Eliana Rodriguez Scene Analysis 4/10/2012

What can be interpreted from a scene of a play? Plays are very complex forms of art that are breaked down into scenes. each scene lets the audience (reader) know whats happening next. Scenes are also home for hidden messages that the audience has to interpret in any way they can. In the play "No Saco Nada de la Escuela" (I dont get anything out of school) by Luis Valdez, there are many hidden messages within the scenes. Before reading the play and just the title, the reader can expect this play to be an anti-school point of view. This play belongs to "El teatro campesino" a movement that started around 1965 by farmworkers. El Teatro Campesino is a theatrical troup founded in 1965 as the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers. The original actors were all farmworkers, and El Teatro Campesino enacted events inspired by the lives of their audience. Early performances were on flat bed trucks in the middle of the fields in Delano, California, and the theater is now located in San Juan Bautista, California.Teatro Campesino's early performances drew on varied traditions, such as commedia dell'arte, Spanish religious dramas adapted for teaching Mission Indians, Mexican folk humor, a century-old tradition of Mexican performances in California, and Aztec and Maya sacred ritual dramas. Although the troupe began by entertaining the farmworkers, within a year of their founding they began to tour to raise funds for the striking farm workers. By 1967, their subject matter had expanded to include aspects of Chicano culture that went beyond the fields: education, the Vietnam War, indigenous roots, and racism.

Luis Valdez the author of "No saco nada de la escuela" was the one who created the movement of el teatro campesino. In 1971, el teatro campesino moved their headquarters to San Juan Bautista and adapted traditional religious plays La Virgen del Tepeyac and La Pastorela for Christmas celebrations. As Chicano culture received unprecedented attention in the United States, Valdez received national attention, and taught drama at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. In 1973 they worked with British theater director Peter Brook; in 1976 they toured the play La Carpa through Europe, sponsored by the State Department. The original troupe disbanded in 1980. The opening scene of the play "no saco nada de la escuela" starts while children are playing. All the chidren are described and racially divided. we have a black boy, Malcolm, a white girl, Florence, a white boy, Abraham, and two "chicanitos", Moctezuma and Francisco. The teacher goes inside the classroom to start the class. This teacher clearly has no respect for minorities and the reader can see that in the comments she makes to the class. she says things like "oh! another one that cant speak English! Why do they send these kids to me?..." (71),"They shouldnt place these culturally deprived kids with the normal children..."(72). The teacher also tries to change the names of the black and chicanito boys. She refers to Malcom as Willie, Moctezuma as Monty and to Francisco as Franky. Monty accepts his new name and you can see that he wants to be integrated into the white culture. Francisco and Malcom on the other side fight to keep their name which means that they are more comfortable with accepting who they really are. In this scene all the kids are asked to interpret the ABC's in the way they want. this is a very important part of the scene because we get to see how each character thinks and feels with just three words. The first to go is Florence and she uses the words apple, baby and candy for her ABC's, this shows that she is still an innocent girl who doesnt really know anything about hate or

racism. The second to go is Malcom and he uses the words Alabama, banjo and cotton for his ABC's. these three words are associated with the slavery black people faced before, this shows that even at his young age Malcolm is familiar with the history of his ancestors, the teacher congratulates him for knowing "what his place is" in society. Next in line is Abraham and he uses animal, black and brown, and kill for his ABC's. the reader senses the racism that this kid has. not only for the agressive words in his ABC's but also because he refuses to sit next to Malcom, Moctezuma and Francisco. The teacher congratulates him and also goes on and tells the class that his name was inspired by a president who freed the slaves. When is Moctezuma's turn to say his ABC's he uses the words airplane, boat and cucaracha. Moctezuma seems like he doesnt really know about racism or anything that is going around him just like Florence. He uses common words that dont really mean anything. Francisco doesnt even get the chance to say his ABC's because he doesnt know English and the teacher dismisses the class because she feels agravated with him. A very interesting part of this scene is the effort the teacher does to change the names of the boys who are minorities, while telling Abraham that he should be proud of his name beacuse it was inspired by the president how freed the slaves. When Moctezuma wants to point out that his name is special too because it was inspired by a Mexican emperor in the times of the Indians, the teacher tells him that his name is a funny name that she doesnt even know how to pronounce. By the end of the scene Moctezuma agrees to call himself Monty, not only losing the special meaning of his name but also giving up his Mexican culture to be integrated into the Anglo-American one. Francisco in the other hand ends up failing the class because he refuses to change his name to Franky. The teacher even throws him on the floor screaming that his new name is Franky but Francisco keeps insisting that his name is Francisco and that he doesnt want to change it. In a sense we can see that Francisco has more proudness of his Mexican roots than Moctezuma because he

doesnt want to leave behind his Spanish name to change it into an English one. The teacher also tries to change Malcolm's name, his name is already in English but the teacher feels that his name is too "black". She tries to change his name to Willie, but like Francisco, Malcolm refuses to change his name. The reader knows that Malcolm has some sort of knowledge of his ancestors because of the words he used in his ABC's is only predictable that he wasnt going to change his name because he was proud of who he was. This scene shows the strugles minorities face when they come to America. in this play we see it through the eyes of chicanos and the black boy. the message is that even if is hard communities of minorities need to stay together to create a strong community. I believe Luis Valdez titled the play "No saco nada de la escuela" because it is exactly how he felt. In this community the educational system focused on American history as well as the American culture. The educational system also focused on teaching the students that the white person is better rather than teaching them about their own background. The characters that were minorities in the play felt that school was irrelevant since they were not taught on the history of their own Hispanic and Black heritage.