"I had a choice between Hell, Purgatory... or Raton New Mexico."
Ragged Blade veteran Gerald C. Ortiz in a solo performance!
THREE CHANCES AT HEAVEN
by Jerry Rabushka
Presented At THE TIN CEILING
Starring Gerald C. Ortiz
Directed by Jerry Rabushka
Tech: Jason Lauderdale
House staff: Jerry Rabushka & Mike White
Poster design: Matt Burlingame
Three Chances at Heaven takes us back to early 20th Century Raton, New Mexico. A new city, an isolated western outpost, just getting its footing and personality. Against this historic backdrop we meet Carmen Arriaga Villanueve y Ibañez, a rising Spanish opera singer touring the West; a woman who is equally at home in the opera house as the bawdy house.
Her biggest fan? Antonio Vittorio, a handsome miner from Verona who moonlights as an usher to make a little extra money, happy to follow her from "house" to "house."
Due to a bit of intervention by our show's narrator, an uncooperative otherworldy type recently deceased from a bar fire in Guadalajara, Carmen and Vittorio find themselves in a spur or the moment wedding with consequences far beyond what either of them anticipated. She's free spirited, he's possessive. She speaks Spanish, he speaks Italian, their marriage counselor speaks Navajo. Can this marriage be saved? And what about.... the baby?
If you had three chances to chance someone's life for the better, when would you take them? Early on, then they were young and impetuous, or later, after so many mistakes — including your own — had already been made. Aficionados of Raton's early history know what happened to the mine and the opera house; our hero has a chance to alter some of the city's early history, but is never quite sure when — or if — to make that choice.
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"Now you wouldn't think a four of clubs would be relevant to anything. You'd never think that a four of clubs would lead to fighting, shooting, and fire, and that it'd be all my fault!"
