![]() As long as I’m able to,” says Rosemary, who’s 71. “I feel it’s something he wanted us to do. Does that make it the “Cats” of agitprop? She hopes to keep it going, in part because the issues remain vital, in part in memory of her husband. Rosemary calls “The Silver Dollar,” in performance for some 43 years, the region’s longest-running Chicano play. The couple eventually left the San Gabriel Valley for Ontario and then Montclair, where Rene died in 2018 of kidney disease at age 69. The grassroots theater did “improvs, dealing with whatever issue was happening,” Rosemary says, often in public spaces, like parks. Teatro Urbano was founded circa 1974 by Rene Rodriguez, soon joined by Rosemary, who’d taken theater classes at El Monte High and Cal State Long Beach. Guzmán said Rodriguez’s Teatro Urbano was a legend in El Monte and South El Monte, where the troupe was born, and that it was the subject of an essay by his wife, Carribean Fragoza, in the anthology the couple co-edited, “East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte.” I was in downtown Pomona for Saturday’s monthly Art Walk, on my way to the dA to check out the “Chicano Park Muralists” exhibit, when a woman on a street corner handed me a flier for “The Silver Dollar.” This was of more interest than most fliers handed to me on street corners.Īt the dA a half hour later, as I chatted with writer Romeo Guzmán, he brought up the play and pointed out Rosemary, who was walking past, and who turned out to be the woman who’d handed me the flier. This column, by the way, came out of the blue, as they sometimes do. Laguna Park is now Salazar Park in his memory. ![]() ![]() Times, later as news director for Spanish-language station KMEX. Salazar was a prominent voice for Chicanos, first as a reporter for the L.A. There’s laughter, there’s sorrow, says Rosemary, but also enlightenment. That’s the climax of “The Silver Dollar.” The rest of the play is a slice of life piece about the interactions among patrons at the bar: an argumentative Vietnam veteran, an undocumented worker, a married man and his girlfriend. A deputy fired a tear gas projectile through the curtained doorway of the Silver Dollar, striking and killing journalist Ruben Salazar, who had just sat down to sip a beer. Tear gas was dropped from sheriff’s helicopters. Police declared the gathering an illegal assembly. ![]() A massive antiwar protest, the Chicano Moratorium, drew more than 20,000 people to march along Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. 29, 1970, the play is a fictionalized version of the events of that day. 16-18) for three shows: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Shot in America is a study with broad implications for our understanding of cultural politics and the entertainment industries.But “The Silver Dollar” is back, and the dA will be the next place audiences can see it. Noriega reveals the ways in which Chicano and other minority protests both emerged within and were regulated by the very institutions that excluded them. Noriega offers a compelling and detailed description of an enormous body of work by Chicano media makers against the backdrop of Chicano social movements, politics, and activism over a forty-year period-an extraordinary exposition of the civil rights movement, media reform activities, and public affairs programming that constitutes the prehistory of independent and minority cinemas. Shot in America tackles seemingly intractable dilemmas involving the political and market functions of film and TV to provide a definitive response to the debates over cultural and racial identity that have embroiled media and cultural studies over the past two decades. One of the most influential figures in ethnic media studies takes direct aim at how Chicano filmmaking has been represented in the history of media in the United States.
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