LA CARPA DE LOS RASQUACHIS
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| El Teatro Campesino. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these
days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE is pleased to provide instead
accounts of previous theatre seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for
theatre-hungry readers. If you'd like to know the background on how this
previously unpublished series came to be and what its relationship is to my
three The
Encyclopedia of the New York Stage volumes (covering every New York
play, musical, revue, and revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the
prefaces to any of the entries beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at
the end of the current entry.
LA CARPA DE LOS RASQUICHIS [Drama/Family/Hispanic/Labor/Politics/Spanish Language (partly)]
D: Luis Valdez; P: Chelsea Theatre Center of Brooklyn; T: Chelsea Theatre,
Brooklyn Academy of Music (OB); 4/19/73-4/10/73 (10)
El Teatro
Campesino, the California troupe that emerged from amid a 1965 farm laborers’
strike against a major grape grower, remained a potent political force in farm
circles throughout the 60s, performing agitprop plays (actos) to clarify for the workers a variety of social and political
issues. The company brought one of its pieces, called in English “The Tent of
the Underdogs,” to the “Fly Chelsea to Brooklyn” mini-festival sponsored in
1973 by the borough’s leading theatre company. It toured city parks after
closing its Chelsea Theatre engagement.
Unlike the
company’s usual one-act skits, this piece was a full-length work created
collectively by the troupe and employing traditional Mexican ballads with new,
socially meaningful lyrics and various mythological themes. Its “poor theatre”
minimalist style, with several actors wearing masks, was effectively employed
to tell in, English and Spanish, the story of a struggling, oppressed, Chicano
family, downtrodden by labor contractors and others and constantly under the
pervasive shadow of death, seen as a gleeful dancer in their midst.
Mel Gussow
was moved by the material and impressed by the production, which returned to
the Chelsea as part of another series of visiting companies when it played at
Manhattan’s Westside Theatre from 10/24/74 to 11/18/74 for 32 performances.
Clive Barnes said of this production that he “respected the evening more than [he]
enjoyed it.”
Previous entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker