Theatre and Social Justice: The Work of Luis Alfaro

I had never been moved by the plight of the characters in Euripides’s Medea. While I’ve watched the events of the play with a removed awe, their three-dimensional human motivations had always been obscure to me. This has at least partly to do with the form and style of ancient Greek drama itself. To modern theatermakers, “the Greeks” present a conundrum. Their stories are enduring, primal, and profound, but their engines – messengers, choral odes – are a style of work that often doesn’t resonate with our modern audience.

This paper analyzes the choruses in Luis Alfaro’s Electricidad and Oedipus El Rey, two of the Chicanx playwright’s most prominent engagements with Greek drama, and the only ones that feature a chorus. Like their ancient counterparts, Alfaro’s choruses play a central structural and narrative role in his dramas: they not only frame each play, but they also mediate between stage and audience, offering crucial commentary on the actions of the protagonists.

Luis Alfaro’s adaptations of Greek tragedies wrestle with questions of where his characters can find justice. Living in the shadow of affluence and privilege, these figures identify the shortcomings of the American judicial system. As Las Vecinas, the chorus of neighbors in Electricidad, put it: ‘We don’t dial the 911 no more./No place for la policia in these barrios now./We handle our own.’(Alfaro, 2006, 67).

Luis Alfaro’s work plays out the lives at the heart of LA, staged for very different audiences, not only in central LA but in high-status venues like the Getty Villa. Today as Emma Lazarus’s poem lies in shreds at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, Alfaro’s Latinx performance takes up her message and brings ancient plays to our city, now.

Luis Alfaro, a Chicano writer/performer known for his work in poetry, and theatre, has become a powerful force in the field of theatrical adaptation. Recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including MacArthur and Ford Foundation Fellowships, Alfaro has also been honored for his specific adaptations of Greek plays, in 2017 winning a Los Angeles Ovation award for Mojada (his adaptation of Medea).