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About ten minutes in Cachada, I curled up in my theater seat and remained that way for the rest of the movie. It’s a good documentary, but boy, is it harrowing.
The documentary centers on a theater group, Cachada - the word is slang for “opportunity” in El Salvador, which consists of half a dozen El Salvadorean women, street vendors by day, and their teacher. (Although the group’s funding isn’t discussed in the film, one suspects that someone got a grant.) At the film’s beginning, they’ve decided to put on a play based on their lives, around the theme of motherhood.
This brings up all sorts of harrowing traumas in these women’s lives. One pair of sisters recalls being beaten by their father almost every day while they were growing up, and note that although they meant to do better when they had their own children, sometimes they, too, beat their children - particularly when they’ve had a bad sales day and there’s no money for food.
There’s a particularly harrowing improv scene where a woman acts out going to sell in the market with her children in tow, representing the children with the packages of toilet paper she usually sells. You wouldn’t think watching someone lose patience and whale on a four-pack of toilet paper until she breaks down sobbing would be so emotionally draining, but oh, my God.
The process also brings up memories of sexual abuse, of rape, of abusive partners, and partway through the group convenes to discuss whether they really want to do this show with this painful and sensitive material. As one of the women notes ruefully, motherhood sounds like a warm ‘n’ fuzzy theme, but it’s really cut to the heart of their lives.
But ultimately they decide they do want to go forward in creating the show, and the film ends, not with the show itself - we only see a little bit of that - but with its reception, when the actresses’ children come up on stage to share the final bows with them as the audience applauds.
You get the sense that the theater group is the closest to therapy they’re ever likely to get: they’re all so poor they’d never be able to afford a therapist. The theater group Cachada truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them: not just an outlet for creative expression, group where they can safely express traumas that they’ve maybe never shared with anyone else before, in a supportive environment full of people who understand, who have been through similar things (even their teacher, although pretty clearly in a better financial position than the street vendors, has been raped), who might be able to help each other break the cycle of violence.
The documentary centers on a theater group, Cachada - the word is slang for “opportunity” in El Salvador, which consists of half a dozen El Salvadorean women, street vendors by day, and their teacher. (Although the group’s funding isn’t discussed in the film, one suspects that someone got a grant.) At the film’s beginning, they’ve decided to put on a play based on their lives, around the theme of motherhood.
This brings up all sorts of harrowing traumas in these women’s lives. One pair of sisters recalls being beaten by their father almost every day while they were growing up, and note that although they meant to do better when they had their own children, sometimes they, too, beat their children - particularly when they’ve had a bad sales day and there’s no money for food.
There’s a particularly harrowing improv scene where a woman acts out going to sell in the market with her children in tow, representing the children with the packages of toilet paper she usually sells. You wouldn’t think watching someone lose patience and whale on a four-pack of toilet paper until she breaks down sobbing would be so emotionally draining, but oh, my God.
The process also brings up memories of sexual abuse, of rape, of abusive partners, and partway through the group convenes to discuss whether they really want to do this show with this painful and sensitive material. As one of the women notes ruefully, motherhood sounds like a warm ‘n’ fuzzy theme, but it’s really cut to the heart of their lives.
But ultimately they decide they do want to go forward in creating the show, and the film ends, not with the show itself - we only see a little bit of that - but with its reception, when the actresses’ children come up on stage to share the final bows with them as the audience applauds.
You get the sense that the theater group is the closest to therapy they’re ever likely to get: they’re all so poor they’d never be able to afford a therapist. The theater group Cachada truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them: not just an outlet for creative expression, group where they can safely express traumas that they’ve maybe never shared with anyone else before, in a supportive environment full of people who understand, who have been through similar things (even their teacher, although pretty clearly in a better financial position than the street vendors, has been raped), who might be able to help each other break the cycle of violence.
