On December 17th, 2023 at 7:00pm, Cholavision Productions presented their final showcase of Romeo and Juliet: Rolling Through East LA in La Puente, CA. This photo essay, The Brown Mirror: An Essay and Photos on a Demonstration of Theatrical Resistance, bent to the reality constructed by a brown creativity, originating from a guerilla theoretical framework and our survival in the US context—take a few deep breaths before reading any line.
¡The Foreground: La Puente, aka Bridgetown!
It is a crisp California December evening and Latina/x/o’s from all over Southern California are getting dressed in their Sunday-best: stiff white Shaka Wear t-shirts are being ripped out of their clear packaging, True Religion jeans are being pulled halfway up a pair of brown legs, sombreros are coming off their top shelf hiding places, crisp air force ones getting cleaned by an old toothbrush, boots getting a fresh layer of brown paint, button ups, polos, pompadours, new lashes, press-ons, and the ¡zoot suit! is exhumed from the darkest depths of an old closet. Latina/x/o families are dumping into rust buckets lined with yelling matches, lowriders so clean we can eat off of ‘em, Bombs ready to bomb down Hacienda, Metro Busses pointed towards a town that is only found on the very rare limited edition extended LA County map—those who don't know where we live, use the community-sanctioned parking lot firework show (spontaneously born from the excitement in the air) as a North Star to the town hidden between cities, rotting roads, and unincorporated parts of stolen land.
This crowd of Latindad—spanish speakers, mingling with the english speakers, with the spanish-english in-betweeners—isn't gathering in front of a cross, a soccer game, or for one of our prima/x/o’s funerals—instead, we pull up to a Cholavision Production, Romeo and Juliet: Rolling Through East LA, in one of the forgotten folds of Los Angeles county: La Puente.
A city where you read every sign in Spanish first, where you are greeted in the mornings with a ¡buenos dias! drenched in a café-de-olla morning breath. In these neighborhoods live the original brown berets, the invisible forgotten first farmworkers that have fed this country, and the Chicana/x/o’s that walked out of their English classes for us. We are the base of a valley, on either side of us lies the unincorporated pieces of land that even Whittier didn't want! The trees loom, the vines build territories for a people to build a life away from it all—pueblos line the hills, filled by a brown wealth that won't ever save the people of the valley. This is Bridgetown, where we boogie-woogie in overgrown backyard dancefloors, the tia/x/o’s drink over a fire and cry for the land they haven't kissed in twenty years, our hermana/x/o’s bring home another round of fireworks that will leave your kids in the future with a tia/x/o that is one finger-less, and the taco stands on each of our corners are used to fund lives of loved ones we won't ever hold again.
This is Bridgetown, aka La Puente, where at 14 years old your small fingers are the perfect size to debone chicken on the assembly line, where spaceships riding 4000-spokes bomb down Hacienda to meet their compadres at another car meet in front of a Chris’s/Nogales/Jim’s burger joint, where another nameless vigil burns wax over another corner never to be owned by us, where highschoolers sell $7 car washes in 95-degree summer nights to buy new school wrestling gear, where our water is filled with more than Flint ever saw, where police use Hacienda as there race track, and here in La Puente, Bridgetown, is where a team of revolutionaries erects a brown mirror on the theatrical stage.
¡Behind the Curtain/Hegemony: Break the Cycle, in your Favor!
¡Come as you are!
It is a cast constructed of a people Shakespeare never wanted on his stage—here, theater food is tacos, the spitting sounds shooting out of mufflers cruising down Glendora Blvd give the scenes on stage an authentic East of LA ambiance, and throughout the show the prima/x/o’s in the audience let out unapologetically-audible: gasps, laughs, and “¡daaa-uuums!”
These characters were never Shakespeares—all they share is a name.
The center of this theater is not located on a continent that we have never called home, but instead has been built on survival, approaching itself as a cultural product of resistance.
