La Mariposa/Breaking Through
Properties Design by Laura Merrill
Teatro Visión (San Jose, CA) April 2024
Written by Francisco Jiménez
Adapted for the stage by Leo Cortez
Directed by Ugho Badú and Ricardo Cortés
In La Mariposa, a young Panchito arrives in the U.S. with his family, and finds his way amid a life of constant moving and in a school where he doesn’t understand a word his teacher says. As he watches his classroom caterpillar transform into a butterfly, he too begins to learn to spread his wings.
Breaking Through follows him to his teenage years, where Panchito comes to love school and reading. A dream to become a teacher awakens in him. But when his responsibility to his family clashes against his own desires, he must navigate the competing priorities that face him.
In reference to the cardboard maletas Panchito and his family use to cross the border, the properties needed to have the same ephemeral and conspicuous feel that brings us over the border with Panchito. Almost piece in this design was created with cardboard and/or heavy paper.
Some notable pieces made for this production include:
10 individual ‘tent’ pieces that flip into letters the children use to taunt Panchito with during class. These represent his difficulty learning a new language and connecting with the people in his new home.
These tent/letter properties where used several times throughout the play for various transition moments. I connected them to one another through a boxy painted style so the actors could create various tent shapes with them. I then put a piece of cardboard in the center of the squares that would flip over to reveal the large letters. Almost like flipping a page of a book.
6 individual books bound and painted as schoolbooks.
I made 3 books out of cardboard that could be opened and read by the actors for the appropriate scenes. For the textbooks I made just the outside covers and then glued strips of cardboard together along the outside edge to simulate book pages. This made the books hollow and easier for the children to carry. All books were bound in brown paper and painted with various colors of latex paint.
A large butterfly puppet made with used book paper.
I made a 5’ wide butterfly puppet with flapping wings for the release of the butterfly at the end of La Mariposa. The base of the body was made of 1/4’ plywood affixed to a pole mechanism that flapped the wings. The wings were made from cardboard and decorated with pages from various used books and colored paper. Although we didn’t end up using it for its original purpose, the puppet became our center piece for the theater’s lobby during the show run.
A butterfly jar representing the 3 stages of a butterfly’s transformation complete with small butterfly puppet inside.
At various points in La Mariposa the butterfly will go through the different phases of it’s growth cycle. I needed something big enough to be seen from the stage while also hiding the other 2 pictures from the audience. I achieved this by making an angled shape to the jar to keep the pictures separate. I then made a similar styled butterfly to the large puppet that was put inside the jar to be released by the children at the end of the play.
