The “Dionisio Theater Group” of highly motivated, non-professional
Hispanics acotrs, presented “Dona Cariba,” in Spanish (English subtitles) at
the Vista, Avo Play House, before a packed house including students from the
class of Virginia Shannon, a French teacher at Vista High School.
The theme of the play involves the approach of modern technology to a small
1980’s Mexican village. The telephone operator who is about to be replaced by
a machine, knows everything about everybody and keeps all the people knit
together with the stories she hears and retells. As the comedic story
progressed, there were smiles on the young adults and children’s faces that
soon progressed to outright screams of laughter and delight.
Von Son is an individual who has excelled in the face of a physical
disability. While hunting in Mexico in 1982, a spinal cord bullet wound left
him a wheelchair-bound paraplegic. His life since then has been the stuff of
which inspirational books and movies are made. His Ph.D. was just one of an
impressive string of accomplishments such as playing tennis and riding a
three-wheel bike.
During his first year in the US (1986), von Son gardened and sold leather
crafts to pay tuition. In college, von Son was in Phi Beta Kappa and was
graduated cum laude with a degree in Social Ecology. He was granted his Ph.D.
in Latin American Literature at the University of California at Irvine in
1997. While attending Irvine University, he counseled undergraduate students
and state prison inmates who attended his creative writing class.
von Son, a published author, integrates his personal life and beliefs into
a special style of writing he refers to as “parody and meta-fiction as used in
Mexico”. Meta-fiction often deals playfully and self-referentially with
fiction writing. He also specializes in poetry and short stories. One of von
Son’s students explained his successful talents working with students. He has
given motivational speeches to high school students. von Son contributes to
the studies of cinematography and philology in general and writes about art
for a local newspaper. At present he is investigating “through literary
lenses” the works of the Mexican ancestors who inhabited Alta and Baja
California during the colony.