The editors of this collective multi-genre memoir have filled a lacuna in the history of Chicana/o theater and indeed of American theater as they have gathered the testimonios—or life histories—of seventeen women, including themselves, to present an exceptional picture of a theater group, rooted in working-class and Chicano Movement politics during a period that spans from the 1960s to the 1980s. Teatro de las Chicanas, the first all-female Chicana theater troupe (26), organized and founded by Chicana college students who came from various parts of California, had a number of members throughout its history. As the group evolved in purpose and focus the name changed; thus it became Teatro Laboral as they took up labor issues and Teatro Raíces as it became more focused on cultural issues. Yet, throughout the group’s history, it remained firmly committed to a feminist and political message and to social justice issues.
The foreword by Yolanda Broyles-González addresses the reader: "You have in your hands a recently unearthed treasure from the Chicana women’s civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s and 80s" (ix) and proceeds to contextualize and, through an academic lens, present an analysis while assuming the role of a partera, or midwife, as she says. The rich and well-crafted foreword is indeed a mapping of the terrain that the pieces and plays present. Broyles-González presents a quick and dirty history of Chicana struggles in the section titled "The Social Context: Civil Rights and Liberation Struggles," and proceeds to a discussion of the memory arts of the oral tradition. She traces the creation process and culls from the various testimonios to then analyze the way the Teatro’s use of traditional oral forms allowed for a transformation insofar as the plays critiqued the Chicano Movement’s masculinist agenda. Citing as one of the pivotal points in the Teatro de las Chicanas development, their experiences at the 1975 TENAZ (Teatros Nacionales de Aztlán), various contributors underscored the dismissive stance of the TENAZ organizers; after much sacrifice to get there, they were not allowed to perform. Broyles-González ’s unpacking of the most salient issues that surfaced in the testimonios reveals deeper cultural forces at play. For example, she explains how "Native American social organization offers powerful proto-feminist antecedents" (xviii). Thus the woman-centered collective practice and reliance on oral tradition reflect the root cultural practices of the participants’ home community.
As the members came together to share their memories of the Teatro’s activities during the heyday of the Chicano movement, they reminisced and re-lived not just their life with the Teatro but their own personal struggles, often intimately tied to their work for social justice. Teatro Chicana ostensibly offers a sheaf of lives that constitute as important and significant a contribution in the history of the teatro tradition as exemplified by more visible and documented groups like Teatro Campesino or Teatro de la Esperanza. It also brings up issues of orality and textuality insofar as it puts in print for the first time the scripts that were first developed orally and even that as they were staged remained largely an oral construction subject to change. More importantly, the book highlights, apparently without intending to do so, the radical differences between these other ensembles and a woman-centered feminist theater group. No doubt the other Movimiento troupes also gave their members "wings to fly" as Clara Cuevas says of Teatro de las Chicanas, but this woman-only group stands as a testament to the power of women’s collective struggle within the nationalist patriarchal environment many women encountered during the Chicano Movement. Broyles-González says, "Teatro de las Chicanas …was a safe haven from the dogmatism of Chicano nationalism’s narrowness" (xix). As several of the women recall, the ultimate insult was to call them lesbians and to accuse them of divisive politics, all because of their insistence on a well-thought-out and politically developed focus they laid out in their Points of Unity, included in an addendum to Teatro Chicana.
This focus is clearly seen in their most popular plays, included in Part II of Teatro Chicana, for they address issues such as the underrepresentation of Chicanas in higher education ("Chicana Goes to College"), immigration ("E.T. —Alien"), labor issues ("Salt of the Earth"), and solidarity with Central America ("Archie Bunker Goes to El Salvador"). The editors state in the brief conclusion that "teatro women are committed to peace, reason and compassion" (171), a commitment clearly evident in the pieces selected for inclusion in Part II and in the stories the various authors shared. I was delighted to see this book come to print and more so by the foreword by Yolanda Broyles-González; however, there was one thing I found lacking that would have made for a stronger book: an index. I would have loved to be able to browse through an index where I could easily find names, teatro groups, and concepts that occur spread throughout the pieces.
This book is unlike single-playwright collections of plays by playwrights like Carlos Morton or Cherie Moraga, and it differs from recent anthologies or critical works of Chicano or Latin@ theater in that we not only get a collection of scripts but we also hear the cacophony of diverse and compelling voices, the teatristas themselves offering a history of their participation in the Teatro and the political foundation for the scripts; thus we come to a multifaceted view that renders a complete and complex portrait of the Teatro de las Chicanas, a portrait useful for scholars of theater and scholars concerned with how traditional cultural strategies such as oral storytelling and street theater can transform lives.
--------
[Review length: 929 words • Review posted on January 19, 2011]