SAN JUAN BAUTISTA — As the lights go down and the playhouse
falls dark except for the spotlight in the front of the stage, the
audience is invited to
”
Enjoy a trip through the mind of Luis Valdez.
”
And what a trip that is.
SAN JUAN BAUTISTA — As the lights go down and the playhouse falls dark except for the spotlight in the front of the stage, the audience is invited to “Enjoy a trip through the mind of Luis Valdez.”
And what a trip that is.
Valdez’s comedy drama “I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges” is a sit-com weaved in a play of a play. And while it’s a lot of fun along the way, the show leaves the audience with a message of hope – that we are all in control of our own lives and destinies, especially when we are the farthest from feeling that way.
Set in the mid-1980s in a suburb of Los Angeles, the “Badges” opens with Buddy Villa asleep on the couch while his television set blares the 1948 film starring Humphrey Bogart that was a best-picture nominee, “The Treasure of Sierra Madre.”
In one of the most famous lines ever spoken on the silver screen, a Mexican man who is chasing Bogart down in the film claims to be a Fedarale and tells Bogart to hand over his gun. Bogart asks to see his badge, and the man responds, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
Soon we find Buddy and his wife Connie have made a good living for themselves as the self-proclaimed “King and Queen of the Hollywood Extras.” By playing myriad parts in films with limited or non-speaking roles – much like the Mexican man in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” – the couple was able to put a daughter through medical school and send their son to Harvard law school.
However, whether they choose to admit it or not, they know they will never be given a lead role – not based on their talent but on the color of their skin. Minorities are relegated to token roles that reinforce basic stereotypes, playing roles like maids or gardeners.
Soon the action in the play picks up when the couple’s son, Sonny, returns home from school and announces that he has quit Harvard to write his own films and television shows that will give his family and other minorities an opportunity to play lead roles. But somewhere between his goals, his urge to fit in a school where he was one of very few minorities and the desire to make up for what he thinks is a waste of his parents’ talents, Sonny loses his mind, robs a Jack in the Box and has a gun to his head, so confused that he is on the verge of taking his life.
And while Valdez’s comedy drama has its share of laughs, it also has more than its share of life lessons.
“I hope that the audience can see that they can control their own lives,” said Marilyn Abad-Cardinalli, the director of “Badges” and member of the board of directors for El Teatro Campesino. “In life, it’s all full of situations, and we wish we can control them. Since it’s (Sonny’s) own life, he can control his own ending. … And on a very superficial level, I hope they can see how TV has marginalized people to a certain stereotype.”
Abad-Cardinalli, who assisted Valdez in directing the play 13 years ago, lives in Gilroy, teaches at Gavilan College, is the founder and producer of STAR and executive producer of the Gavilan television station.
“I was called in to substitute teach, and I never left,” said Abad-Cardinalli, who originally is from San Jose. “I’ve seen the trees full grown – which were just little trees – on the Gavilan campus.”
Abad-Cardinalli said she offered to direct the play after being asked by Valdez to do the show.
“It was time to give everyone a break, but we wanted to keep the momentum from ‘Zoot Suit,’ ” she said.
The cast of “Badges” includes Noe Montoya as Buddy, Vivis as Connie, Vanieck Ecchaverria as Sonny, Andres Gutierrez as Chico Chingon and Kerry Lee as Anita – a cast that also has learned from the lessons that Valdez offers in his play.
Lee, who plays Sonny’s love interest in the play, said she has seen many of the Valdez’s lessons first-hand. As an Asian-American, Lee said she finds herself playing roles of “token characters” who never have so much as a romantic life on stage.
“It’s very much me,” Lee said about her role in the play. “I’m Japanese-American and a dancer and had a family in (internment) camps.”
Lee, who had been away from theater for five years before auditioning for the role, thinks she was meant to be in the play because of the life lessons she has taken away from he experience.
“This play is speaking to where do you come from – what’s your background?” she said. “I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can’t get more white or more Mormon.”
Lee said she dated white men and fell into more white traditions rather than keeping many of her family’s traditions.
“They used to call me a banana – yellow on the outside, white on the inside,” she said.
For Ecchaverria, the play has given him a new outlook on his career.
“What’s really interesting is I’m Chicano, I grew up really into hip-hop and hip-hop culture,” said Ecchaverria, who grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Harlem, N.Y. “When I got into theater, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be involved in ‘classical theater,’ ”
When he left home at 18 to pursue his dream of playing roles that would live forever, he found himself going farther and farther away from his roots.
“Going into classical theater, I would call it more Western canon theater tradition,” said Ecchaverria, who found himself much more at home when he came back to California for the play. “As an actor, you have to adopt the facts of a character. I already know what it’s like to be Chicano … to be a Mexican-American trying to make it in Hollywood.
“Sonny had to put on a persona to make it. I don’t have to here.”
He said he forever will be changed after his role in “Badges.”
“I feel like I’m starting all over,” he said. “I consider this to be a classic story and a classic play in a classic place. I don’t think life’s ever going to be the same again.”
Montoya, who plays the role of Sonny’s father, already knows the lessons of Valdez. In fact, Valdez gave Montoya some personal advice when he was just a young, confused teenager.
“I grew up in Hollister. Hollister was a very conservative town,” said Montoya, who was in high school and had no idea what he wanted to do with his life before he saw an El Teatro Campesino play. “When I saw El Teatro Campesino, I said ‘That’s what I like.’ About a year later, they came to San Juan Bautista, and I started hanging around.
“Before then, I wasn’t motivated,”
Although Montoya wasn’t generally interested in his studies and didn’t think he would need them, Valdez pushed him to graduate from high school, saying that he would need to be smart if he wanted to be a community leader.
“That was my school,” he said. “I learned about history, politics, music.”
Montoya volunteered at the theater for several years before deciding to move to San Jose, where he began dancing.
“I never thought I could dance before,” he said. “I learned I had a lot of gifts (while being at El Teatro) that were given to me by my creator.”
After 25 years away from the playhouse, he came back and tried out for “Zoot Suit,” but didn’t have the time to devote to the strenuous schedule of the play. However, he did earn a role for “La Virgen del Tepeyac,” playing the role of Saint Juan Diego – a role he had played for many years before he left.
“That was a dream I had,” he said of playing the role.
“So I came back,” he said. “And it’s like I never left.”
Montoya still remembers the early days of El Teatro – in a time where many of the statements Valdez’s plays were making.
“It was guerilla theater,” he said. “You perform wherever there’s space, even on the back of a flatbed truck. You perform and you give it everything you have.”
Montoya knows that each of Valdez’s plays have something to say about himself.
“Luis’ shows are always from the heart,” he said. “I know he wrote about me. I look and say, ‘I’m in here somewhere.’
“We’re all teaching each other. It’s different worlds coming together.”
“And that’s what the Chicano tradition is all about,” Ecchaverria said.
“I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges” is playing Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. running Saturday through Aug. 31 at the El Teatro Campesino Playhouse, 705 Fourth St. in San Juan Bautista. The box office is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For tickets call (831) 623-2444. Group rates are available.
