Highlighted Play:

Roosters (1987)

Synopsis:

Taking place during the summer heat in an agricultural valley in the American Southwest, Roosters follows the Morales family after the release of their patriarch, Gallo, from prison following a manslaughter charge after trying to breed the perfect fighting cock. His wife, Juana, and his sister, Chata, await his return home after seven years away, during which Hector, the son, put aside his father’s pride toward manual labor to work in the field to provide for his family. The daughter, Angela, a fifteen-year-old that likes to behave younger than she is, is a spiritual and precocious girl who prays for signs of transcendence and her father’s return home. The conflict between father and son is symbolically portrayed through cockfighting, while archetypes of women in Mexican-American culture are highlighted to show the effects of machismo, the importance of spirituality, and the possibility of a new way of living.

How this play can be used:

The play can act as an introduction to the complexities and nuances of the Mexican-American culture and family dynamic because of how Sanchez-Scott imbues the play with various culturally significant details such as spirituality, cuisine, language, etc. The characters, modeled after archetypes present in Mexican-American families, interact with the culture in important ways that highlight their gender expectations (the matriarch cooks and cleans, the "man-of-the-house" must provide the family income, etc.) while showing how both genders can be affected by machismo/masculine pride.

Discussion Questions:

• Sanchez-Scott uses cockfighting as a way to discuss machismo/masculine pride. Why might she do this?

• There are many symbols in this play, such as saints/angels, the roosters, and shadows. How do these symbols advance the story and the characters?

• Catholicism is woven into the story of Roosters heavily through the character, Angela. How does Angela's fixation on Catholicism fuel her youthful approach toward living and how does it compare with her family's?

• What do you think the playwright’s intent was for the dynamic between Hector and Chata? How do they support or challenge their respective gendered archetypes?

• The ending of Roosters is an example of supernatural intervention/magical realism, a storytelling device common in some of Sanchez-Scotts plays. How does the levitation in the plays ending emphasize the ways the children of the Morales family react to their parents traditional way of living.

Sample Activities:

Students can create a powerpoint presentation where they will do a cross-cultural examination on misogyny and the roles we expect women (and men) to play; comparing the social roles that women are cast into in Roosters to the social roles women are cast into in other cultures.

The class can also read "My Mother Woke a Rooster" by Laurie Ann Guerrero and "The Old Rooster" by Omar Rusa to explore the similarities and differences in the symbolism of the rooster in various writings.

Building on themes that transcend cultures, research can be done on the shocking similarities in the subtext of cockfighting (pride, emasculation, homoeroticism, etc.) despite drastic geographic difference.

Additional Plays:

Latina (1980)

Synopsis:

This play takes place in Los Angeles in the 80’s following a group of Latinas, many of whom are illegal immigrants, working for a domestic help agency. The characters are detailed: from the fully assimilated and aspiring actress Sarita, the experienced Clara and Eugenia who have been working for the agency for many years, to their sleazy boss who owns numerous businesses around town, Don Felix. Wealthy white clients creep into the story, illustrating the white America that the women survive in and how it dehumanizes them. The women’s various cultural backgrounds and ages complicate and strengthen their bonds, showing the ways the women must combat economic oppression, legal struggles, and sexism as Latinas in America trying to make a living.

How this play can be used:

Focusing heavily on the exploitation of labor, clashes of culture, and the looming threat of deportation for immigrant Latinas, this play can be used to start conversations on the immigrant experience in America, especially the economic and legal hurdles they must overcome. Additionally, Latina builds on accounts that Sanchez-Scott got while working at an employment agency for maids, allowing for a discussion analyzing the precautions playwrights take to use people’s real-life stories to provide insight while avoiding exploiting the person's experiences. With the characters of Mrs. Levine and Mrs. Homes, the play can also be used for an exercise aimed toward being a personal self-reflection of privilege.

The Old Matador (1991)

Synopsis:

Taking place in the American Southwest, The Old Matador follows the Peña’s after the head of the family, Enrique, decides to take his families money out of the bank to fund his dream trip to Spain to pursue bullfighting. His realistic wife, Margarita, tries to reason with him as she deals with caring for their 15-year-old son, Cookie, and the family’s financial strain after her daughter Jesse’s wedding fell through, disrupting her daughter’s future. While Margarita tries to tame her husband’s wild ways while consoling her heartbroken and directionless daughter, Cookie discovers an Angel that crash-landed near their house following a meteor shower. Themes of love, idealism, and real-life responsibility are brought to a head as magical realism is used as a tool for character transformation and resolution in a heightened bullfight.

How this play can be used:

This play explores how idealistic or realistic ways of living can not only have consequences, but also be rooted in gender and/or culture. This can be used to start conversations about how different genders are expected to have different responsibilities: how can men more easily pursue dreams whereas women are expected to think of their families first or be responsible for “taming” their husbands? Can culture limit the ways different genders dream? Building on the theme of dreaming, an exercise can be done on the pros and cons of idealistic vs. realistic ways of viewing one’s life. This can lead to a reflection on one’s own dreams and the importance of either acknowledging their existence or acting on them.

