Virchis is a professor emeritus at Southwestern College Department of Theater Arts and producing artistic director of Teatro Máscara Mágica. He lives in Chula Vista.
The cultural arts have always played a significant role in social justice movements, and the 1960s Chicano social justice movement was no exception.
Music, murals, poetry, the fine arts and the performing arts have long been beautiful instruments of the Chicano community’s culture.
Think of musician and songwriter Chunky Sánchez, who used his melodic voice and captivating guitar to sing the stories of our community’s struggles and successes.
The documentary “Singing our Way to Freedom,” by filmmaker Paul Espinosa, brilliantly captures Chunky’s ion for storytelling. At the time, Chunky was a member of the Rondalla Amerindia de Aztlán, which became the favorite musical group of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez.
Cultural pride was also elevated during the Chicano Movement. Artists of various disciplines — known as artivists — founded the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park in 1970 after they fought City Hall for a cultural center of their own.
These artivists included muralists Salvador Roberto Torres, the visionary behind the murals at Chicano Park. They all used their artistic talents to tell the stories of our challenges, our heroes and our successes.
At the time, I was in my 20s, and for me, the theater was my calling. I was inspired by playwright Luis Valdez, who paved the way for many of us.
Valdez co-founded the Teatro Campesino in 1965 during the Delano Grape Strike led by Chavez’s United Farm Workers union. This traveling troupe used its performances to spread the word with farm workers in the fields and the public about the need to improve farm workers’ working conditions.
Before 1990, Latinos were virtually voiceless in the San Diego’s theater community, which for me was an immense source of frustration and disappointment.
I’ve always been inspired by the collaborative process where everyone contributes to the vision and mission. Thus, long ago, my dream was to bring Latino and other diverse voices onto San Diego’s leading theatrical stages.
At the time, I was a theater professor at Southwestern College. My friend and colleague, Jorge Huerta, Ph.D., an esteemed professor at UC San Diego, shared that same dream.
Both Jorge and I were fortunate in 1986 to be named co-artistic directors of the Teatro Meta educational program at the Old Globe Theatre. A year later, however, the Old Globe canceled its bilingual Latino Play Discovery Series, which had been established in 1983 through a Ford Foundation grant.
Encouraged by Old Globe founder and producing artistic director Craig Noel, Jorge and I moved forward to pursue our dream.
And so, Teatro Máscara Mágica, San Diego’s first professional, multicultural theater company, was born in 1991. We chose the name Máscara Mágica — Magic Mask — because of the enduring Latino traditions that revolve around magic and rituals, which are also powerful themes in other cultures.
Teatro Máscara Mágica has always had two other cultural components — Asian American and African American — brought to life by the late UC San Diego professor Floyd Gaffney.
We are proud that San Diego’s longest-running holiday theatrical tradition is “La Pastorela,” which began its run with a workshop reading at the Old Globe’s 1989 Teatro Meta educational program. “La Pastorela” was produced from 1990-93.
Since 2019, we have had a permanent year-round home, El Salon, at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro. While we have yet to occupy it because the COVID-19 pandemic closed everything in 2020, we intend to open our doors by late 2022.
I am ever hopeful that San Diego’s mainstream playhouses will look at more ways to incorporate more of our stories into their productions.
On a personal note, I’m honored to have my story and that of others told by the Latino Legacy Foundation’s multimedia online book, “San Diego Latino Legacy, Timeline-Milestones-Stories,” presented by The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit latinolegacyfoundation.org to see it.
I applaud visionary Maria Velasquez, along with the founders of the foundation, the project team and its sponsors, for continuing this valuable work so that our history is not forgotten.
Let me also remind you that Velasquez, a former TV journalist, was also the creator behind the “100 Portraits, Pioneers, Visionaries and Role Models,” a photographic exhibit that highlighted the achievements of San Diego’s Mexican American community back in 1994. At the time, it was the first-ever traveling photographic exhibit and book of our community, and I was honored to be among its honorees.
We need to these master storytellers who continue to keep our legacy alive. That’s how we will also begin to more fully understand and appreciate one another, on the theater stage and well beyond.
