Six-year olds buying beer. High school drop-outs too cool to work for minimum wage. The ghetto. “BX is my heart and soul,” said Steven Tejada, Latin-Arts-sponsored comedian, to an audience of PA students in Kemper Auditorium last Friday night. He referred to his home, the South Bronx, a borough of New York City known for its crime and poverty. Tejada did not set out to shatter stereotypes about the Bronx, rather, he played off of them in a one-man dialogue about his love-hate relationship with his roots. One of his rather oafish characters euphemised dropping out of the New York City public school system as “educational activism.” “Someone had to do something for the community,” he said. “That’s why I had to drop out of high school.” He added, “I also have something against minimum wage. That’s why I’m not working.” In another sketch he portrayed the proprietor of a bodega [a 7-11-esque liquor store] scolding his six-year-old self not for buying a beer, but rather for delivering it to his father the wrong way. Although some complained that Tejada’s conversations with himself were at times difficult to follow-a valid, if minor flaw-the show was easy to understand. Tejada cleverly turned what could have been an hour-long monologue into dialogue, and effectively eliminated the third person by acting out characters other than himself. Although Tejada capitalized on negative stereotypes of his home, he subverted them by demonstrating a distinct goodness in his characters. They were flawed, but well-intentioned. He played his roles with affection and humor, so that the bodega owner was fatherly rather than irresponsible; the high-school dropout not simply lazy, but misled. Tejada criticized the actions of his subjects implicitly, but shed a good-humored light on their motives and characters. As the only member of his group of friends to attend college, Tejada is a self-described anomaly in the Bronx. Indeed, a recurring theme in the show was the difficulty the “BX” community had supporting his exodus from the ghetto. To sheltered suburbanites, New York City can seem like a worldly place, but Tejada demonstrated repeatedly the isolated existence of living in the South Bronx. He referenced “exotic, far-away” places, pronouncing “Connecticut” and “New Jersey” as if they were the names of foreign countries. In one sketch, set at the bus stop before Tejada left for Connecticut College, he imitated a friend describing Greenwich (pronounced “Green Witch”) as a forest filled with “mad white people who like to go hiking.” He was an odd version of the urban cowboy-a hick from the inner city. Tejada cited this urban isolation as the reason for his friends’ difficulty in accepting his departure from the BX. They worried he would change at college and come back wearing clothes from “Banana Republican,” and doubted his ability to truly separate himself from the ghetto, saying that he could write an essay about getting shot in the foot. In the end, his friends revealed that they were proud of him, just afraid to lose him.Tejada showed his audience that culture shock is universal. He spoke to a diverse boarding-school crowd, some of whom shared Tejada’s background, others for whom the show provided an entirely new perspective. Proudly wearing a Yankees cap, he left the stage to appreciative and thoughtful applause. Tejada’s show was more than just a comic performance, it was a step towards expanding cross-cultural understanding – towards enlarging our infamous “Andover Bubble.”
