A quarter of the way through The Flu Season, Will Eno’s 2003 absurdist exercise set in a psychiatric hospital, patients in the TV room watch a report on how an entire family fell through early-winter ice and died. Skating on a thin dramatic surface, the play itself hovers on the verge of its own destruction.  Like Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy, which concludes with the statement: “It was not midnight. It was not raining,” nullifying the earlier assertion: “It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows,” The Flu Season performs a pas de deux between self-creation and self-negation.

Two metafictional figures, identified as Prologue (Sophie Bolles) and Epilogue (Stephen Poer), materialize at the beginning and, ignoring fourth-wall conventions, speak directly to the audience. Prologue is buoyant and rhapsodizes about the scene she sets for a play she calls The Snow Romance. But Epilogue, a jittery cynic, contradicts her and states that the play has been renamed The Flu Season. Prologue and Epilogue will repeatedly interrupt the proceedings with commentary. Prologue’s is exuberant and lyrical, immediately deflated by Epilogue’s tart disclaimers. “I’m sick of this story,“ Epilogue ultimately tells Prologue, “and I’m sick of you.”

The story, such as it is, involves a male patient, called Man (Nathan Thurman), and a female patient, called Woman (Kaitlin Graves), who meet and fall in love in the hospital. They are attended by an officious physician, called Doctor (Aaron Aguilar, who also directs), and a self-absorbed nurse, called Nurse (Halen George). Beyond that, a plot summary would be irrelevant, because verbal frolic is more important than events and because Epilogue – the author’s eraser – continually deletes what Prologue affirms and what we see on stage. “Life is a word game,” insists Epilogue, and, true to life in a loony way, The Flu Season, whose title is an ailing lark, is composed not of significant actions but verbal flummery and non sequiturs. “Buck teeth are buck teeth,” proclaims Nurse. “There’s only so much cocoa left,” declares Doctor, who is more deranged than his patients. ”That’s my philosophy.”

Since the fictional characters in the play are manifestly fictional characters, the challenge to Proxy Theatre’s talented cast is to make them not believable but memorable. For a suicidal soliloquy with echoes of Ophelia, Graves’ Woman stands out, as does Aguilar’s Doctor, especially when, swathed in bandages after a bee attack, he makes his drivel almost unintelligible. Epilogue asks: “It is entertaining to watch people in pain, yes?” Yes. Though The Flu Season skates over depression, rejection, loneliness, and death, it never quite falls through the ice. The spirited execution of lines and gestures that Epilogue pronounces “useless” generates a kind of morbid exhilaration.

In what might have brought down the curtain if there were a curtain marking off the minimalist set, Prologue, grievously disappointed in the turn her play has taken, finally announces: “The end.” But Epilogue immediately declares: “There is no end.” The players simply disappear, with no opportunity for the ovation they have richly earned. With this, the third production of its second season, an adventurous, audacious repertory company proves again that in San Antonio theater there is no substitute for Proxy.   

Dear Mexican: Like many Americans, I’ve heard about the “Fast and Furious” scandal in which our own ATF was shown to be guilty and corrupt of supplying guns that ended up in the hands of the drug cartels. Now, if I say any more, I might be talking about facts that I don't know, and I would probably only be spouting off about what I heard on the news. I also recently saw a report about the violence in Mexico, and it mentioned something that I was unaware of. The report stated that there is only one place in all of Mexico for a citizen to purchase a firearm. However, we know that the cartels in Ciudad Juarez (and other parts of Mexico) are heavily armed. Of course, there is always the larger world market the cartels could use to find their firepower. But just across the border in the U.S., there are hundreds of gun stores, in addition to an ATF that is apparently willing to supply guns to them. 

Now, I’m not much of a gun proponent or opponent. I don't think firearms (in and of themselves) are the cause of or solution to most of our societal problems. However, I do know that firepower makes cartels powerful, and the drug violence coming out of Mexico is hard to ignore. In light of the fact that Mexicans can only legally obtain one gun, purchased from one location (if they meet all the requirements), what are the statistics for gun-ownership in Mexico? How does the Mexican culture differ when it comes to the average citizen and their view of safety and their right to protect themselves? There are obviously differing opinions in the U.S.A. about gun ownership, gun rights, and gun control. Similarly, I would expect that Mexicans have different views and opinions among each other regarding firearms.

But really, my main question is: One gun store? In all of Mexico? One gun store? Meanwhile, Juarez is awash with guns and blood. . . 

Curious Jorge

Dear Pocho: Before I get to your pregunta, a quick comment on Fast and Furious: while I’m no fan of the Obama administration, isn’t it so gabacho for Obama critics to only care about the smuggling of guns into Mexico, which causes untold misery to so many, when they can embarrass him with it? Refry this, gabachos: Mexicans have been buying guns in the States and sneaking them into Mexico since the days of the Magón brothers (my favorite smuggling story: a man I knew once wrapped yarn around a ball of bullets, and had his wife take it onto a plane; she ended up knitting a sweater with it. This was in the days antes de 9/11, of course). And Ronald Reagan sold arms to the Contras—or was that okay, because he was fighting supposed commies?

