Necessary Theater: Six Plays About the Chicano Experience

Rating:
Summary: Supplementary text to CHICANO THEATER: THEMES AND FORMS.
Review: The plays are Judith & Severo Perez's "Soldierboy," Milcha Sanchez-Scott's "Latina," Luis Valdez's "The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa," El Teatro de la Esperanza's "Guadalupe" and "La victima," and Arthur Giron's "Money." The plays, with the exception of the fairly mainstream "Money," are written for bicultural, bilingual audiences. The Mexican/Barrio Spanish-to-English code switching might throw a few people.

Univ. of Calif. theater scholar Jorge Huerta prefaces each play with production notes, critical analysis, and a playwright biography. In the book's introduction, Huerta writes, "All theater should be necessary; otherwise, why bother to produce it?" He recounts a capsule history of Chicano theater and headlines the plays.

"Soldierboy" takes us back to 1945 and World War II. A Chicano soldier has come home to San Antonio; his Euro-American buddy didn't. Frank's return is haunted by flashbacks--leading up to the moment of his war buddy's death--interwoven with the fate of Frank's ailing younger brother.

In "Latina," Felix Sanchez presides over a growing empire of small businesses and a harem of Latina immigrants looking for work in Beverly Hills as domestics. Poor Sarita is caught between the workers and clients: "You always take the gringa's side." It's nice to hear these women's voices--your friends gossipin', bickerin', schemin' and dreamin'.

Just plain weird and surrealistic, "The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa" should be the first play you read when you study Chicano theater. Two of the characters are a bodyless head and a headless body, and they both belong to the same family.

Inspired by real-life events, "Guadalupe" is a Bertolt Brecht-influenced presentation of the dismal conditions that provoked a group of Californians to organize.

"Money" is a sexy play about a woman who plays hardball with the manager of a corporate foundation and gets exactly what she wants.

"La victima" is the damnation of the U.S. version of the old Berlin Wall. A young Sammy is separated from his family during the confusion of the repatriation of Mexicans, along with their U.S.-born children, during the '30s. He grows up in the U.S., serves in the Korean War, and joins la migra (the I.N.S.). His birth mother is rounded up during a raid. How do you say goodbye to your mama twice?