Our Utopia

About

The Swallowtail Players, The Aurora Canyon Community’s Premier (and only) Theatre troupe invite you to a public reading of one of their most important texts, Our Utopia, written by the community’s founder Aurora (transcribed by playwright Carlos-Zenen Trujillo).

“The word ‘utopia’ is so loaded. I think about it a lot. What does it mean? Does it mean love? Does it mean family? Does it mean the beauty of the world unfurling before you?” – Sister Aurora

Trujillo, an ANPF 2021 New Voices playwright, returns to ANPF with this immersive new play, a commission of Bag&Baggage Productions, which is co-producing this developmental reading.

The story of delves into the darker side of an idealistic community. Drawing inspiration on Our Town, the play asks big questions about belonging, community, and our place in this world.

“Oregon is home to its share of idealistic dreamers, communes, and, well, cults. Our Utopia asks what we are willing to give up so that we can belong,” shares ANPF Artistic Director Jackie Apodaca, who is the Our Utopia director for both this workshop and the play’s world premiere at Bag&Baggage in the fall of 2023.

Trujillo is an alumnus of Southern Oregon University, and their play Christmas, Contigo premiered in 2021 at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre. Currently, Trujillo is a cohort member of Artists Repertory Theatre’s PATHWAYS Mentorship Program.

Playwright Perspective

In 2020, I had a startling realization: I’m an Oregonian. (I know how it sounds, but stay with me.) I’m an immigrant, and part of the immigrant experience is a deep rootlessness. Despite having lived most of my life in the US, I still don’t feel truly “American,” and despite having spent most of those years in Oregon, I never identified as a real Oregonian. In 2020, however, I became very introspective (I wonder why) and one of those 3 a.m. thoughts was the fact that this state has profoundly altered my psyche.

What is an “Oregon” story, what makes it “Oregonian”? My conclusion is: Oregon is a land of lost dreams. Lotus Eater Country. It is the place where Utopian daydreams become real. And where they more often than not become nightmares.

This state is defined by independence, the idea that here, you’ll be left alone to create your little slice of heaven. And it has broadcast that image to the world. From the Oregon Trail to Portlandia, we love to let the world know that in Oregon, you can just be. You can be yourself, and so long as you work hard enough, you too can create paradise. And yet. That isn’t the whole truth, is it? Not for the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest, the victims and survivors of the Rogue River Wars. Not for the Chinese rail workers in Hell’s Canyon. Not for the Black Oregonian excluded from setting foot in the state.

Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state in the union. They dot our forests and valleys as a reminder of all the hopes and dreams this place has swallowed. This state has a magnetic pull to those dreamers (good and bad).

Our Utopia is that story. An Oregonian Our Town. Also, it’s a story of how dreams can become nightmares, and how our desire for a better life can become twisted into something darker. But more than anything, at its core, it is a call for empathy. It’s easy to sit in a theatre, or behind a screen, and judge people who fall into cults, but have you ever stopped to think: Am I in a cult? What am I willing to sacrifice to protect? What lengths will I go to live my dreams? What will I give up for Utopia?

Who

*Appearing through an Agreement between ANPF and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.