OH, WILD WEST!

Three New Plays

Culture Clash

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781559363273
• eBook ISBN:
  9781559366724
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

“Midway through Water & Power comes a scene so perfectly written, so chilling and yet so hilarious [it] encapsulates all the anger and social criticism fueling [the play], beginning with the agonizing realization (also central to Culture Clash’s smash Chavez Ravine) that the fates of the L.A. many are held in the hands of the often capricious and heartless few.”—Variety

For Zorro in Hell:

“The funniest show the Bay Area comedy troupe has ever written. Culture Clash uses the story [of Zorro] as a starting point for a devastatingly hilarious satire of just about everything Californians hold dear.”—Contra Costa Times

In this trio of plays, Culture Clash rewrites California’s past in the performance troupe’s own irreverent comic style, interweaving pop culture with their home state’s local history. In Chavez Ravine, called “a hell-raising home run” by Variety, they cover the land grab that uprooted an entire community and built Dodger Stadium. In Water & Power, the topic is the assimilation of Latinos and their rise to political influence. And in Zorro in Hell, Culture Clash re-imagines early California through the eyes of the original masked man.

Culture Clash is Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Siguenza. Founded in San Francisco’s Mission District on Cinco de Mayo in 1984, they have become the most prominent Chicano/Latino performance troupe in the United States. Their work ranges from sketch comedy to full-length plays and adaptations of Greek classics, and has been produced at universities and theaters throughout the country.

ACT ONE

The house lights are up. Over a loudspeaker the audience hears a Voice in Spanish and English.

VOICE 1 (Making an announcement):

Damas y Caballeros bienvenidos al Teatro Alta California. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to El Teatro Alta Californio.

En este momento apáguen sus telefonos celulares y old-school pagers. At this time we ask that you silence all cell phones and firearms.

Otra vez, por favor, apague sus telephones. Once again, silence all cell phones or you will be whipped at intermission.

Gracias! Y ahora, disfruten Zorro en el Infierno. Enjoy Culture Clash.

(House lights out.

A single guitar is heard.

The curtain rises. The lights slowly come up.

The guitar is augmented by layered sounds of distant thunder, Arabic wails, Indian chants and drums as deep as the Continental Divide itself: a sonic culture clash.

Upstage, looming over everything, is a huge California Bear Republic flag.

A Man seated downstage center, wearing a mask, faces the audience.

The Man is strapped into a straightjacket and seated in a metal chair. He is fitted with a hockey mask and plastic spit guard. He sits upright. A Nurse enters and tends to him. The guitar and occasional distant thunder continue under his poem.)

MAN:

They seek him here,
they seek him there,
they seek him everywhere,
is he in Heaven,
is he in Hell,
that damned elusive
Pimpernel!

(With one hand the Nurse removes the hockey mask and spit guard to reveal the Man’s Zorro mask. She exits.)

I wear the mask. I submit to the mask.

(Two men—Agents 1 and 2—enter upstage in the shadows.)

The self, less important than the masses. The mask as

political weapon, self-sacrifice. The Zapatistas, of course. VOICES (Over loudspeaker): ¡Todos somos Marcos!

MAN: I googled myself last night. The news is not so good. Zorro porn sites, chat rooms . . . I am the Walmart fucking Price Slasher for Chrissakes! I am a downloadable ring tone.

(We hear ring tone 1: a horse whinny and a whip crack.)

One match, one man, one woman can ignite a revolution or recall a sitting governor. Heroes stand up for an entire community and the people get inspired!

Government Agents (Joseph Kamal, left; Ric Salinas, right) interrogate the Writer (Richard Montoya).

VOICE 1 (Over loudspeaker): I am Spartacus!

VOICE 2 (Over loudspeaker): No, I am Spartacus!

MAN: No, Che Guevara said right after he got off his motorcycle, “When your land is invaded, when values and culture are threatened by outsiders, there is no resort but to fight and die.” Fight and die. That is love.

