Theater

Comments | Recommended

Immigrant experience on stage at WaterPlace

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, July 26, 2007

By Channing Gray

Journal Arts Writer

Marc Levitt’s The Triple Decker is a narrative history of a fictional triple-decker tenement in South Providence and of six immigrant groups who live there over the course of 60 years.

viera Levitt viera Levitt

For two generations a fictitious triple decker in South Providence has been home to families from various cultures. The groups bring with them their customs, their dreams and prepare to live the immigrant experience.

It is a story written by South County’s Marc Levitt and performed on and off for the past dozen years.

Now The Triple Decker Project comes to WaterPlace Park tomorrow night at 7:30 as part of the WaterPlace Park free concert series. The show, which lasts about an hour and 10 minutes, chronicles the lives of six immigrant families — Armenian, Cape Verdean, African, Dominican, Cambodian and Irish — who pass through the triple decker in question, and who learn what it is like to become Americans. Levitt explores the rituals and myths brought to this country by these groups and what life holds during periods of war, peace, depression and prosperity.

He thinks the piece is especially pertinent because of the controversy surrounding the immigrant issues facing the United States right now.

The piece is well researched as to the customs of each group and the places its members might have frequented. In one case a young couple goes to a downtown theater to see Charlie Chaplin, then heads to Rocky Point for a night on the town.

The story also traces the younger generation’s flight to the suburbs and how the parents were left behind in the tenement.

Throughout it all, Mrs. O’Rourke, an amiable Irish woman, acts as a mentor to the next generations to move into the house. She is a go-between when a couple from two cultures want to get married, saying that no culture is totally homogeneous and there is no reason they can’t wed. She is the hopeful one of the lot, who sees the advantages of the New World.

The families are ultimately brought together by the children and the music that is performed by a series of ethnic musicians, immigrants themselves. Harmonica player Chris Turner is the music director.

Those ethnic instruments are used to play American folk tunes such as Take Me Out to the Ball Game. You can hear a Cambodian xylophone knocking out When the Saints Go Marching In, said Levitt. Players include David Ariyan, Armenian fiddle; Phil Edmonds, Irish whistle; Norberto Taveras, Cape Verdean guitar; Song Heng, Cambodian xylophone; Levon Ariyan, dumbek; Carlos DeLeon, Dominican trumpet; and Isa Coulibaly, Malian drum.

The music will continue after the show so people can dance, said Levitt, who along with storyteller Valerie Tutson will serve as narrators.

cgray@projo.com

Advertisement

Reader Reaction