He also plays an old black widower who assuages his loneliness by befriending a lost dog. And a street drunk who rails hilariously at the pompous yuppies who saunter by, walking their pampered dogs. The show, which runs through Saturday at the District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams-Morgan, is not an ode to the joys of multicultural brotherhood. Aviles and director B. Stanley have created something far more gritty and realistic. And it's the job of the audience to digest it in whatever way their digestive system can take it.
Some people have more stomach for it than others.
Up From the Street When he came to Washington in 1980, Aviles was an involuntary immigrant. At 15, he was living with his grandmother in a small town in El Salvador. Radicalized by observing the plight of his country's rural poor, he joined a student group allied with rebel guerrillas and he started hiding guns in his house, preparing for the upcoming offensive against the U.S.-backed oligarchy. Meanwhile, as the civil war heated up, right-wing death squads were killing leftist sympathizers every night and leaving their bodies in public places as warnings. I've seen it.