Back to the question: Mexicans love their guns as much as they love salsa, and while the Mexican government highly regulates sales of guns (although nowhere near as stringent as the one-shop rule you hard), gun violence is still high. A July 2012 post by The Guardian cited stats that showed Mexico’s gun ownership rate was 15 per 100 people (42nd highest country in the world), which paled en comparación to the U.S.’s astounding número uno rate of 88.8 per 100. The homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 goes to the Mexicans: whereas in the U.S., the figure was 2.97, the Mexico cifra was 9.97. As for the percentage of homicides due to firearms? 54.9 percent for Mexis, Americans clock in at 60 percent—not much difference. One huge caveat, though: the report was compiled based on stats from 2007, far before the narcowars engulfed most of the country. With a police force as ineffectual as the GOP’s Latino outreach program, the right to bear arms for Mexicans isn’t just some high-falutin’ constitutional ideal—it’s usually the only way to ensure you stay alive.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano, or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!

> Email Gustavo Arellano

Some craft beer aficionados take the go-local movement to an extreme. Not content to seek out the latest seasonal brew from a Texas brewery, they’re making their own suds at home. Using ingredients sourced from DIY suppliers, they can achieve results that are a far cry from the watery bathtub beer your great-uncle made to survive Prohibition.

At Homebrew Supply on North St. Mary’s, you can choose from a large assortment of imported hops and flavoring agents, buy a shiny glass carboy for fermentation, or take the advice of proprietor Todd Huntress, who runs the small store that also features a bar with two taps — and purchase a starter kit on the cheap, from $25 to about $50.

Jerry Lockey, a homebrewer who prefers full-bodied beers, skips making a mash from grain by using a syrup he buys at the St. Mary’s supplier. Sold as the fixings for a nut brown ale, it produces an almost-black brew with a strong flavor that Lockey enhances with additional hops “to take off the sweet edge,” he explained to the Current while demonstrating his casual, but effective, brewing technique recently at his home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Bringing a gallon of water to just under a boil, he adds the syrup, and extra malt, stirring all the while. “People say of homebrews, ‘It’s strong.’ But it’s not alcohol content, it’s the body you don’t get with Coors Light,” says Lockey. A medical technologist, he prefers to leave science at work, and hasn’t used a thermometer in years. He judges his batch by rough estimation, instead.

He tosses in a bag of ice to cool the mix down, siphons the batch into a glass carboy, then bulks the batch out to five gallons with more hot water. When he guesses it’s around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, yeast is added. Then the first fermentation, about a week, takes place. A second, with another decanting to a carboy, may or may not happen, depending on Lockey’s mood, and how the fermentation’s going. Finally, the liquid will be put into bottles, with extra sugar added, causing a last fermentation in the bottle, adding fizz to the beer.

A few blocks away, Lockey’s friend Steve Lewis, who prefers to go old school and start with grains, decants a bottle of the last IPA he made. Only two weeks old, the bottle opens with a vigorous pop, a good sign. “That looks pretty good, it’s got a nice head, has good color,” Lewis says. “It smells like beer, but the acid test is the taste.”

He tries a glass, and says, “That’s pretty good. I would call this a nice hoppy IPA. That’s how we like them.” Lewis plans to age his other bottles a month more, before chilling them in the fridge. His only concern for the next month of aging? “I hope it doesn’t lose any hoppiness.” Though he says, “I’ve made plenty of batches of bad beer,” this is, no doubt, a good one.

Kaye Lenox, former San Antonio Public Library Foundation executive director, admits she was dubious the first time a friend asked her to see the finals of the Las Casas Performing Arts Scholarship Competition at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre.

About 100 students from 35 different high schools throughout South and Central Texas entered the competition this year, vying for scholarships ranging from $1000 to $5,000 in four performing arts categories: vocal solo, acting solo, acting duet, and dance solo.

“I thought, ‘oh, no, it’s going to be like a Parks and Recreation talent show,’” Lenox, now Chief Executive Officer of the Las Casas Foundation, says. “But the kids just blew me away. They put on a very professional show. We have a lot of young talent in this part of Texas that needs nurturing and that’s just what Las Casas wants to do with this competition. We don’t ask the students to major in the performing arts, but we want them to go to college.”

Twenty-four finalists are set to compete for $85,000 in scholarship money May 19 at the Empire. Since 2009, the competition has awarded more than $300,000 in scholarships and is celebrating its fifth anniversary by offering a grand prize totaling $15,000.

Grace Phipps, a 2010 Las Casas winner whose credits now include the movie Fright Night, ABC Family’s The Nine Lives of Chole King, and CW’s The Vampire Diaries, is one of the judges, along with Greater Tuna co-creator Joe Sears, Broadway actor Seth Fisher, David Green of the Dr. Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian Foundation for the Arts, and choreographer Robin Lewis.

Studies show that students who are involved in the fine arts tend to do better in other academic subjects, Lenox claims.

“Mainly, we hope to build the students’ confidence,” Lenox says. “The confidence to perform during the competition, the confidence to tackle their college auditions, and the confidence to excel at performing arts or any field they choose.”

Las Casas, the nonprofit foundation that restored the downtown Majestic and Empire theaters, is putting more emphasis on its support of arts education and local performing arts organizations now that the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, the new home of the San Antonio Symphony, is under construction, Lenox says.

“When the symphony moves, it’s going to free up a lot of nights at the Majestic,” Lenox notes. “Since the theaters are restored and well taken care of, Las Casas can focus more on supporting the performing arts and arts education. We’re hoping to work more with local groups on presenting shows at both downtown theaters. We’ve already started talking to the Children’s Fine Arts Series, and we’re open to proposals from other performing arts groups.”