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performance of Teatro de la Esperanza's very fine play, La Victima. Only one other time have i ever seen this type of reaction at a festival performance. In the Sixth Chicano Teatro Festival that was held in San Antonio, Texas in 1975, this same teatro group electrified about 300 people, primarily residents from San Antonio’'s Chicano Southside with their fantastic rendition of Guadalupe, without a doubt one of the finest expressions of Chicano creativity in the field of drama. La Victima is the first serious effort to represent theatrically the » Migra « acto or play. There have been countless meanigless performances by various Chicano Teatros that have expanded a great deal of energy in stilted postulations of political rhetoric but very little worthwhile acting. Possibly only the Teatro Campesino's El Corride de Jesus Pelado Rasquachi, and the Mas car ones', La Gran Carpa del Corride Mexicano are of similar level of Chicano teatro excellence. Esperanza gives La Victima a historical perspective in its representation of the so called »illegal aliena problem. This is good because most other teatros have tended to be simplistic in their representations of this so called »problem.« The usual fare is a lot of hollering about the unity of the working class, especially between Chicanas and Mexicanos and the big scene is the infamous » redada « by pig-like migra officers. La Victima is much more complex and intriguing. The main character, Samuel, as excellently portrayed by Rodrigo Clark, actually becomes an INS officer. Now this is quite a switch from the totally absurd pig-like caricatures of other teatros. La Victima is actually Sam, the INS agent who represents all of us that have bought the American dream even after it has trampled on us in the past. Esperanza has not allowed the exhuberance of its political convictions to trample on the natural evolution of the plot. In fact, finally we have a plot. There is a story line that has a beginning, middle and end. It begins in 1913, when a Mexican familly emigrates to escape the economic and political chaos of the Mexican Revolution. The various scenes show the effects of living in this country on the different characters. Amparo, the daughter, grows from a dizzy teenager infatuated with her future husband, Julian, in Act I, Scene 11, to a pregnant mother, in the height of the depression, preparing to leave with her husband because of the lack of employment to an old woman rejected by her son, Samuel, who has now become an INS agent. Samuel had been left behind inadvertently in the herd-like crush at the train station when everybody was leaving for Mexico back in Scene IV. Samuel grows from an ingratiating youngster on his mother's knee in Act I, Scene 111, to a love struck young man about to get married and go in the Army in Act 11, Scene V, to an INS agent by the end of the play that has to deport his own mother. The characters of Samuel and Amparo do grow. There is meat and substance to them. The villain the INS agent, is perfectly believable. He is, after all, Sam, the son of Amparo who was brought over in 1913 by her own father. There is historical beradth to the characters. They are not just facades, mouthing Marxist rhetoric, hut true actors

working with solid weil-documented material that is the substance of a lot of our lives. The acting just simply buperb. You can tell that there is serious study to character roles. There must have been countless hours of rehearsal to reach such professional execution. All the characters, major and minor, are well developed and refined. Not only is the execution solid but they have also captured well the mannerisms of a real familia. I swear that I have heard my mother talk like Amparo. Also Clara, excellently portayed by Martha Hernandez, is a very good example of the totally assimilated middle-class housewife that thrives on material comfort. Also, Sam makes us all uncomfortable, not because we are all INS agents, but because he is so mach like all of us as a son and father and yet, look at what ne was capable of doing by submitting totally to the material seduction of this society. La Victima is good theatre because the craftsmanship is there. The entire cast of Rodrigo Clark, Estella Campos, Martha M. Hernandez, Romelia Morales, Santiago E. Rangel, Eddie Robledo, Jose G. Saucedo, and Enrique Tovero were excellent in their portrayals of all the roles which they represented. (Raul Ruiz, La Raz,a Magazine, 1977)