ABSTRACT
Luis Alfaro’s revisionary theater work resonates not only with the mythohistorical origins of Latino/a theater but also with what many posit as the cradle of Western theater itself: Greek tragedy. In his dramatic mythic revisions, of which Electricidad is the first, Alfaro brings together precolonial myth, Greek tragic myth, and contemporary Latino/a realities and critically probes all three. Alfaro’s protagonist, Electricidad, revises the ancient figure of Electra and recasts her as an old-school chola fatally enmeshed in the gang subculture of twenty-first-century Los Angeles. Her tragedy, the tragedy of a family unable and unwilling to reject the masculinist ethos of revenge and to break the (self-)destructive cycle of intergenerational, as well as inter- and intra-community violence, turns into a nuanced critique of present-day Chicanidad in the United States, especially its barrio constituent. Yet, at the same time, Electricidad puts forth the sociocultural vision and critical ethos of a new mestizaje as a viable and productive alternative to both Eurocentrism and Latinocentrism. Politically provocative and theatrically daring, Electricidad grapples with the issues it treats intradiegetically on the extradiegetic level too. The play’s productions sought to engage the community and particularly its at-risk members (such as gang youths) in order to stimulate open talk, challenge established attitudes and beliefs, and create a supportive environment where social therapy and change could be set in motion. In its multiple functions, Alfaro’s Electricidad enhances the echoes of Greek tragic myth throughout our twenty-first-century world, making the latter’s sharp edges resound with age-old and ever-new meaning.
