Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Play Revisits The Story Of Chavez Ravine, With Some Laughs
A dozen years ago, the satirical Latino/Chicano theater and performance trio Culture Clash (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza) debuted its historical sketch comedy revue Chavez Ravine at the Mark Taper Forum. Entertaining and educational, this full-length show offered an account of the mid-20th century venality and political corruption that led to the destruction of the mostly Mexican-American residential communities once entrenched in the hills between Silver Lake and Echo Park and the subsequent building of Dodger Stadium on the "sacred ground" where so many families lost their homes. This month, Culture Clash is performing a moderately updated revival of Chavez Ravine at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.
It really is an ugly episode in the story of our urban development that Chavez Ravine recounts, one that every civic-minded Angeleno should learn about. And a breezy, fast-paced evening of silly jokes and charismatic schtick isn't a bad vehicle for getting the weighty story across to an audience that may have little knowledge of these events.
Including actress Sabina Zugina Varela, the cast of four move quickly in and out of dozens of roles, some fictional or composite but many specific and well known, ranging from Vin Scully and Fernando Valenzuela to Richard Neutra to J. Edgar Hoover and Kenneth Hahn, among many others. With less skilled perfomers, the constant transitioning from scene to scene and character to character could easily devolve into a mess of undelineated encounters and rushed line deliveries. Here, under the guidance of director Lisa Peterson, who also helmed the original 2003 Chavez Ravine production, the actors all very capably establish themselves in their multiple identities as one situation follows fast after another after another.
What does end up missing, though, amid all the madcap fun and breakneck storytelling, is much of an emotional investment in the personal stories of the myriad people we meet. Though we understand all the injustices perpetrated, we hardly feel the tragedies of their victims. The one character who gets the most attention is Montoya's Frank Wilkinson, an activist city housing official whose ambitious initiative to build improved public housing for Chavez Ravine residents landed him in front of the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee and then in jail. Much as we admire him, though, even his plight is too deeply embedded within the show's relentless onslaught of wisecracks and caricatures for us to lament his mistreatment for more than a passing moment.
Support for LAist comes from
The show's comedy bits themselves are hit and miss. When Wilkinson tells a group of Chavez Ravine residents that the new development he has in mind will feature attractively landscaped cul-de-sacs, one of them responds "What's a culo sack?" Or when some other locals discuss Jackie Robinson's achievement in breaking the Major League Baseball color barrier and one of them contemplates the seemingly unlikely prospect of an African American team owner some day, another muses "That would be magic!" There are a lot of jokes like these in Chavez Ravine.
The production is enhanced considerably by the accompaniment of a three-piece acoustic band as well as the frequent projection of historic photographs of the now-vanished neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine, in addition to video footage of the police coming in to force the last residents out and the actual demolition of their houses in the late 1950s.
For three performances this week, the entire Kirk Douglas Theatre has been reserved for school groups to come and see Chavez Ravine, and we only wish every student in town could have the chance to encounter this high-energy history lesson about "the colonial ghosts of Los Angeles." It wouldn't be a bad pedagogical experience for anyone else, either. Especially anyone else with a taste for broad neo-Vaudevillian humor.
Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival plays eight shows a week through March 1 (though no public performances tonight through Thursday). Tickets $25-65.
As Editor-in-Chief of our newsroom, I’m extremely proud of the work our top-notch journalists are doing here at LAist. We’re doing more hard-hitting watchdog journalism than ever before — powerful reporting on the economy, elections, climate and the homelessness crisis that is making a difference in your lives. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to maintain a paywall-free, independent news source that informs, inspires, and engages everyone.
Simply put, we cannot do this essential work without your help. Federal funding for public media has been clawed back by Congress and that means LAist has lost $3.4 million in federal funding over the next two years. So we’re asking for your help. LAist has been there for you and we’re asking you to be here for us.
We rely on donations from readers like you to stay independent, which keeps our nonprofit newsroom strong and accountable to you.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, press freedom is at the core of keeping our nation free and fair. And as the landscape of free press changes, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust, but the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news from our community.
Please take action today to support your trusted source for local news with a donation that makes sense for your budget.
Thank you for your generous support and believing in independent news.
Chip in now to fund your local journalism
(
LAist
)
Trending on LAist
-
With less to prove than LA, the city is becoming a center of impressive culinary creativity. -
Nearly 470 sections of guardrailing were stolen in the last fiscal year in L.A. and Ventura counties.
-
Monarch butterflies are on a path to extinction, but there is a way to support them — and maybe see them in your own yard — by planting milkweed.
-
With California voters facing a decision on redistricting this November, Surf City is poised to join the brewing battle over Congressional voting districts.
-
The drug dealer, the last of five defendants to plead guilty to federal charges linked to the 'Friends' actor’s death, will face a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
-
The weather’s been a little different lately, with humidity, isolated rain and wind gusts throughout much of Southern California. What’s causing the late-summer bout of gray?
Best of LAist