“La Virgin de Tepeyac” opens on El Teatro Campesino stage

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“La Virgin de Tepeyac” opens Friday, Nov. 29, and runs very Thursday through Sunday through Dec. 22. Tickets can be purchased online from El Teatro Campesino.

It’s the night before Thanksgiving and the dress rehearsal for El Teatro Campesino’s “La Virgin de Tepeyac” is running very late. The play is set to open two days hence, on Nov. 29, and exhaustion is creeping in when, out of nowhere, director Kinan Valdez starts singing the Mary Poppins classic “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” The company gamely joins in, though nobody seems to remember many of the words. 

With the tension broken, everyone turns back to the time-consuming challenge: putting on a play they have not performed live in six years. And doing it for the first time at El Teatro’s small playhouse rather than within the expanse of Mission San Juan Bautista, which requires considerable downsizing.

“In its first iteration at the Mission,” Valdez said, “the two naves were closed off and everything was done essentially up on the altar. In 1975, they opened the naves and the show started utilizing the entire expanse of the stage and the space.”

In that space, the theater company staged two adaptations by Luis Valdez of traditional Mexican Christmas plays in alternating years, “La Virgin de Tepeyac” and “La Pastorela.” Each used as many as eighty actors, dancers and musicians performing on a stage in the center of the mission as well as the two side aisles, the choir loft and the altar.  

“La Virgin de Tepeyac” is based on a 17th-century religious pageant that tells the story of Juan Diego, a Chichimec peasant who witnesses four apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the hills of Tepeyac. His experiences lead him to confront the religious authorities, who, by way of a miracle, eventually accept his visions.  

This is the first live production of the play since 2018. In 2019, renovations to the Mission made it permanently unavailable as a venue, forcing El Teatro to adapt “La Pastorela” to its own playhouse. The 2020 stage production of “La Virgin” was canceled due to the pandemic and replaced by a radio version, which was repeated in 2022. A successful “La Pastorela” production at the playhouse in 2023 paved the way for this year’s revival of “La Virgin.”

“We’ve seen it evolve from a very limited area to a gigantic area,” Valdez said, “and we realized that if it has this history, it could be modified again. So now it’s collapsing back down into a limited area, and that’s the situation that we find ourselves in today.”

Valdez said that lessons learned from the last two Pastorela productions, which he directed, gave insights into how to adapt the current play.

“It took us a couple of productions to make it its own theatrical experience.,” he said. “We’ve streamlined it just because the cast and the size of the props cannot be as large as they are the Mission. So everything is reduced a bit.”

“La Virgin” presents its own complications, however. Whereas the Pastorela is more of a commedia dell’arte production, “La Virgin” has a large and dedicated audience drawn to its themes of redemption, compassion and faith, which were enhanced by being set against the backdrop of the mission.

“So, how do we stage this kind of play into our rafter-filled packing shed?” said stage manager David Alvarez. “The artistic challenge is to adapt it and still keep that spiritual connection with our audience. It’s still the gem that was in the Mission but moved into our humble space.” 

Valdez said that the size of the Mission and the number of people who could attend the shows or perform in them allowed for immense pageantry that will not now be possible. However, the tradeoff is that those attending performances will be much closer to the actors.

“It will be a much more intimate experience for our audiences,” he said. “They’ll experience the drama of Juan Diego, trying to be the messenger of the Virgin in a way that is impossible in the Mission.”

Teatro founder Luis Valdez considered the two revised productions of “La Pastorela” to be great successes and believes people who have seen “La Virgin” before will be excited by how it has been adapted to the smaller space.

“They’ll discover theater can take any shape and form,” he said. “’The Virgin’ has brought a lot of color, love and warmth into this building. I think this will be a healing experience, not just for our company but for our audience as well.”

Tickets for “La Virgin de Tepeyac” can be purchased online from El Teatro Campesino. The production runs very eThursday through Sunday from Nov. 29 – Dec. 22.

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