Rita Moreno, a legend of Broadway and the silver screen, graced yet another stage Wednesday night when she spoke at Tufts about life as one of the first minorities to break into show business.
In celebration of Latino Heritage Month, the award-winning actress and mother of a Tufts alum told the Cabot Auditorium crowd that it is impossible to define America by anything other than its diversity and the contributions of its minority community.
Moreno said this acknowledgment is especially important during the war on terrorism, adding that her two-hour trip from New York City to Medford was surreal because the two distinct cities seem to have more in common since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We need to become one united nation," she said. "We can still have diversity but it will only serve to bring us together."
To illustrate this point, Moreno spent much of her hour-long talk addressing the history of diversity in America, lacing the discussion with anecdotes from her childhood experiences as a Puerto-Rican immigrant. She poked fun at the difficulties she and her mother had learning English, and humorously presented her mother's early mispronunciations. "Sounds like stand-up, doesn't it? This is my life we're talking about," she said.
Moreno, who is best known for her portrayal of Anita in the 1957 film version of West Side Story, was groomed to be a performer from an early age. As a child she took lessons in Spanish dance, ballet, voice, and acting, performing gigs at nightclubs by age 16. She was quickly discovered and brought to MGM studios in Hollywood, where she played various ethnic roles, searching for her niche. "They didn't know what to do with me," she said. "If you think there's stereotypes in movies now think of what it was like then."
But while Moreno discussed the ethnic themes of movies such as West Side Story and The King and I, the feisty 69-year old did not elaborate on her personal experiences in creating the works until the question and answer session that followed her speech. She used the scene in which the Jets throw racial insults at Anita in West Side as a fictional example of something she experienced as a young girl.
"My emotions in that scene resounded from experiences with racial prejudice," she said. "Old wounds don't necessarily heal as well as you'd like them to."
Some in attendance - including Drama Department Chair Barbara Grossman - were struck by Moreno's focus on diversity, saying she should have spoken more about her theatrical experiences than the American melting pot. "I appreciated her comments on diversity, but I would have loved if she spent more time giving insights on her Broadway experience," Grossman said
Moreno spoke about her daughter Fernanda's experiences at Tufts during the reception that followed. A 1988 graduate and active member of Sarabande, Fernanda was one of only a handful of Hispanic students enrolled at Tufts at the time. While Moreno said she was happy to see an increase in diversity at Tufts over the past decade, she expressed concern that the University segregates ethnic groups by offering culture houses such as the Latino and Africana centers.
"There's a lot of diversity here," she said. "But it's a little sad - I worry that when there's these angles we ghettoize ourselves in a way."
Yet it was efforts to diversify Tufts that made Moreno's speech possible. Though her appearance was a joint venture of the Latino Center and the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS), the two-year old Diversity Funding Committee provided the financial backing that brought Moreno to Tufts.
According to Latino Center director Ruben Salinas-Stern, the move and expansion of the Latino Center has helped give the community a more prominent presence on campus. Latino Heritage month becomes bigger each year, he said, adding that the Diversity Fund helps bring dynamic speakers to campus.
ALAS President Eric D??vila said the Moreno event has been planned since February. "We chose her because she was within our budget, a dynamic speaker, a Latino female, and a name people will recognize," he said.
Junior Elizabeth Ramos said she was impressed by Moreno's knowledge and intelligence. "Her talk was very eloquent and touched on many issues of concern today," she said. "She used humor to take off some of the seriousness of the topics, which enriched the discussion."
