In San Juan Bautista, you can tell it’s getting close to the end of the year without ever having to look at a calendar. The shops stay open a bit longer. The alluring and medieval-looking paintings of the Mission Saints appear on downtown street lamps. And everybody is buying tickets for the holiday play.
For almost half a century, San Juan’s famed El Teatro Campesino theater company has been staging two separate plays in rotation during the holiday season: the overtly Christmas-themed play La Pastorela (The Shepherd’s Play), and the spiritual apparition story La Virgen del Tepeyac. In mainstream American culture, neither play is well-known. But in San Juan, they are traditions, as deeply familiar as Thanksgiving dinner.
This year, the every-other-year rotation turns to La Virgen, which, unlike La Pastorela, is told almost entirely in Spanish, and is not directly connected to Christmas, but instead to Dec. 12, the annual Dia de la Virgen, a Mexican holiday.
The play is a centuries-old story, which traces its origins to some time in the 1700s in Mexico, but was adapted by ETC founder and celebrated Chicano playwright Luis Valdez, and first performed in San Juan in 1971.
It dramatizes the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the miracle narrative that binds Catholic Church tradition to the indigenous culture of Mexico.
Catholic true believers around the world know the story of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, who was a Chichimeca Indian living in the early 16th century in what is today near Mexico City. In December of 1531, as recorded in official Catholic history, Juan Diego was visited on four separate occasions by the apparition of the Virgin Mary. These appearances happened in the context of European conquest and occurred less than 40 years after the landing of Columbus in the New World. That the Mother of Christ appeared to a humble indigenous Indian is seen as a symbol of hope and comfort for Latino Catholics in the Americas and elsewhere.
The El Teatro production is presented every other year in the church at the Mission San Juan Bautista as a re-creation of the Virgin’s appearance to Juan Diego. It is a pageant of song, dance and drama that presents not only the miracle of the Virgin, but provides dramatic background to the encounter between the colonizing Spanish and the Aztec Empire.
The production’s director this year is actor and playwright Ruben Gonzalez, who said that, because it is a returning tradition, La Virgen attracts many of the same audiences every year, that it is as much a holiday ritual as a piece of dramatic entertainment.
“It’s a story that’s always presented in a certain way,” said Gonzalez, who played the lead role of Juan Diego in 2000 and 2012. “You don’t play with the story, but you can accent it in certain ways. I’ve added a few things that people who come every year will say, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ But I don’t mess with the story at all.”
In a time when Mexican immigration is front and center in the national political debate, Gonzalez said he wanted to provide a reference point or two to remind audiences that the themes of the play are still as relevant as ever. As one example, he said he has given more leadership roles in the play to female actors, to reflect women’s growing influence in culture and politics.
The play opens many years before the appearance of the Virgin, portraying the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in opening scenes that include Aztec dance and music that greet Spanish clergy and soldiers. Cut to about a dozen years later, when the holy Virgin Mary appears to the humble Juan Diego, instructing him to tell the Spanish bishop to build a church on the hill of Tepeyac, among the downtrodden indigenous locals.
Gonzalez said that La Virgen is as concerned about the documented history as it is about the church’s miracle story, and that the play honors both. “You have to be honest about the history,” he said in reference to the forced baptisms of Indians by Spanish priests in the early parts of the play. “It wasn’t just ceremonial. It was a blitzkrieg. And I’m kind of highlighting that in a way to make the point that no one has the right to define what God is or what God looks like.”
La Virgen features a cast of about 30, and over the years, it (and La Pastorela) has provided performance opportunities for hundreds of actors. Gonzalez, who is originally from Los Angeles, said, “I’ll meet people in LA, and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I did my stint up there (in San Juan).’”
Generations of actors have participated in the play, but this year, said the director, the cast includes more and more young people.
Audiences have just as strong a connection to the holiday plays as the actors do. The play is done entirely in Spanish but, said Gonzalez, most of the audiences speak little to no Spanish. “We call it the pilgrimage,” he said. “They come from everywhere, San Francisco, the valley, even from LA.”
The program describes the action in each scene and allows those who don’t speak Spanish to follow along. The new production features ETC regulars Mauricio Samano in the role of Juan Diego, and Stephani Candelaria as La Virgen.
Gonzalez, who has been affiliated with El Teatro Campesino since 1991, is now living in Texas. For many years, he has been a solo theater artist, performing one-man shows, often directed by Kinan Valdez, the son of ETC founder Luis Valdez. His latest production, from his own play, features Gonzalez taking on the role of 11 different characters. Still, he’s eager to return to San Juan, despite a wife and two young children back home in Texas. La Virgen gives him a long view of faith in a troubled time.
“I’m a big fan of (mythology scholar) Joseph Campbell,” he said, “and the research I’ve done on different levels tells me that myth is the way we pass on tradition. Especially now, with what’s happening (in the country), people come to this play for hope that humanity finds a common ground out of tragedy. That’s the only way you can repair these fractured relationships between communities. At the end of the day, it’s not about religion. It’s about people coming together.”
La Virgen del Tepeyac
Presented by El Teatro Campesino
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Sundays at 4 and 7:30 p.m. Through Dec. 18. $15-$28 adult; $15-$25 seniors, students and children; $30-$45 priority seating.
Mission San Juan Bautista
406 2nd St, San Juan Bautista
elteatrocampesino.com
