SAG/AFTRA/EQUITY * Download Begonya's Resume -- IMDB * Contact: Tel: 310279-2981
This short 1-person play is a 13" prologue to the full-length play in the works. Relating to consciousness, quantum physics, education, AI, and the truth escorting us beyond established material concepts.
Dr. Sal shares with her Preclinical Science class a patient's near-death experience as relating to how the principles of quantum physics perhaps validate the phenomena of consciousness.
During these seismic shifting times, resistant orthodox science fights awakening to consciousness as the foundational nature of reality, though quantum leaps in artificial intelligence functions, prove otherwise.
Written by Begonya Plaza-Rosenbluth and performed on August 26, 2023
New York Public Library for Equity Library Theatre Festival of Short Plays.
Directed by Dana Jacks,
Video recorded by Beverly Batzel.
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GERNIKA LIVES
In my early twenties I put aside my acting career and embarked on a passionately personal documentary adventure. I wanted to capture the voices and essence of Gernika's survivors who experienced horrific violence and destruction. Their memories echo throughout history as a cry for peace.
April 26, 1987 was the 50th Anniversary of the Bombing of Guernica.
The silenced survivors who during the Franco years could not speak, finally got to narrate their personal traumas of that horrific day in my documentary, Gernika Lives.
Imagine that this was one of the first aerial bombings on innocent populations, after Harar in Ethiopia, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Because Gernika is the emblem of Euskalerria (the Basque people in the Northern part of Spain, and Southern part of France,) the Fascists targeted the area to level it as a war of aggression waged by Franco and Hitler.
When I was a little girl I remember sitting on my daddy’s lap and hearing his stories, while seeing tears roll down his cheeks. I wasn’t a filmmaker, but I somehow needed to make this amateur film for my father, and for all my Basque ancestors, and the people of Euskalerria. Some say that the Basques are the indigenous people of Europe. They speak their own unique language, and have maintained their identity and a democratic independence from the beginning of time while in a complicated dynamic with neighboring governments. During Franco’s regime, they were prohibited from speaking their language, or blaming the victimizing assailants.
In 1988 when I returned to the States, and wanted to distribute the film, nobody in Hollywood was familiar with this story or the least interested. Soon after I was cast in Born on the Fourth of July, and went on location to the Philippines, my film was shelved, but that learning experience is forever informative.
CLICK ON VIDEO to watch. It works.
Prior to Gernika's bombing, when my aita (father in Basque) was a child of three years of age, his family lived in a comfortable chalet in Barakaldo. My grandfather was the head of the worker's union of the shipyard, Los Astilleros.The Fascist Nationalists appropriated themselves of my grandparent's home, and sent them off to vanish in homeless conditions. First they fled on cargo trains to France, and then continued to Barcelona, until finally returning to the shattered remains of Guernica where my barefoot father helped clean up the rubble of the ravaged town.
Written, directed, narrated, produced, and co-edited by Begonya Plaza
A co-production with K2000 in Bizkaia
Edited with Jack Tucker (Emmy winning editor)
Music by Xeberri and other distinguished Basque musicians (included in the film credits).
Film introduced by John Randolph (actor / activist, victim of McCarthyism)
Featuring: Basque artist/author Luis Iriondo, and historian, author Mario de Salegi
Dedicated to my father: Jesus Plaza
In Spanish, and Euskera with English Voice-Over & subtitles. 39".
Redirect to Gernika Lives page:
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My early acting career Demo:
Links for recorded performances
The Invisible Catalyst (a poem dedicated to Covid-19)
A scene from "In Arabia We'd all be Kings" by Stephen Adley Guirgis
Benefit performance at First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, hosted by Ed Asner
"Silver Tongued Devil" Begonya Plaza for Rimes of The Ancient Mariner February 24, 2016
Invisible Catalyst (Poem to Covid-19 NY)
Cat and I in Port Lligat researching Salvador Dalí
Childhood friends: Mauri, Felipe and Jesus breaking bread in Euskadi
On the US1 with Zelda Kaplan * Jeffrey Gurian
The Persistence of Memory is a screenplay I wrote that was a semi-finalist at the 2005 American Zoetrope Screenplay competition. It also garnered the interest of notable Hollywood artists with signed letters-of-interest but the competitive process of raising money in Hollywood turned out to be uninspiring, especially at a time when I was a single mom committed to raising a teenage girl, my proudest joy and responsibility. Instead, I continued exploring through my writing a stage version and later a novel that still to this day I'm struggling to finish.
This is a fictionalized account about Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala, seen from the eyes of a young man who was privy to their private lifestyle and forever affected by his intimate experiences with them. This character-driven phychological thriller explores and exposes the juxtaposition of genius and wickedness, the purity of art with the vulgar hunger for celebrity.
I have always been inspired by artists and the question of how someone can be so powerfully moving in their artistic represention of humanity, yet demonstrate such abusive and selfish personality. Many years in the late 90's, during a summer writing program at NYU I wrote a script about Jacqueline Picasso about her last day on earth prior to ending her own life, just because without Picasso she felt worthless. That contrast of power and weakness fascinates me. Having met several of Gala and Dal´'s lovers in NY and Los Angeles, and many fascinating individuals, in their own right, who knew Dalí intimately while I was living in Barcelona, I feasted on their intriguing stories.
Unfortunately, other films have gotten made with individuals who had actually read my script prior and praised it. Oh well, that's life. But what hurts me the most is seeing how none of these films have been capable of evoking the depth of Salvador Dalí's magnetism, and grandeur. He was ahead of his time as a thinker and visionary. Dalí was not the clown that so many want to make him out to be, nor was Gala his lascivious wife the evil stupid Russian. No, no, no. There is a lot more to these two intensely astute and intelligent beings. But in our time we want to place limits by classifying, judging, and belittling what we don't want to take the time to understand.
I've learned so much through this creative and investigative endeavor, intellectually, spiritually, and professionally, so much so that even if others have taken ideas from me in order to attain their quick fix, and faltering success, I feel alright about it. I wish Hollywood would stop with the gimmicks though, so the world could be a better place, because this Dalí genius was a rare specimen bringing with him many lessons for us to absorb. One of the Dalí's gifts was their vulnerability, and so revelatory was how they used their weaknesses with a fearlessness to overcome society's limitations. It is through their sensibilities and insensibilities that they, like mythological figures of our time, stand forever as masters of innovation.
DALI Esque-Apades is a short segment of my writings. A stand alone short story. This video was filmed with East Village poet and actor, Phillip Giambri narrating. Enjoy!
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LINK TO PAGE Where you can see more of my research videos going back to the year 2000, and information I've accumulated over the years.
Begonya Plaza © 2000