The Brief

In mid-March, the cast and crew behind a new play about the life of labor leader Dolores Huerta and the rise of the farmworker movement were preparing for their debut.

Then, on March 18 — the last day of the production’s tech rehearsal — the New York Times published an investigation into United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez detailing allegations that he sexually abused and raped girls and women. Huerta wrote in a statement that Chavez had coerced her into sex on one occasion and forced her to have sex on another. She said she got pregnant each time and hid the pregnancies.

“Hearing the news and reading it, I was in absolute tears,” said director Sara Guerrero. “I didn't know what to expect.”

She wondered if the play, ¡Sí Se Puede!, would be pulled before it had a chance to begin.

“What would be the best way to continue to elevate this woman who endured a lot?” Guerrero said.

The answer Guerrero and the rest of the cast and crew landed on reflects a struggle for many since the allegations against Chavez were published. How do you square the gains of a movement that humanized and improved the lives of farmworkers — led by a man who inspired generations of activists — with the harm done by that same leader?

The origin of '¡Sí Se Puede!'

Today, Center Theatre Group is most known for the shows hosted at its flagship downtown L.A. theaters and in Culver City, but decades ago, the organization toured.

“We have to exist outside of the institutions, otherwise we’re not part of the global citizenship,” said Jesus Reyes, director of learning and community partnerships. “ There's so many young people and older people who have lost touch with art … So it's also our responsibility to put it out there.”

Director Sara Guerrero (left) and Playwright Eliana Pipes stand in front of the set for "¡Sí Se Puede!." Both have longstanding ties to L.A.'s theatre community.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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Center Theatre Group commissioned an all-ages play about Huerta from writer Eliana Pipes in March 2025 to kickstart a pilot program that would bring shows to lesser-known regional venues.

Pipes devoured documentaries, books and conducted her own interviews with people connected to the farmworker movement.

“There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” Pipes said. “But… there were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”

A necessary pivot

On the day the New York Times' investigation published, Guerrero got together with Pipes and others from Center Theatre Group to discuss how to move forward.

“ What really stood out to us was that we had always intended to elevate the story and call to action of Dolores Huerta,” Guerrero said.

The United Farm Workers' grape boycotts depicted in the play are credited with helping the union win contracts with growers and eliminate the use of certain pesticides.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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The decision: Chavez would remain a minor character — albeit with fewer lines. Pipes re-typed the play and drove to the final rehearsal at East Los Angeles College. She pulled over once to cry.

The cast performed a dress rehearsal for an audience of ELAC students.

“There were some tears, there was a lot of laughter and celebration, and I think it felt really healing for everybody to get to celebrate her, especially in this moment,” Pipes said.

El Teatro Campesino

¡Sí Se Puede! also highlights farmworker leaders like Larry Itliong, who’d organized Filipino farmworkers for years before Huerta and Chavez started working with Mexican laborers. Filipino farmworkers, historically less visible, started the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and Itliong later became a leader in United Farm Workers under Chavez.

The language of the play — English, Spanish and Tagalog — and the production design reflect the culture of the farmworker movement, incorporating a style of skits performed for farmworkers from the backs of flatbed trucks.

“El Teatro Campesino was not just entertainment, but it was also an organizing tool,” Pipes said. “The actos that they put on were meant to educate farm workers on the fields about their rights and incentivize them to join the strike.”

This El Teatro Campesino workbook belonged to Pipes’ grandmother who met Huerta through United Farm Workers meetings hosted at Santa Monica’s Unitarian Universalist Community Church.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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The style of El Teatro Campesino is big and theatrical. The politician character's devil mask is also a nod to the archetypes often found in the style's skits.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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Pipes was also tasked with translating the complexities of the farmworker movement into a narrative appropriate for all ages.

Sometimes that meant taking a few creative liberties with the character’s personal traits, like swapping Itliong’s trademark cigar for a lollipop.

More difficult was acknowledging the sometimes violent backlash the farmworkers faced. For example, a police attack on United Farm Worker demonstrators in San Francisco in 1988 left Huerta, then 58, with a ruptured spleen and fractured ribs.

“I think sometimes TYA — theater for young audiences — and for families has a reputation for being sort of toothless or apolitical,” Pipes said. “This piece does have something to say and it says it loud and proud. And even though it's in an age appropriate way, we never shy away from acknowledging the injustices that women face in the movement.”

“¡Sí Se Puede!" opens by asking the audience to think about the origin of their food before diving into the history of farm work in California. Juan De La Cruz plays several roles in the show, including a grape harvester.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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The "capitalist pig" is another archetype of El Teatro Campesino. Sol Joun plays the grower and several other roles in "¡Sí Se Puede!"

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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In one scene, a TV broadcaster interviews Huerta and Chavez  at the terminus of the 1966 farmworker march from Delano to Sacramento.

“ I'm here at the State Capitol with Cesar Chavez and his secretary, Dolores Huerta — could you grab me a cup of coffee sweetheart?” the broadcaster asks.

When Huerta asserts herself as a co-founder of the union, the broadcaster calls her Chavez’s “sidekick.”

“It's so hard not to be heard,” Huerta’s character reflects after the interview ends. “Even in my own movement, some of the campesinos can't stand listening to women  and I try to pick my battles, but God, sometimes it feels like I'm battling a fight on two fronts.”

How audiences are reacting to the show

Center Theatre Group retains the right to produce the play in the greater Los Angeles area, but the play is available for anyone to produce elsewhere.

“ I would love to see it across the country, and particularly in places that have a long history with the farm workers movement, like Arizona, Texas,” Pipes said. “But I would love this play in every city, in every state.”

At the end of the show, the actors asked everyone in the audience to close their eyes and think about their personal answer to "What is the change you want to make in the world?"

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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The show’s initial 10-show run included libraries, recreation centers, schools and Boyle Heights City Hall.

The Toxqui family drove from Pomona and sat front and center for the April 2 show.

Mom Noelle said her great-grandfather worked in the orange groves.

 “It's something that's important to me and my own family history,” she said. “[I have] the desire for my kids to understand the fights that have happened before them and that will continue to happen.”

Izel Toxqui (center), 8,  said she felt inspired after watching the show. Her 4-year-old sister Ameli said she liked how Huerta helped people get food when they were hungry. “Ese parte me gusta que cuando ella estaba luchando por sus derechos,” she added, saying she liked that Huerta fought for their rights.

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Carlin Stiehl

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LAist

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Ruffy Landayan came to support friends in the cast, but left with a deeper understanding of the farm worker movement he “barely” learned about as a San Bernardino high school student.

“[The play is] about history, but it also felt very current because it is really current,” Landayan said. “That's when I realized the power of theater.”

The show also affirmed the experiences of people familiar with the movement.

Raul Cardona has worked with El Teatro Campesino since the 2000s and is a community organizer in East L.A.

“ There's a place for everyone in the revolution,” Cardona said. “If you don't belong to an organization, find one that you stand with and become part of it. The work needs to be done and it's not gonna do itself.”

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and a psychic friend says she has a name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult. I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,” Kalbeitzer said.

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“Like it’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’” O’Brien recounted, “And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?’”

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“I think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,” he said.

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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