‘La Factoria’ opens Oct. 8 at El Teatro Campesino Playhouse
In the play
”
La Factoria,
”
which will open at El Teatro Campesino’s Playhouse for a
four-night engagement Oct. 8, all of the seven characters have a
dream. The cleaning ladies are a close-knit group of women who long
to be and do more with their lives. One character wants to do
stand-up comedy, another longs to adopt a baby and another wants to
sing.
‘La Factoria’ opens Oct. 8 at El Teatro Campesino Playhouse
In the play “La Factoria,” which will open at El Teatro Campesino’s Playhouse for a four-night engagement Oct. 8, all of the seven characters have a dream. The cleaning ladies are a close-knit group of women who long to be and do more with their lives. One character wants to do stand-up comedy, another longs to adopt a baby and another wants to sing.
It is suiting, then, that the seven actresses are all friends in real life who work not as cleaning ladies but as social workers. The idea for the show came about because the women had been putting on skits and performing at work functions.
After the last performance at work, Carmen Carrasco said that she had a dream that one of the other women, Rebecca Perez Ochoa, had written a play for them.
“We got a sitcom,” Carrasco said, of her dream.
While the women might be a long way from having their own TV show, Perez Ochoa decided to sit down and write a play with characters based on her friends. She didn’t tell her friends what she was doing. She just started writing. When she shared her piece with them, it wasn’t done yet and she wasn’t sure she would ever finish it.
“Carla always makes things happen,” Perez Ochoa said. “She said, ‘Finish it.’ She put me on a timeline.”
Carla Torres, who plays Vicky in the play, went to school with Kinan Valdez, a playwright and director who has long been active at El Teatro Campesino. When the play was done, Torres talked to Valdez about doing the show for a limited engagement at El Teatro Campesino’s Playhouse in San Juan Bautista.
According to Perez Ochoa, the core of the show is about dreams, but it has layers.
“There is a cultural layer, a spiritual layer,” Perez Ochoa said. “The bigger layer that engulfs it all is comedy. When you look at life, it is not about major dreams.”
On a recent afternoon, the women rehearsed the opening scene in a garage. Their rehearsals are limited to weekends, and some weeknights, since each one of the women works full time and has a family.
During the opening scene, the show is set up in a lunchroom where five of the ladies – Alma Diaz, Rebecca Hernandez, Carrasco, Torres, and Paty Villegas – sit around and chat like close friends. There is a smattering of Spanish in the dialogue and a lot of joking. The premise of the story is that Chona (Perez Ochoa) has decided to go part time so that she can pursue a dream of being a stand-up comedian (Pa Chang plays the new girl who replaces her). As she pursues her dream, Chona inspires her friends to look at their own dreams.
“For Paty life is good, but the one thing she always wanted to do is adopt a girl,” the women say of the character.
“Carmen’s character feels stuck at her job, but comes to the reality that she affects people where she is,” they added.
“She kind of figured us out and captured us,” said Hernandez, of Perez Ochoa’s characters. “She talked to us without us knowing what she was doing. She is the type of person to listen and capture what we dream of doing. She wrote that.”
Though it was Perez Ochoa’s dream to write a play, she quickly got her friends on board for rehearsals and the upcoming performance. They started rehearsing sporadically in June. Since they received a date for their performance, they have been practicing more regularly.
“It is so much fun,” Diaz said. “I wish the rehearsals were on YouTube.”
Perez Ochoa acknowledged the hard work it has taken to prepare for the performance and the other things necessary.
“Time, money, resources,” she said. “We are overwhelmed at the extended family and friends [who are helping]. It is taking a whole lot of hands and feet.”
“We have friends who are doing the backstage stuff – changing music,” Torres added.
The show runs about an hour and a half, with a 15-minute intermission. There will be a live performance by a rapper and a dancer.
“We want people to come out and feel they had a really nice evening,” Perez Ochoa said. “And I want these girls to know they are good. They are capable and other people see them as good.”
La Factoria
‘La Factoria’ will be shown at El Teatro Campesino, 705 Fourth St., San Juan Bautista
Thursday, Oct. 8, 7 p.m., $10 admission
Friday, Oct. 9, 8 p.m., $12 admission
Saturday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m., $12 admission
Sunday, Oct. 11, 2 p.m., $10 admission
For more information, call 297-0691 or e-mail [email protected].
