I’m still in awe of Aida 

Cuevas’s performance of her 
album Totalmente Juan Gabriel 
last Friday night. 

Cuevas is a powerhouse 

performer with phenomenal 
vocals. She has been in the 
music 
industry 
for 
over 

40 years, winning both a 
Grammy and a Latin Grammy 
award. Not only is Cuevas 
an 
incredible 
singer, 
but 

she also has a strong stage 
presence, holding herself with 
tremendous confidence and 
grace. Totalmente Juan Gabriel 
is a tribute to her friend and 
mentor Juan Gabriel, who 

passed away in 2016. 

From 
the 
second 
her 

mariachi 
band, 
Mariachi 

Juvenil 
Tecalitlán, 
entered 

the stage, the audience went 
wild. I could feel the energy 
explode with their opening 
song, and their enthusiasm was 
infectious. Even though I didn’t 
know any of the words and don’t 
understand Spanish well, the 
upbeat tone of the music spoke 
for itself. 

Next to me, in front of me and 

behind me, people were dancing 
in their seats and singing along. 
Towards the end of the night, 
the audience sang so loudly that 
Cuevas — with a huge, shocked 
smile on her face — decided to 
listen instead of sing. She looked 
proud to have an audience so 

engaged, and for others like 
myself who didn’t know the 
lyrics, it was incredible to 
witness everyone else’s passion. 

Throughout 
the 
night, 
it 

became clear that Cuevas meant 
a lot to many of the audience 
members. I couldn’t catch what 
Cuevas was saying in between 
songs in Spanish, but every 
time she talked the audience 
members 
around 
me 
were 

silent, as if savoring her every 
last word. I began to realize that 
for many people, Cuevas was 
the connection to their culture 
and 
home 
countries. 
Many 

parents were there with their 
children, sharing an important 
part of their identities through 
Cuevas’s voice. 

The majority of her songs 

were in traditional mariachi 
style, with energetic beats and a 
general sentiment of happiness. 
There was one slow song where 
the lights dimmed and Cuevas 
poured her soul into the singing, 
but it wasn’t out of place, instead 
reminding us that even when we 
celebrate one’s life, we may feel 
melancholic on the journey of 
accepting their passing. 

One of my favorite parts was 

when members of Mariachi 
Juvenil Tecalitlán band had 
solos. They built off of each 
other, and each instrument 
got its shining moment. The 
band members were overjoyed 
with 
our 
reactions, 
which 

made it all the more exciting 
to not just listen, but to watch 
them perform with the same 
enthusiasm as Cuevas. 

The audience was so thrilled 

with the show that even after 
Cuevas said goodbye and left 
the stage, they chanted loudly 
for an encore, which caused 
her to return for one final 
performance. It was a special 
moment as Cuevas discussed 
how much it meant for her to 
tour in North America and 
share her music. This show 
also fell during Día de Muertos 
(Day of the Dead) — a Mexican 
holiday celebrating friends and 
family who have passed away 
— making the tribute to Juan 
Gabriel all the more powerful. 

Cuevas 
is 
sometimes 

compared to Aretha Franklin, 
and I now understand why. 
With her impressive vocal range 
and ability to project emotion so 
clearly in her voice, Cuevas is a 
distinctive artist and important 
figure in Mexican music. And 
beyond that, she’s an icon who 
offers Latinx Americans the 
chance to reconnect to the 
music of their roots. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 — 3A

By Michael Ray Jacobson and Patti Varol
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/07/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/07/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018

ACROSS
1 Crowds around
5 Geologic time
10 It’s the truth
14 Baseball’s Felipe 
or his son Moises
15 Nabisco wafer 
brand
16 Serengeti feline
17 Barclays Center 
team
18 Strung along
19 Boatloads
20 1968 55-Across 
song
23 Axis foes
24 Spot for an 
AirPod
25 Tight spot
28 “__ whiz!”
29 Sundance’s 
sweetie __ Place
32 1976 55-Across 
album
34 Lofty principles
36 “Do __ others ... ”
37 1970 55-Across 
song
41 “The Walking 
Dead” survivor 
Grimes
42 Advertising lure
43 1969 55-Across 
album whose last 
song is 20-Across
46 Business review 
site
47 Influential D.C. 
group
50 Place in the 
woods
51 Forever and a day
53 “Watch and learn”
55 Singer/songwriter 
born 11/7/1943
58 Auburn rival, 
familiarly
61 Miguel’s “I love 
you”
62 Small Chevy 
model
63 Vacationing
64 Harsh-smelling
65 Sharp-edged
66 Tach reading
67 Annoy
68 Car trip game