AGENT 1 (Moving out of the shadows): Now who the fuck are you?

MAN: “I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die . . .”

AGENT 2 (Following Agent 1): Why did you threaten the governor?

MAN: Because I am bicultural, bicurious and bipolar.

AGENT 1: Threats against elected officials are reported to Homeland Security.

MAN: Let’s combine FEMA with MENSA so that more pendejos can run the country.

AGENT 2: Why did you spray a large black “Z” on the capitol dome in Sacramento?

MAN: I make a mark! (A large Nike logo appears on an upstage wall) Not that mark. I saw a dead fox by the side of the road. Tawny and beautiful with streaks of amber and blood red, once proud and free, reduced to suburban road kill. I picked up el fox, and buried him, properly, facing east like the Indian taught me.

(The Nurse enters with more meds.)

NURSE: Indians are alcoholics. Calm now, take your meds. MAN: “Mine eyes have seen the glory . . .”

NURSE: Shhh. (She stuffs the meds in his mouth)

MAN: I have a memory of the land, the memory tastes of rolling hills, endless vistas, natural rock outcroppings. Redwoods standing witness to the wild salmon’s journey north from the bays to the rivers and deltas, snaking up the valleys to the snows of the upper pass. All of it lovely, essential, vital. Tierra. California! Worth dying for, que no? “Give me liberty or death,” right, just like Tupac said!

My California, she is now an endless series of subdivisions and strip malls choking what little there is of natural habitats and there is no open land nowhere for the fox to roam.

AGENT 1: I’m still heart sore over the plight of the spotted owl.

AGENT 2: Bioterrorist, tree-hugging, Green Peace pussy. NPR listener!!!

AGENT 1: You’re in it up to your mask, fella.

MAN: I will be the wounded grizzly, the dead fox on the side of the road who will not get away unless I light the fire with my single match. I will be the drunken Indian stripped of his tribal collectivism. I am a West Virginia coal miner darkened by sadness, working my ribbon of coal.

AGENT 1: Who the fuck are you?

MAN: I am Zorro. I must be Zorro. I will be a mujahadeen Zorro. A Chicano jihadist who will wage war against the Narcos and Tea-Baggers!

(We see a huge slide image of Sarah Palin with a rifle. Loud shotgun sound.)

SARAH (Voice-over): We shoot wild wolves in Alaska.

MAN: Sangre will be spilled, death to the governor of this Bear Republic of Cal-ee-forn-I-A!

AGENT 2: Say that again and you’ll be “waterboarding” in Guantanamo with the rest of the sand-niggers. (Removes a nine-inch chrome syringe from his pocket) This may pinch a bit. (He injects the Man in the side of the neck)

MAN: Inoculay-shun . . .

AGENT 2: It’s a clean needle, I think.

MAN: I can see the Killing Floor from my porch.

(Lights shift. We see only the head of the Man as he feels the effects of the narcotic.)

I am Zorro . . . Though I wasn’t always Zorro. There was a time when I was a nooorrrmaalll Chicano . . .

AGENT 2: Normal Chicano?

AGENT 1: Now there’s an oxymoron I can live with.

AGENT 2: Start singing, start from the beginning. Slowly.

MAN (Very slowly): My journey started some time ago . . .

AGENT 2: Not that slowly!

MAN: I forget when exactly, but these are the events as I can best recollect . . . (Spanish guitar. The Agents back out slowly) Was I here, or was I there? Was I in Heaven or was I in Hell? California!!!

(The Man flees. The bear flag becomes a flurry of video images: historic, post-modern, pop-culture icons of Taco Bell to Speedy Gonzales to the Taliban, to hundreds more. This transition continues as night falls. Crickets. Calm.

The Man reem...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• GET YOUR Z ON!
• PRODUCTION HISTORY
• A NOTE ABOUT MUSIC
• ACT ONE
• ACT TWO
• Copyright Page