By BETTY BASTIDAS
A small black stage comes alive as three queer Latina women, dressed in white button down shirts hanging over black pants, recite from music stands, at times in unison:
“There is a butch in every barrio, there is a butch in every hood, every barrio has its mancha (blemish), not every barrio treats her good.”
I look out the window and I see her- ella la mas firme de todas (her, the most firm of them all) leaning against the bus stop doing it like she does it everyday, sabia (I knew) that is where I wanted to live—in her body.
It is witty lines like these that make up a tight series of sketches in The Barber of East LA, an outfit theater group from Los Angeles now playing as part of the Fury Factory Festival at the Traveling Jewish Theater. The trio comprised of Raquel Gutierrez, Marri Garcia, and Claudia Rodriguez is the result of Butchlalis de Panochtitlan’s collaboration with acclaimed playwright, director and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Luis Alfaro.
The show’s story revolves around Chonch played by Gutierrez, a lesbian during the 80’s living in East LA, and her rough ride through love. It’s an unrealized love, and the story follows her life as a butch returning home from barber’s school to the hostile environment she left behind.
The other protagonist is Claudia Rodriguez who plays as Betty–– and wants to leave her small minded hood to make it big as a Latina punkera in Hollywood. “Who wants to come into this hell- there is so much smallness here––narrow minds in a tiny circle,” she said. The other character is Martinez who plays a nasty male cop, Betty’s best friend Julian and the fabulous Juana Chingas, Oooraleee!!
“The Barber of East LA is a story of two generations of different kinds of outlaws— the gender outlaw and underground punk rock – trying to find themselves and express anger through music – and an imagined encounter between the two,” said Gutierrez who wrote the script and identifies more with being a writer than a performer. Grounded in community-based work, this trio have been friends for the past 10 years and their amicable synergy on stage benefits from this.
Their performance, passionate and humorous, is done with a lot of corazon. Chonch’s barbershop is the backdrop. Though this was technically a “reading,” the dynamic acting made the stands disappear. The wigs—carefully displayed in the back of the stage adjacent to a row of neon glowing mirrors—transport the audience from one character to the next, from one generation to another––through what it’s like to be queer in homophobic society.
“It’s a different way of writing our histories into history. You go into queer exhibits and you don’t hear about the Chonches or the Laylows that get lost in the shuffles,” said Rodriguez who played as Betty.
“We feel those characters,” added Gutierrez.
Gutierrez said the show is based on a 77-year-old Chicana butch lesbian who had a barber shop on Brooklyn Avenue for nine years and old school punk rockers who shared their experiences as angry mujeres (women) in a neighborhood plagued with “domestic violence and sexism.”
“We are trying to embody it and bring you in to the dynamics of the neighborhood, the dynamics of this era and what it must be like for a woman to be in hyper masculine spaces,” said Gutierrez.
Filled with just the right music, quick paced scenes and clever humor, their performance is rich with cultural anecdotes and hood experiences from the brutal barrio of East LA.
The Butchlalis will hold their next performance this Saturday and next Thursday and Friday. If you want to see a good barrio story, this trio of Latino queer lesbians delivers one.
Don’t miss it.
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