Comprehensive List of Plays

Full Length Plays

• Latina (Production, L.A. Theatre Works, Los Angeles, 1980)

• Roosters (Development, INTAR’s Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Lab, New York, 1985) (Production, INTAR, coproduced by New York Shakespeare Festival, New York, 1987)

• Stone Wedding (Production, LATC’s Latino Theatre Lab, Los Angeles, 1988)

• Evening Star (Production, Theatre for a New Audience, New York, 1988

• Carmen (adaptation of Georges Bizet’s Opera) (Production, Los Angeles Theatre Center, 1988)

• El Dorado (Production, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, 1991)

• The Old Matador (Production, Arizona Theatre Company, Phoenix, 1995)

• Lenny’s Wedding (Mariachi musical, currently in development)

One-Acts

• Dog Lady (INTAR, New York, 1984)

• The Cuban Swimmer (INTAR, New York, 1984)

Film

• Roosters (Screenplay adaptation, Film Premiering in 1993)

Additional Resources

Bibliography

Reference Texts

Arkatov, Janice. “Playwright Enters World of Cockfighting in 'Roosters'.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 15 June 1988, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-15-ca-4339-story.html.

Bronner, Simon J., editor. “Gallus as Phallus: A Psychoanalytic Cross-Cultural Consideration of the Cockfight as Fowl Play.” Meaning of Folklore: The Analytical Essays of Alan Dundes, University Press of Colorado, Logan; Utah, 2007, pp. 285–316. JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt4cgrzn.20. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

Bouknight, J. “Language As a Cure: An Interview With Milcha Sánchez-Scott”. Latin American Theatre Review, vol. 23, no. 2, Mar. 1990, pp. 63-74,https://journals.ku.edu/latr/article/view/822.

“Chapter 2: The Poetics of Resistance: Sexual Dynamics in the Gender Subordination of Chicanas.” The Color of Privilege: Three Blasphemies on Race and Feminism, by Hurtado Aída, University of Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 45–91.

Davey, Sara L. “Shadow of Woman: a Thematic Analysis of Contemporary Latina Dramatic Literature through Three Plays.” Utah State University, Dissertation Abstracts International, 1996, pp. 72–91. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, proxy.library.nyu.edu/login url=https://www-proquest com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/dissertations-theses/shadow-woman-thematic-analysis contemporary/ docview/304302163/se-2?accountid=12768.

Friesen, Melissa J. “The Nonviolent Spectator as Critic.” The University of Wisconsin - Madison, Dissertation Abstracts International, 2005, pp. 77–90. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=https://www-proquescom.proxy.library.nyu.edu/ dissertations-theses/nonviolent-spectator-as critic/docview/305375300/se-2?accountid=12768.

Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus, vol. 134, no. 4, 2005, pp. 56–86., doi:10.1162/001152605774431563.

Jacobs, Elizabeth. “Undocumented Acts: Migration, Community and Audience in Two Chicana Plays.” Comparative American Studies, vol. 14, no. 3/4, Sept. 2016, pp. 277–288. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14775700.2016.1267372.

Mahfouz, Safi Mahmoud. “Exploring Diasporic Identities in Selected Plays by Contemporary American Minority Playwrights.” Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 66, 2012, pp. 163-189. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/rockmounrevi.66.163. Accessed 16 Mar. 2021.

Mirendé, Alfredo, and Evangelina Enríquez. “La Chicana: The Mexican-American Woman.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 1979, pp. 96–118. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, ProQuest, doi:10.1215/00182168-61.3.601.

Sanchez-Scott, Milcha, et al. The Collected Plays of Milcha Sanchez-Scott. CreateSpace, 2019.

Shirley, Don. “STAGE REVIEW : Machismo Plucked Bare as 'Roosters' Takes Flight.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 21 June 1988, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm1988-06-21-ca-4559-story.html.

“Women Playwrights of Diversity: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook.” Women Playwrights of Diversity: a Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, by Jane T. Peterson and Suzanne Bennett, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1997, pp. 293–296.

Images and Videos

Department, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Theatre. “258 The Old Matador Fall 2005.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 11 May 2021, www.flickr.com/photos/94697820@N04/sets/72157690146102004/with/38056115945/.

“Latina.” Cal State LA, 25 Nov. 2017, www.calstatela.edu/theatredance/latina.

“Milcha Sanchez-Scott.” Milcha Sanchez-Scott | Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, tdps.berkeley.edu/milcha-sanchez-scott.

“Milcha Sanchez-Scott Interview (Complete) - 2019.” YouTube, Latino Theatre Initiatives, 5 Aug. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=H52oXu5fMak.

MovieTrailersByVD, director. Roosters Trailer 1995. YouTube, YouTube, 7 Nov. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZzjmQt_UE.

“Roosters (1987).” Latino Theater Co., 2018, latinotheaterco.wixsite.com/ltc-archive/about1-c5yy.

Sanchez-Scott, Milcha, et al. The Collected Plays of Milcha Sanchez-Scott. CreateSpace, 2019.