La Semana de Teatro Chicano

Esta noche, I saw Electicidad by Luis Alfaro at the Mark Taper Forum, finally! I need to stop putting things off to the very end of the run; it closes this weekend. But anyway, I enjoyed it very much. It was a version of Sophocles' Electra (although there seemed to be some Antigone mixed in as well) set in el barrio de East Los (East LA). And I must say that it was a little more Electra than I thought it would be, and also quite a bit more funny than I expected. Especially at the beginning there was a great deal of humor. I worried a bit about the exoticizing and sanitizing of the Cholo culture that Alfaro was attempting to represent, but I thought he did it with a great deal of love and respect for both his Greek and his local originals.

It also seemed to be an exercise in female masculinity; both Electricidad in her Dickies remaining true to her father when her brother was too "soft" and "sensitive" and Iphigenia wearing a Catholic school girl uniform (she left the barrio to join a convent) with all the grace and comfort of a butch in a dress challenge and disrupt their mother (Clemencia's) aggressive female sexuality and hunger for power. Ifi's the kind of girl that dances with women (as suggested by the Chorus at the beginning of the show), with a deep gravelly voice a big frame and a wide stance, and though she's a minor character compared to her sister, I personally was fascinated by this completely untraditional characterization. Trici and Ifi are both looking for peace and structure from an absent father and each finds her faith; for Electricidad, it's the Cholo culture of which her father was el Rey, while for Ifi it's Catholicism. For both their faith is challenged throughout the play.

One of the great things about this play was the language. It was written in Spanglish and the fluidity and ease with which the actors moved back and forth between Spanish and English was beautiful. Their accents were strong and their speaking rapid, so that I wondered if the non-Spanish-speaking little old ladies in the audience were getting anything at all out of the play. But then part of me didn't care because of the sheer aural virtousity of the performance. Each of the actors voices was strong and unique, from the tough and gravelly Ifi to the high and nervous Orestes, and their accents were very clear and so familiar here in LA.

On a side note, the Abuela (another character not exactly in Sophocles' version), was played by Alma Martinez, who happened to be at Stanford working on her PhD while I was an undergrad. I barely knew her, because I believe she advanced to candidacy my freshman year or so, but I certainly knew her name and probably checked out props for her a couple of times. Anyway, I knew she studied the Teatro Campisino, but I had NO IDEA she was the same Alma Martinez whose name appears in the cast list for plays like Zoot Suit and even in the film. She's totally a major Chicana actress, and I hadn't a clue. She's teaching at UC Santa Cruz now (and apparently still hasn't finished her dissertation), but it was really strange to see someone I knew, however tangentially, onstage at the Taper without expecting it.

La Semana de Teatro Chicano empezó el viernes pasado con las Butchlalís de Panochtitlan y continua con la Hungry Woman esté domingo. ¡Que divertido!