Experience Oedipus El Rey & the East L.A. Trilogy of Luis Alfaro!

For your reading pleasure, please enjoy this excerpt from our interview with playwright Luis Alfaro for his re-imagining of 3 classic Greek tragedies set in East L.A.; which include Oedipus El Rey, Mojada and Electricdad from Backstory’s brand new issue #42!
 
You can watch newly staged readings of all 3 plays for free through the end of the day on January 20th, 2021 by visiting the Center Theatre’s website right here!
 
If you enjoy what you’ve read in this excerpt we hope you’ll join us to read the rest of the article by by subscribing to Backstory Magazine!

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Staged
The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro
Classic tragedies find new resonance in 21st-century Latinx life
By Jeremy Smith

Luis Alfaro’s writing career was born out of death at the age of 10, when someone died in front of his family’s house in the impoverished downtown Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico-Union. His Pentecostal mother was at a prayer service, while his Catholic father was observing a decidedly more secular ritual at the Hollywood Park Racetrack, and they’d unassumingly left Alfaro and his brother to babysit their younger sister. The following day, as the shocking scene was still playing in Alfaro’s mind, his fourth grade teacher asked students to write something interesting about their neighborhood. “So I wrote this whole story about death,” laughs Alfaro. The teacher was so moved she sent the young man to the principal’s office, where Alfaro’s mother was called. His reward for this vivid composition: a three-day suspension. “The deal was that I had to go see a psychiatrist because I had written very romantically and very passionately about this death.” Alfaro insists he was simply doing what his migrant farmer dad had advised throughout his childhood. “My father always used to say to me as a kid, ‘We bring to light that which is in the dark.’ ”
 
Those words have resonated throughout Alfaro’s career, as has the fascination with death. These elements form the troubled soul of the playwright’s critically acclaimed take on three classic Greek tragedies: Electra and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides. In his Latinx-infused pieces—Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey and Mojada—the works bring forward perennial themes to shine a devastating light on the multitude of societal ills plaguing the Latin communities. And there’s nothing forced or false about them. Alfaro has based each play on real-life stories that prove when it comes to human folly and frailty, all God’s creatures are making the same tragic mistakes even some 2,000 years later. The shows have been produced at such prominent U.S. venues as Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and New York City’s Public Theater and are now streaming free for a limited time during the pandemic as dynamically staged readings via a partnership between Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group and the Getty Museum.
 
Alfaro’s journey to this celebrated point in his career was surprisingly circuitous, given that he spent much of his young adulthood ushering at L.A.’s Music Center. Before landing that gig, the precocious scribe-to-be was building a love for the arts, reinforced by his mother, who used to bring home a newspaper and ask her son to circle a cultural event he’d like to attend—one that, as a result of the family’s tight budget, was typically free. As the boy got older, his tastes grew more sophisticated, which led him to save money for one concert he simply could not miss. “I had read this article about Nina Simone,” he says, “And I said to my mother, ‘I have to see Nina Simone.’ I used to collect bottles and cans in the neighborhood, and my mother would make me cupcakes and tamales, and I would go around selling them. So I bought a ticket to see Nina Simone at the Wiltern and that kind of shifted my thinking about the world.” Though his parents were deeply religious, they encouraged his ardor for the arts, and drove him to various clubs and concert halls. “My parents would wait in the car, and at intermission I’d usually get a soda from the bar and take it out to their car.” Occasionally, they regretted the trips. “I remember one year I said to my mother, ‘I have to see Nancy Wilson,’ who was this jazz singer. It was at the Playboy Jazz Festival, and I think I was probably too young for it, but I remember my parents dropped me off—and that was a formative experience. I got back in the car, and I had a French accent. My parents were so mad. I was telling my parents I was going to move to France and that I needed a beret. Then I started wearing a fake French mustache.”
 
As the theater bug sunk its stinger into Alfaro during his stint at the Music Center, he bore witness to the touring companies of Chicago (with Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera), Sweeney Todd (featuring Angela Lansbury) and Pacific Overtures (starring Mako). As the ushering staff’s “overeager butt kisser,” Alfaro was eventually tasked with assisting some of the theater’s most esteemed visiting artists. “I used to walk [Marshall Mason] to his hotel. One night I had to walk Lanford [Wilson] down to his hotel because he was wasted out of his mind. August Wilson needed an assistant to walk him to lunch every day so no one would bother him. I got to meet Neil Simon. I would walk Angela Lansbury between shows so people wouldn’t bother her either. I had to escort Lillian Hellman when they were doing The Little Foxes with Elizabeth Taylor. I remember she was backstage, and I was saying, ‘I’m sorry, Miss Hellman, but you can’t smoke in the theater.’ She was smoking a Virginia Slim backstage! She didn’t even acknowledge me. I said, ‘You really can’t smoke backstage.’ She wasn’t going to stop.” The young Alfaro wasn’t always familiar with these artists’ work, which was probably a plus in that he lacked the awe others felt in their presence, but he knew he wanted to be a part of this party. “In retrospect, this was the illicit, wonderful world I needed to belong to. This was the Pinocchio world of the underground that was alluring.”
 
Rather than go to theater school, Alfaro began to make a name for himself as a poet and performance artist—surely no way to make a living, but he made it work. “We find ways to exist. Having been raised religiously, my parents instilled this idea that it was never about money, but we had this rich, wonderful life. My family always ate together every night. We couldn’t eat unless everyone was there. It was a very entrenched way of thinking about community. In retrospect, I think about all the things our parents did with us, and it was never about money. It was about going to the park, going to beaches and going to museums on free days. They were very committed to making sure we experienced a world, and I’m so grateful for that. As a playwright, I can go through the very leanest of years. I’ve never applied for unemployment because I’ve never been unemployed. I’ve always worked as a poet. Even when I was super poor, I would go into a Barnes & Noble for a reading and say, ‘I need to get a sandwich. You guys need to give me a sandwich for this free poetry reading.’ When you go into places like that and you say that…when you value your work…I was very young and nobody ever denied me. I think about all the coffeehouses I went to and said, ‘Can I get a free dinner in exchange for the reading?’ They’d be like, ‘Yeah! Here! Have a sandwich. Have a cappuccino.’ I think there’s a way of making a life. If you want to make a life, it’ll find you.”
 
Like what you’ve read? Continue reading the rest of the huge full article and interview in Backstory Magazine issue #42 to find out more about Alfaro’s process for bringing these Greek classics into the 21st century, plus, read an exclusive excerpt as well.
 
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