“The Minutes” is an improvisational performance, punk, anti-theater. Punk theatre is a family of individuals within a collective ’we’re making work’, we have a common thread, we are authentic/true to work and the page, the audience is the testing ground, struggle with convention, dialogue to work out, and dialogue with the audience.
It takes the reality-based, biographical spaces of the Lincoln Heights High School, and the dismissal and reinstatement of the teacher Sal Castro as a starting point to investigate and reveal power structures inherent in space, social structure, its actors, and objects. This project will adapt and situate the East L.A., 1968: ‘Walkout!’ in the context of current academic institutions. We improvised all story segments based on the real events and translate this specific spatial and linguistic framework, that employs projection technology, into improv theatre, and game play.
Our process drew from three distinct sources: [1] language games derived from institutional language patterns, and historic documentation [2] model- and doll-making, and [3] improvisational theatre. Using photos, oral history, and film documentation, we created a poetic framework of discrete language to design our characters. Design and acting students created dolls and dollhouses, miniatures of institutions, and institutional symbolic space.
Thinking of artistic practices and political activism as a site, we aimed to uncover less visible mechanisms through improvisation and play, by giving assignments to the performers, each reinterpreting the conditions of ground, group relations, and site. In this new form of cybernetic storytelling, the performers played inside the model as insiders, and at the time breaking the magic circle, by responding to themselves as characters in a dollhouse. We used our techniques to improvise scenes and take a dip into our collective narrative memory in a playful manner.
Communication in this narrative space was based on the condition that all participants have previously shared semiotic and cultural experiences, speak to some extent the same language, and perhaps share similar memories. The theatrical translation process is one of the pivotal activities within the narrative space to create and maintain narrative consistency, and at the same time to create unbearable tension. The narrative order seeks to establish and fix certain standards of behavior for each player and subsequently limits individual freedom.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Los Angeles Unified School District is governed by the Board of Education. The board meets on Tuesdays to work on school policies. Following the ‘Robert’s Rules’, the board takes so-called minutes, formal, and detailed records of its meetings. These minutes are public records.
In 1968, in Los Angeles County only ~0.1%. of the Mexican- American high school students went on to get a college degree. Dropout rates were around 50 % in East Los Angeles. Yet the board of education did little to nothing to improve the situation.
One high school teacher–Sal Castro–decided to change the school system. Knowing that the public schools would lose money for each student not attending class, he encouraged the students to stage a ‘walkout’. In the summer of 1968, more than 22,000 high school students walked out and demanded an end to corporal punishment, the inclusion of Mexican-American history in the curriculum, and a pathway to college for all high school students.
Presented by
The Family Room Collective
Sylke Rene Meyer, Todd Moellenberg, Matthew Savitsky and the Department of Theatre & Dance at Cal State Los Angeles
THE PLAYERS (in alphabetical Order)
Kanyinsola Agboola Mireya Caballero Jaylene Cesena Cindy Flores
Bryan Ha
Alex Montgomery Fabio Moreno Samuel Ortiz
Diana Angarita Paola Jarlin Pineda
Cordelia Sonnenschein Matt Stepan
Musicians/Composers
Dennis Dickonson Anahit Momijan
PRODUCTION TEAM
Director…………………………………………………………… Sylke Rene Meyer
Lighting Designer …………………………………… Diana Herrera
Sound Designer………………………………………………. Christian Rodriguez
Stage Manager…………………………………………………… Abraxaz Sanchez
Master Carpenter……………………………………………………….. Jacob Nava
Video Documentation……………………………………………. Kimberli Meyer
Faculty Technical Director/Stagecraft Faculty…………….. Daniel Czypinski
TAD Department Chair…………………………………….. Meredith Greenburg
TAD Department Coordinator……………………………………. Brittany Mejia
TAD Department Student Assistant…………………………. Betsy Valenzuela
Arts & Letters Production Staff
Technical Director/Shops Supervisor………………………. Elizabeth Pietrzak
Costume Shop Supervisor………………………………………….. Bruce Zwinge
Electrics Shop Supervisor………………………………………………… Tim Jones
Audio Systems Engineer……………………………………………….. Rico Garcia