Author: Peter Indall
Writer, performer and community activist Luis Alfaro visited Oxy to make a presentation on a variety of his works of art Friday, April 20. Introduced by Professor Raul Villa as a “poet, playwright, genius and wino,” Alfaro performed excerpts from his works that largely draw inspiration from growing up in Los Angeles. An Angeleno who gets around without a card, Alfaro’s pieces conjured up comical depictions of childhood while also delving into the Chicano identity.
The stories frequently returned to his personal experiences as a child living at Pico and Union downtown. Alfaro focused more on the fun he had rather than the poverty his family lived in. In one story he recalled a school field trip to the Shrine Auditorium to see the Barber of Seville that ended in his brother getting into a fist fight and interrupting the production. Another memory described a family reunion in Fresno, where Aunts gossiped and Uncles provided the first smoke on a cigarette. An interesting variation on the youth memoir, the stories included the usual outlandish exploits and family examinations, but the uniqueness of Los Angeles permeated the excerpts.
Alfaro theorized that L.A., without an urban center, produces conditions that make communities develop like “border towns.” While this allows for the cultural preservation, it also separates different types of people. Rather than see this as discouraging Alfaro said that he continues to tour and perform his works because “stories are what save us.”
Alfaro specializes in artistic workshops to teach and interact with underrepresented groups. He described it as “enveloping himself in a community” to understand the elements that make it distinctive. Not satisfied in success in one medium, Alfaro admits to pursuing art even in fields he does not necessarily have talent. In some of the singing sections of his presentation (a rendition of Minnie Ripperton’s “Loving You”) he asked for the audience to join in due to his inability to hit certain high notes. This humility may explain the hands on approach that Alfaro uses in his workshops, as he works to engage the audience in participating with the speaker. A story should not be limited to writing, music or visual methods, but to “tell a story I use the best way it can be told,” he said.
In his most recent works, Alfaro looked beyond his own childhood for inspiration. Recently he wrote a play entitled Electricidad, a modern day adaptation of Sophocles’s Elektra, centered on girl gang culture in L.A. His next work draws upon Oedipus Rex as Alfaro applies its question about fate to contemporary notions of the cycle of poverty and the consequences of the geography of one’s birth. A returning guest speaker to Oxy, Mr. Alfaro promised another visit very soon, but perhaps without singing.
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