and as a person; Lelly with the dualism of education and race; and Officer Jeter with the ownership of his role as a servant of the people. To offset the tension of these character melees are the satirical DJs Trip (Jackson Toran) & Nelson (Gregory Qaiyum), their unique interstitials give the audience the genuine DJ odyssey of dropping the needle at the climax.

Each actor embraces the responsibility of knowing their own character and where their personal plights derive from. Whether it be the affirmation of young blood in an arena dominated by an older audience, the combating of the neither here nor there social syndrome, the tumultuous journey of self-realization, the scribing of their individuality, or just a musician trying to be heard and taken seriously. Each character is given life through genuine intuition and the audience can see this through the inherent hip-hop lens.

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