[StBernard] Katrina horrors re-staged by drama teacher

[Westley Annis]

Katrina horrors re-staged by drama teacher
Sona Patel
About a year ago, Cuesta College drama instructor Philip Valle started
having a recurring dream about Hurricane Katrina. 
He imagined scenes, characters and events that he eventually combined into
his newest play, "Levee: A Gothic Ghost Tale," which is performed by Cuesta
students and based on perceived events leading up to Hurricane Katrina. 

Valle toured New Orleans last year to familiarize himself with the area and
to visit Kid Smart, an organization that hires professional artists to teach
performing arts in local schools. 

The play is set in a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish. Valle said he had
extensively followed the incident at St. Rita's Nursing Home in that parish,
where 34 people were killed as Hurricane Katrina hit. While the play does
not take place at St. Rita's, Valle said audience members familiar with that
incident may recognize a similarity. 

Throughout the play, Valle highlights the relationship between residents of
a nursing home and the staff, while simultaneously presenting events
happening around New Orleans about 24 hours before the hurricane hit. 

Valle said he had no desire to write a play about Hurricane Katrina but that
he kept having dreams of the play's setting and characters - mainly the
residents and staff of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish. 

"I had been reading about the incident at the nursing home where 34 people
died but maybe it's just that I couldn't shake the thought of that so it
kept coming back," Valle said. "I then realized that it was a problem we
should address and pretty much the whole story just presented itself." 

Valle's play also touches on other controversial events during the
hurricane, including incidents of looting and police brutality. 

Some of the overlying themes focus on the history of New Orleans and the
cultures that have influenced the area. 

"All you have to do is open any of the buildings and there are layers of
photographs and piles of paint so that in a sense this is a piece about the
culture being overlaid on top of redundancy of human error and nature,"
Valle said. 

For example, he said, the history of New Orleans was about the flooding of
the Mississippi River. "It's never going to stop unless we do something,"
Valle said. "That's one thing that we've tried to educate ourselves about
through this play and one thing my students and I want to be aware of."

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/205831.html