Luis Alfaro’s ‘The Travelers’ @ GXR

—Jan Farrington

[Writer/editor’s note: It’s a special joy to be there to see the green shoots of new theatre come out of the ground. This past weekend, I had a sudden opportunity to see a company’s first area stage production—and though it’s early days yet, the experience was worth the time. Wishing them—and all the theatre-makers of North Texas—a New Year of good shows….]

In an out-of-the-way monastery along Highway 99 in California’s hardscrabble Central Valley, playwright Luis Alfaro (know hereabouts for his Oedipus El Rey, a never-forgotten experience some years ago at the Dallas Theater Center) sets the story of The Travelers. An odd name for a group of religious brothers who don’t seem to be going anywhere, and yet….

The GXR (George X Rodriguez) company’s first onstage production, I was told—a company name may come to them, but for now GXR nails it well enough. And if I claimed to understand this weird and fascinating play, I’d be seriously stretching the truth. But at the same time, I did come away with a head full of ideas about what it might be about…and why Alfaro spent a chunk of the pandemic writing it.

The men are brothers of the old Carthusian order (which includes priests, monks, and also lay brothers who mix religious thought and manual labor in their days). The brothers onstage are draped in white robes that cover the clothes of their former lives. Yet one more, a younger, more innocent-looking man, seems to live in a bathtub. (The set includes a chair, an altar, a tub, a toilet, let mostly by a congregation of candles.)

Everyone, we feel, is worn, anxious, uncertain of their future here (the diocese wants to close the place). They don’t seem particularly religious; it’s rather a mystery how they come to be here. Just life, perhaps, pushing them up to a shore as they travel. Company founder George X Rodriguez has collected a cast from among faces I’ve seen around North Texas, mostly from what I would call small-but-good theatre companies…and though the play remains confusing, they do their characters proud. They are Brothers Brian (the leader, played by Alejandro Herrera), Daniel (Fredy Edward Quiroga), Nancho (Robert G. Shores), Yiyo (Jordan Kuzmack), and Ogie (John Christopher Roggenbuck)…and another will come soon.

Into the “settled” mix of the brothers comes a stranger (Kevin Velasquez), who is not yet Brother Juan, but will be—a man staggering into the monastery dripping blood from a wound. Is he dead? Strangely, the wound keeps dripping, but he’s alive.

The Travelers does feel like a COVID play, with a sense of separation between “out there” and “in here”—a group enclosed together, awkwardly. Their pasts are flawed, they are not companions who always blend easily—and the future is a disturbing blank. If these “travelers” had to travel on, would they pick up the pieces of their pasts, or forge ahead on a very different path? The brothers hint at different and individual plans and hopes.

The Brother in the bathtub, young Ogie, is a blank, learning about the world from the “necessary” visits of the other monks. Who is he, this innocent? For that matter, who is Brother Juan, whose unhealing wound gives off a Fisher King aura (it’s a centuries-old legend of a king or knight suffering from an unhealable wound, unable to restore order to a world in decay and crisis—and filtering in throughout the play are hints and fragments of information about that outside world, one the brothers are both pulled toward and reluctant to re-enter.

In the end, there isn’t an end, but there is a sense of new journeys beginning. Some travel on, some stay, revelations change or cement their plans. The monks take off their robes, all but one. And might he be enough to help himself, help us, help our world begin to heal?

BROTHER JUAN
I’ll stay until there is order. I have been traveling on the inside. But you must go. You know that, right? For the sake of the Order.
[He finds a place. His own space, kneels in his cassock, and begins to pray….]

WHEN: January 8-11, 2026
WHERE: 3623 Decatur Avenue, Fort Worth
WEB: xgeo@aol.com