DOWN
1 Metrosexual tote
2 Repetitive refrain 
in the song “Hot 
Hot Hot”

3 Perfume holder
4 Fish dish 
served with 
wasabi
5 Willing recruit
6 Like a noted 
piper
7 Quaint retail 
adjective
8 In the 
neighborhood
9 ESPN anchor __ 
Storm
10 It may be tragic
11 Not feel well
12 Whisper sweet 
nothings
13 Explosive letters
21 Far from swanky
22 Mined-over 
matter
25 “We just said the 
same thing at the 
same time!”
26 Basic drawing 
class
27 “Little Red Book” 
author
30 Powder puff stuff
31 Bronze or brass
33 San __, Puerto 
Rico
34 “House,” in Inuit

35 A few
37 Hayloft bundle
38 Wrinkle remover
39 Prosperous
40 __ sentence: 
essay opener
41 Included in an 
email, briefly
44 “Gloria in 
Excelsis __”
45 “In America” 
novelist Susan
47 Pet problems?

48 __ at the wheel
49 Ant-sy 
complex?
52 Female relative
54 Uniform cloth
55 Rogers Centre 
team, familiarly
56 K follower
57 “Look no further 
than me”
58 Trivia night site
59 Bedazzle
60 Big D hoopster

SMTD alum Caleb Foote 
on ‘The Kids Are Alright’

ABC’s newest family sitcom 

“The Kids Are Alright” is already 
making waves as one of fall’s best 
new series. Set in suburban Los 
Angeles during the early ’70s, 
the story follows the Clearys, 
a 
dysfunctional, 
testosterone-

filled 
Irish-Catholic 
household 

navigating a politically divisive era 
amid sibling rivalries and working-
class struggles.

Though the show dedicates 

most of its time to lonesome 
middle child Timmy (Jack Gore, 
“Billions”), “The Kids Are Alright” 
deftly 
fleshes 
out 
distinctive 

personalities within the rest of 
the Cleary family, including the 
endearingly goofy Eddie, played by 
University alum Caleb Foote.

As an acting major at the 

University, 
Foote 
performed 

in 
several 
student 
theater 

productions, including “Henry IV, 
Part 1.” In the summer of 2015, he 
participated in the Educational 
Theater Company, an on-campus 
group 
that 
incorporates 

performance 
through 
an 

interactive, educational lens in 
an effort to enlighten incoming 
freshmen about the many social, 
academic and personal issues they 
might encounter during college.

After receiving a Bachelor of 

Fine Arts degree in 2016, Foote 
continued to perform onstage in 
a variety of plays, including “Zoot 
Suit” at the Mark Taper Forum 
in Los Angeles and “Hansel and 
Gretel Blue Grass.” In 2017, he 
was given the San Diego Theatre 
Critics Circle Craig Noel Award for 
Outstanding Male Performance 

for his lead role in “Hand to God.” 
From there, Foote made his way 
onto television, guest starring in 
FX’s “American Horror Story: 
Cult” and “American Crime Story: 
The 
Assassination 
of 
Gianni 

Versace.”

In a recent phone interview 

with The Daily, Foote discussed his 
positive undergraduate experience 
at the University, the perks of being 
a regular player on a network show 
and the differences between acting 
onscreen and acting onstage.

The Michigan Daily: How did 

your education at Michigan shape 
your understanding of acting and 
performing for the camera?

Caleb 
Foote: 
It 
greatly 

shaped it. I can take back all 
my 
professional 
successes 
to 

my education and degree at the 
University of Michigan. In 2016, 
the year I graduated, we had a 
senior showcase and it was the 
first 
school-produced 
senior 

showcase. You do two scenes, 
typically contrasting scenes, and 
you do them in New York and Los 
Angeles and Chicago for industry 
professionals and a bunch of 
people we cold-called — agents and 
managers and casting directors, 
trying to get them to show up with 
the hopes that they would sign us. I 
was fortunate enough to get some 
really cool bites in Los Angeles. I 
got my agent and manager from 
my showcase, and they’re the 
agent and manager I have now. 
Every single professional gig from 
a non-union play, which led to a 
union play, which led to a small 
part on a TV show, which led to 
an important part on a TV show, 
which led to a series regular on the 
ABC network... I can directly trace 
it from the University of Michigan, 

the showcase and the class I took 
for the showcase.