Behind the curtain: cast members rehearsed their lines over one another (projection is key to speak to a people who speak only through projection), hairnets sat as crowns of the oppressed, new cortez’ were being laced for the battle of social control, and the homies shouted their wishes for a few broken legs. As actors from our world transformed into their characters from the next, it was an un-carry-able steaming pot of mixing—between the birth of these characters you’ll catch flashes from the longer historical third world theatrical practice of Luiz Valdez’ Zoot Suit and the scenes that unfolded under the desolate night sky of the Central Valleys’ open fields, delivering to the world a California Chicana/x/o style revolution. In other words, this production is a new entry in a longer history of resistance through the performing arts, a resistance that seeks to carve space for the self-expression of the erased.
“Symbolic power operates in representation in an attempt to naturalize meanings…An attempt to keep representation open is a way of constantly wanting new kinds of knowledges to be produced in the world, new kinds of subjectivities to be explored, and new dimensions of meaning that have not yet been foreclosed by the systems of power that are in operation.”
- Stuart Hall, Representation and the Media (1997)
Do not categorize the work as fictional—instead, read it as magical realist. A form of storytelling that relies on Latina/x/o’s to have faith in what we do not see, to understand that a larger connection lives between us and to the unseen—in it, a responsibility to create with our calloused palms, our future. The homie Carlos said—don't use magical realism, it's not our term—it's a box to keep us in, to make it safe for them to understand us. The work on stage builds in the space that this language has forever failed to ever capture: .
As the opening line approached: the smiles on cast members never stopped, they only became more serious. On the other side of the black curtain sat the opportunity to inscribe an alternative into a context that has continuously taken advantage of our labor, defined oppression for us as inevitable, and continues in its sacrifices of oppressed people for its theatrics of violence.
¡Romeo and Juliet: Rolling Through East LA!
“This is my first.”
- Louie Soto, Capulet, speaking on his lead role in this production
Before any audience member squeezed their way through the packed out aisles to their wooden seat, before any curtain went up, and way before the opening line transported us to an East LA sitting inside of this brown imagination, it is clear that Cholavision Productions decided long ago: Rolling Through East LA was not written to appease others, not built for a pre-destined category, not constructed for the affirmation of those that see us only as invisible or background labor—these characters, cast members, and thinkers have forcefully written themselves into the archive.
It was a room full of firsts: speaking lines, lead roles, hearing a European foo named Shakespeare, seasoned theater-goers serenaded by a classic Southern California oldies playlist during scene transitions, a mountainous shaped crowd horizon line built by sombreros/snapbacks/hair-types-from-all-over-the-third-world, taco finger foods, a thunderous cast that embody our reminders of US policing-penal programs choosing to never work for us, tia/x/o’s experiencing their first ever intermission. All firsts, keeping one another warm, all baring sight on what has been chosen to not exist before.
It was a giant self reflective party, full of music with rhythm, collective laughter erupting from a set of stomachs that elimination has been tempted on, pre-written political bodies inherently engaged in political action through every breath.
A performance of spectacle, in which the audience receives characters we can root for, a love we actually care about, and deaths that remind us of all that we lost for nothing. A Caputlet reflecting a little too much of the world we came to escape. Spanish spoken by a people surviving, never approaching the Spanish of a motherland that doesn't want us—a Spanish written for those that inhabit the in-between.
The first indicates a start, a beginning, the furthest point from the ending—to know, this is just the first, presents us with an unimaginable next step that pulls us to an uncompromising excitement.
“I always knew I had something going on—I mean I am 6’3, 320 pounds—I knew I always had a big presence…every room I walk into, there goes my shadow! Since I was a kid, it has always been like that, but I never used it in a positive way, until now. It's different now, the way I walk through the door.”
- Jayson Solano, Lord Montague/Friar John
The historically marginalized artist constantly works at two levels: constructing their “emerging field” and seeking their personal/professional development. Our labor burns on both ends, spending most of our creative life fighting to validate our work from structures plagued with systemic racism. With full excitement, we celebrate this production—but still one question remains that the art world needs to answer, why has this production only come now?
