El Día que Nevó Tortillas

Teatro Paraguas will present Joe Hayes' famous cuento El Día que Nevó Tortillas (The Day It Snowed Tortillas) at the Southside Library on July 12 at 2:00 p.m. as part of the Color Our World-- Summer Reading Celebration events. Southside Library is located at 6599 Jaguar Drive. Admission is free.

The quick-witted wife of a bumbling leñador manages to keep both of them safe from a group of menacing robbers  through a most unique strategy.  A tale for people of all ages!

The cuento is directed by JoJo Sena de Tarnoff, and the actors include Daric Gutierrez, Froggy Fernandez, Elsa Lopez, Pierce Anaya, Stella Belle Anaya, Kingston Leyba, Magdelena Leyba, Moshea Leyba, Cristine Rogel, Dee Anaya, and Argos MacCallum.

…  Many will relate “The Day it Snowed Tortillas”, which has been something of a signature story for me for over a decade, to a well-known Russian folktale.  In [this] version, however, the resourceful character is a man rather than a woman.  That a woman is the clever one in the Spanish variant reveals something about the attitude toward women and a great deal about the sense of humor.   People the world over tell stories of a humble individual tricking an overbearing person of high status, but the idea is especially cherished in Hispanic storylore.  Making the trickster a woman, who would traditionally be thought of as less powerful than a man, adds spice to the trick.  

My hope is that readers will find these stories spicy enough that they’ll begin to tell them themselves.  And if they do, I invite them to add something from their own imaginations to make the stories even richer.  

---  Joe Hayes