To get into the acting school, 

there’s a lot of natural talent that 
you have to have. You have to be 
good enough to be accepted by the 
faculty. From the early stages of 
the program, you get out of your 
old high school acting habits and 
the things that got you there. From 
there, you expand on what makes 
you unique. That’s what being an 
upperclassman is like; you take 
what you’re really good at, you 
mold it and you challenge yourself 
with the things you aren’t so good 
at. The acting school is just this 
great platform for development 
and risk-taking. If you go in there 
and do something totally stupid, it’s 
not like your peer that’s watching 
you is a casting director that will 
never want to see you again. That 
is where you take those risks, as 
cheesy as that sounds.

TMD: In addition to TV, you’ve 

performed on stage both during 
your time at Michigan and after 
graduating. What have you found 
to be different between acting for 
the screen versus acting on stage?

CF: The payday (laughs). The 

pay is way different for the camera 
because once it’s on camera, it’s 
kind of immortalized forever in 
the history books of television. For 
theater, you spend a month and a 
half, two months if you’re super 
lucky, but you have this extended 
period of time to memorize, to 
rehearse, to get everything set in 
stone. It’s this really great creative 
process and by the end of it, you 
have all of this time to prep and be 
show-ready, which is brilliant. But 
the difference between theater and 
film and television is that with film 
and television, the turnaround is 

SAM ROSENBERG

Senior Arts Editor

ABC

so fast. You’re shooting an episode 
a week. You’re doing an episode in 
five work days. You have a weekend 
to memorize and when you walk 
on set, you have to be totally off-
book. You basically read it with 
the director and then you kind of 
walk it through, map out whatever 
idea you have or the director has. 
Theater would be like the actor’s 
medium, and television is like the 
writer’s medium. It’s more of like 
what you bring in your impulses, 
and then the director makes his or 
her adjustments and there’s not so 
much of a long process of deciding 
on what should I do and mapping 
out specific blocking.

With theater, you have so long 

to rehearse and to get into your 
character and to stay in it for 
the two-and-a-half hours you’re 
doing the show. For television, it’s 
everything that’s in that box of 
the camera and you’re just doing 
the writers justice and it’s really 
just you at home memorizing and 
trying to understand the joke, 
so that when you walk in on set, 
you’re ready to just do it because 
you gotta knock that out and then 
you have to do two more scenes 
after that.

TMD: “The Kids Are Alright” 

centers a lot around dysfunctional 
family dynamics. What was your 
experience like working with such 
a large ensemble of actors of all 
different ages?

CF: It’s my first time that I’m 

not the youngest person on set. It’s 
great. We’re working with these 
vets Michael Cudlitz and Mary 
McCormack, these people that 
have been in the game for so long. 
You learn that there are so many 
different approaches to the game. 
Like, their process of learning 
the material and then bringing it 
forward to the director and crew, it 
totally varies. And these kid actors 
we’re working with are brilliant. 
There’s so many of them. The only 
downfall to working with these 
kid actors is that they have to go 
to school because you just want to 
hang out with them all the time. 
Being one of the older boys of the 
show, myself and my older bro, 
we get to tackle the young adult 
topics. Meanwhile, the kids get 
to tackle all the mischief, ruffian, 
getting-into-the-neighbors-yard-
and-stealing-a-dog business, and 
the mom and dad can handle 
the housekeeping and then later, 
bigger family mom-and-dad issues.

TMD: Your character Eddie is 

the second-oldest of seven kids. 
How do you think he stands out 
among his siblings?

CF: That’s funny you say that. 

The show was written as a pilot 
and it was based on (“The Kids 
Are Alright” creator and narrator) 
Tim Doyle’s life. A bunch of it is 
pretty close to home and realistic 

to what happened in his childhood. 
The pilot is so fast, and it’s a little 
bit overwhelming and it’s kind of 
hard to distinguish characters. 
But as the show progresses, 
because there are 10 characters, 
in every single scene there are 
10 opportunities to make a joke 
and (our writing team) does such 
a brilliant job of distinguishing 
each character. Eddie specifically 
is so fun to play because he’s this 
impulsive, 
big-hearted... 
total 

goofball. When (the eldest brother) 
Lawrence goes to the seminary, 
(Eddie) kind of takes the role of 
the oldest brother, so you’ll see 
him carrying the baby and stuff. 
But he’s just this light-hearted 
guy who has a girlfriend, and it’s 
the first time anyone in the Cleary 
household has brought a girl home. 
Growing up in a household of all 
boys, they’re kind of unfamiliar 
with how to act around a girl and 
everyone has their input on how 
to be a boyfriend and how to be in 
a relationship and that results in 
some pretty great comedy.