While photographing Jayson, he gave me a few minutes to sit down with him and ask a few questions. Speaking to what felt like a long lost primo, we sat on the same stage he would walk onto in less than an hour. I got nervous for him and projected my fears—raised to fear attention and taught by this country to never walk onto a stage as a historically marginalized person, cause the return is never promised–I asked: “You nervous at all?” Jayson’s voice dropped to a calm pace and with a warm stare, he said: “No…I am at peace.”
The personal transformation that the performing arts has had on Jayson is profound, impacting the everyday makeup of who he is. During his performance, Jayson and the rest of the cast stand on top of the world, shout their lines to the brown pit built of dimly lit faces, in this giant constantly shifting spectacle, and under the hottest light in the world—Jayson, a long lost primo, is at peace.
“Hey, you want some?”
- Fernando Arredondo, Prince Escalus, offering me some fries during intermission
During intermission, I walked behind the scenes and found Prince Escalus standing alone with a grease-stained white-bag of french fries in his hands. His zoot suit hung effortlessly off his tall brown physique, his silver looped chain swaying out-loud out of his pocket, and obviously with his hairnet on. He looks over and offers me a fry, from the stage prop fries that sat on stage a few minutes prior: “hey, we dont let anything go to waste here!”
It was a reminder that this is a local production, that every cast member here has day jobs, that this work is done out of a labor of love, all betting on themselves, doing this for the purpose that this language fails to honestly describe.
Prince Escalus rehearsed his lines every morning on his drive to work, he googled the history of the role he was entering and up-ending, he spent hours writing his lines again and again until they burned into his head. His investment in this role and devotion is what brought to the audience: a tall powerful commander on stage, whose deep spoken spanglish stopped all movement in the scene, whose role commanded change, and whose words closed the curtains.
The power of these characters is that they offer us, not a stale meaningless hope—instead, interject a powerful possible reasonable attainable: ¿what if?
¡A Final Word: Gracias/Thank You!
Alex Alpharaoh, Writer of Romeo and Juliet: Rolling Through East L.A.
A brown mirror reflects all that has been erased, an unrestricted truth. LA’s creative industry is the most recognized in the world, our creative economy funds the lives of millions and millionaires—yet, the historically marginalized creative mind must devote a majority of its life to wrestling for its survival. Fighting for representation, thoughtfully not selling out the culture, hustling to snap up our block back, working to survive another day on a life built on credit, to save up enough to be able to buy our tia/x/o’s ransome, and still have enough energy to work on our craft every night.
¡Romeo and Juliet: Rolling Through East LA makes the impossible look easy!
This showcase is not an interpretation, a translation, or a rendition of Shakespeare—he wishes! It stands firmly as a cultural product of resistance, an entry in our collective archive that is meant to empower our people, to lodge its attacks on the structural forms of racism that historically marginalized artists know.
¡A brown mirror was erected!
In our reflection, we find ourselves: the loud-ass tia/x/o’s running to our home with chisme, the prima/x/o’s starting neighborhood wars that will never end, the first-loves we never held but kept us up at night—amor that burns deep inside of our brown stomachs, taken away by the world we inherited.
A brown reflection, “¡Romeo wears cortez!”
On this stage, foo’s shoot with one eye closed, COVID is real, fentanyl ravages brown bodies, and we are still on a collision course with all of the decisions we never made. Under the night sky of a city where brown people will die tomorrow, and our social problems are erased through an unending barrage of weekend backyard parties in which we dance away from the pain of living as the abject—unfolded a performance that gripped us all, that launched the crowd into a standing brown-ovation, where cheers tasted better than champagne, performances that made us all hold our true loves closer, with worn out faces and hands cheering.
A brown mirror was erected on this stage, not by a single person and never for personal benefit, but by a team of revolutionaries who are building what we never had, for the next set of brown students who could not give a damn about shakespeare—¡and who would blame them!
