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The stage set for the production of “Mummified Deer” at El Teatro Campesino, running through Aug. 30, is the first indication that the audience is in for a typically complex and entertaining work by the company’s founder and the father of Latino theater, Luis Valdez.
A vortex of concentric oblong rings focuses your attention on a hospital bed that will hold the character the play revolves around: the frequently unconscious form of 84-year-old matriarch Mama Chu, who has been diagnosed with carrying a mummified fetus for 60 years.
As the play unfolds, it blends the reality of her concerned family, which surrounds her bed, with Chu’s hallucinations of a Yaqui Deer Dancer and a Mexican circus clown, mixing in Valdez’s familiar trademarks: leaps in time and place, wild comedia del arte, stark tragedy, and lessons in social history.
According to Kinan Valdez, the play’s director and the playwright’s son, the revival of “Mummified Deer,” first staged in 2000, was specifically chosen by Creative Director Christy Sandoval and her team as part of the celebration of El Teatro’s 60th anniversary.
“One of the things that they had wanted to do,” Kinan Valdez said, “was to return to works of the canon, specifically situating one of my father’s plays as part of that exploration annually. It’s a lesser-known work, and it felt like a good way to honor the tail end of our season.”
The play is one of Luis Valdez’s most personal works, according to his son, and was written as a way to process the playwright’s grief over his mother’s death in 1994, with the time spent in and around the hospital cementing it as the location for the play.
“At the time,” Kinan Valdez said, “he felt a clamoring to return to the world of theater. So when he wrote this piece, he went hog wild in terms of embracing what it means to do theater and how theater can be an effective medium for telling stories in a very specific way.”
The inspiration for the play, Luis Valdez has said, came from a 1984 newspaper article he read, which described a woman in Juarez, Mexico, who he transposed into the Mama Chu character, giving her the same age and the same medical condition.
The stage set, Kinan Valdez said, is intended as a compelling means of drawing in the audience and evoking a ritual space that reflects the inner psyche.
“It’s meant to be a womb,” he said. “It’s meant to be a cave. It’s meant to be a portal to the inner workings of Mama Chu’s psyche.”
In the “real world” of the play, Mama Chu’s family undergoes a dramatic journey as the members question their individual and collective identities in light of her medical condition.
In the deeper workings of Mama Chu’s ostensibly unconscious mind, she interacts with hallucinated figures from her past who serve as psychopomps, or spirits whose role is to escort newly dead souls from Earth to the afterlife.
One of those guides is Cosme Bravo, a flamboyantly over-the-top Mexican clown played by Kinan Valdez in the 2002 production and played by Ramón Rios in the current production.
“It’s in the traditions of shamanism,” Rios said. “Cosme is an inner force that helps integrate fractured parts of her psyche. We know from the play that Mama Chi has trauma from when she’s a young woman, and it’s buried deep. Cosme is there to help her unearth the truth.”
In the same mystical space, Mama Chu’s mind has created a mute Yaqui Deer Dancer, which represents the family’s—as well as Valdez’s—ethnic past and the spirit of the mummified fetus.
“The notion of the dancer as a central image,” Kinan Valdez said, “has been resonant for my father for decades. I think it’s a powerful symbol that resonates across generations and still touches people. You see somebody dressed as a deer, and it intuitively reminds us of our ancient roots.”
Katrina Valdez, who plays Mama Chu, described her character as filtering through her memories and the things she wanted to forget, and having lived through a very difficult time, finally finding peace with the entire trajectory of her life, good and bad.
“She was able to persevere,” Katrina Valdez said. “Did she make mistakes? Yes. But when you see the traumas she coped with, she did well. Anyone who can leave this realm at peace with the good and the bad is a success”
Outside the theater of Mama Chu’s mind, Armida, played by Sammy Cardoza, introduces the family and its history, as well as her own context as Mama Chu’s granddaughter, who left her traditional role in the family to attend college and earn a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.
“She starts off very fiery,” Cardoza said. “She is coming back to her family, whom she hadn’t seen in two years. So she’s facing some backlash for being the first to leave the nest in the family and trying to figure out who they are and where they came from.”
It is not a coincidence that Armida shares the name of Luis Valdez’s mother, or that through the character, the playwright had her receive higher education, a goal that his mother never achieved, or that she is able to reconcile herself with the family’s troubled background as Yaqui.
“She is reflecting back on a pivotal time in her life,” Cardoza said. “By the end of play, she gets what she wants. She uncovers all the secrets, and I think, heals herself, as well as, intentionally or unintentionally, the rest of the family. I think it’s a full-circle moment.”
Kinan Valdez said that he’s been very happy to have people who might know the playwright’s more well-known works, like “Zoot Suit,” have the chance to experience one of this father’s lesser-known works
“It’s an amazing play,” he said, “theatrically speaking and for the cathartic nature of it. I hope it helps the audience recognize different family legacies and histories. And that, ultimately, they can walk away with the feeling that it is possible to heal and find reconciliation.”
“Mummified Deer” will be performed on Aug. 21–23 and Aug. 28–30, with matinees on Aug. 22 and 29 at the El Teatro Campesino Playhouse, 705 4th St., San Juan Bautista. Tickets may be purchased through Eventbrite, and VIP seating is available.
Content advisory: This production contains strong language and mature themes. There are mentions of sexual violence, sexual assault, genocide and self-harm.
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