TMD: Do you have any brothers 

or siblings?

CF: Yeah! I grew up in a Roman-

Catholic home, basically Irish-
Catholic. I have three brothers.

TMD: Did your upbringing 

inspire your performance at all?

CF: Even though I didn’t grow 

up in the ’70s, I can still relate 
to the Catholic upbringing with 
all the boys and the chaos and 
Mom trying to get everyone ready 
before Sunday mass and the big 
breakfasts and the “you’re on your 
own, take care of yourself because 
if you don’t do it yourself, someone 
else is gonna eat that drumstick.” 
I’m the second-youngest, third-
oldest boy in my real family. It kind 
of takes me back to being a younger 
guy, which is brilliant because who 
doesn’t want to be young?

TMD: How do you get into 

character and immerse yourself in 
your role?

CF: This is my first time 

reporting to a job in film and 
television like it’s a day job, like 
clocking in and out every single 
day for an extended period of 
time. Something with that is like, 
you want to go in every single day 
being like, “I’m gonna do my best 
work.” But you can’t control what’s 
happening to you that day and 
especially because this is going 
on for a long period of time, every 
single scene can’t be an Emmy-
award-winning scene. Such a big 
part of doing a series regular job 
and shooting four scenes a day and 
then the next day shooting five 
scenes and the next day shooting 
one scene is that you can’t have that 
much weight on you. And after you 
do a scene, even if it wasn’t your 
greatest performance, you kind of 
just gotta let it go and look forward 

and look ahead to your next one. 
You can’t beat yourself up over the 
things you can’t control. Some days, 
you’re gonna totally knock it out 
the park, and the writers are gonna 
give you this brilliant joke and you 
get to be on this great location with 
a trash can. And then on another 
day, you’re gonna be a wallflower 
and you’re gonna have one line and 
you’re gonna feel weird about that 
line but you can’t let that bring you 
down because that’s the beauty 
of being on an ensemble project. 
There are so many people to rely 
on. It’s like a team sport. I believe 
it’s a winning team.

TMD: This wasn’t your first 

rodeo on TV. Your other credits 
include FX’s “American Horror 
Story” and “American Crime 
Story: The Assassination of Gianni 
Versace,” both of which were 
created by Ryan Murphy. How 
different was your experience 
working on a cable drama from 
working on a network comedy?

CF: I can’t get killed off at this 

show (laughs). In all the other 
ones, I was always at risk. Every 
single day is the best day of work. 
That’s why we do it. But with that, 
you’ll get a new script every Friday 
and when you get that new script 
working on the cable shows, you 
sift through the script to see if you 
have any lines, to see where your 
character comes up. It’s so much 
fun, but there’s always that chance 
that your character gets killed off. 
That happened to me in “American 
Horror Story.” I was three episodes 
deep, and I was sifting through (the 
script) and I was like, “Heck yes! So 
fun, so fun.” And I made all these 
friends. And then my character, 
boom, my character gets gunned 
down, four gunshots to the chest. 
All my buds got to keep going on 
and I was like, “Why? Why me?!” 
This is my first job where they can’t 
kill me.

TMD: As the season continues, 

what can viewers expect to see 
from your character and the rest of 
the Cleary household?

CF: A lot of heart from the whole 

family. Our writing room is pretty 
insane and our creative team has 
a really great track record. It’s not 
like this is their big break. They’ve 
been making TV for a while and 
really good TV, so we’re in really 
good hands. Right now, we won’t 
be relying on principal office 
visits because we have such a big 
cast that as the episodes progress, 
our writing team has been able 
to distinguish and expand on the 
characters and make them bigger 
and more specific. I have just so 
much love for our writing team. 
You’re gonna see a lot more Eddie, 
I’ll tell you that.

You can catch Caleb Foote on 

“The Kids Are Alright” every 
Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.

RUCHITA IYER / DAILY

Aida Cuevas brought down 
Hill with her voice on Fri.

NITYA GUPTA
Daily Arts Writer

ARTIST PROFILE

EVENT REVIEW

