Local drama takes another step forward with the next play at the Raven, Who Will Dance with Pancho Villa? But the production, which opens on Jan. 22 for an eight-performance run, is hardly new. Gabriel Fraire and his brother John wrote it over 30 years ago; it had its first off-Broadway performance in New York in 1994.
“This was our first collaboration,” said Healdsburg resident Gabriel Fraire. “My brother is actually the theater fan. He was living in Manhattan and told me that if a couple of Mexicans wrote a play about their Mexican family history, he was sure he could find a producer.”
Though John Fraire has moved on to another career as a university administrator, older brother Gabriel (he’s 77, oldest of six) is still a writer, with several novels to his credit, plus poems, screenplays and newspaper work. He was editor of the Windsor Times for several years, his local history book I Remember Healdsburg is still available at the Museum and his other works, including columns written for The Healdsburg Tribune, are on his website at gabrielfraire.com. He and his wife Karen have lived in California since 1975, when they realized they had no reason to stay in the Midwest.
“We were living on a farm in Illinois doing that back-to-the-earth, self-sufficient stuff,” he recalled. “We didn’t have a lot of money. And in the winter we had to close down all the rooms and live out of one room. And finally one day I just said to her, ‘We could live anywhere. We don’t have to live in the cold.’”…