San Juan Bautista’s famed El Teatro Campesino is taking its traditional holiday offering, “La Pastorela” to the airwaves in the form of a new radio play. The free online performance will premiere on Dec. 23, one of three special events the company is making available this month through their website and Facebook page.
Besides the newly recorded version of “La Pastorela,” El Teatro will be offering a free screening of their 2008 video of “La Virgen del Tepeyac” at 6 a.m. on Dec. 12, with rentals available starting that same day at 9 a.m. Starting Dec. 18, the 2009 video of “La Pastorela,” performed inside Mission San Juan Bautista, will be streamed for free.
“We are taking a similar approach to ‘La Pastorela’ as last year’s production of ‘La Virgen del Tepeyac,’” said Christy Sandoval, El Teatro’s managing director. “We have not been able to do live, in-person productions because of the pandemic, so this gives us a chance to still perform the work.”
“La Pastorela” is the story of shepherds traveling to Bethlehem beset by demons trying to keep them from their destination. El Teatro founder Luis Valdez adapted the script for the play from a version performed in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, for centuries.
The radio play is the newest version in a long history of adaptations. It first appeared as a puppet play in 1975, then as a street performance in 1977. It moved to Mission San Juan Bautista in 1980 and was performed there until its debut at the Teatro playhouse in 2019.
This year also marks the first time in nearly 40 years that performances of both “La Pastorela” and “La Virgen” have been available in the same year.
Early in the history of the plays, both were performed during December—“La Virgen” was staged in the Mission and “La Pastorela” was a street play.
“Trying to do both at the same time back then made things crazy and they had to stop,” Sandoval said. “We began alternating them, with “La Pastorela” performed on odd-numbered years and “La Virgen de Tepeyac” performed on even-numbered years. So it has been exciting for us to return to that tradition this year.”
Adapting the play to radio was a challenge that required some changes to the original script to make aspects of the show clear that in performance were more visual than spoken.
“It is still the show as we know it,” Sandoval said, “but some of the stories have been condensed. Character arcs have been condensed, as well, to make the show easier to understand in terms of a radio play.”
El Teatro followed the same process it used with last year’s production, and recorded all the actors doing their parts remotely. Mino Valdez was the engineer.
“We began recording everyone on Nov. 12,” Valdez said. “We started with the main tracks for the actors to be able to sing to them. We floated equipment to the actors so they could record their parts professionally from the safety of their own homes. It’s been an amazing experience and it was great to hear it coming together.”
Piecing the production together from remote recordings has allowed several veteran performers to take part in the new version, including Rosa Maria Escalante as Tebana, Anahuac Valdez as Luzbel, and Daniel Valdez, who starred in the 1981 film “Zoot Suit,” as Bartolo.
“It’s a nice multi-generational production with several Teatro veterans coming back into the fold,” Sandoval said. “For some of them, their last ‘Pastorela’ would have been 15 or 20 years ago.”
One of the side benefits to the radio productions is that they preserve what otherwise would have been an ephemeral stage experience.
“It is a really great feeling to preserve these plays this way,” Valdez said. “Even though we have video versions that are professionally filmed, it is nice to have something that is going to be in the very natural habitat of broadcast radio that will be available to families for free. And I think it will reach more audiences than it ever has before.”
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