Itzel Ocampo, Karla Ojeda, and Myrna Velasco (Photo by Steve Moyer)
Reviewed by Molly McLean
CASA 0101 Theater
Through June 21
Soul Sacrifice is a new play by Consuelo G. Flores. It is a semi-autobiographical work dramatizing her childhood in East Los Angeles during the Vietnam War.
Little Connie (Myrna Velasco) gleefully skips about the house, her innocence often bumping up into the sad realities of the family’s life. Guadalupe (Karla Ojeda), the matriarch, lights candles at the altar when her son Luie (Carlos Pratts) is drafted to Vietnam as a scout. The family fears for his life, since Latino soldiers were dying at alarming rates.
This play is like an altar, one that pays homage to the voices, images, and feelings of the playwright’s childhood, although these elements sometimes get lost in its historical-educational messaging. The characters seem to know the significance of the time they’re living in. For example, one character says, “This day will go down in history!” before marching with the Chicano Moratorium Movement.
But if this play is about honoring history, then why were there only 48 stars on the U.S. flag in the draft office when there should have been 50? In this case, the apparently AI-generated projections create an error-pocked vision of the past.
The best parts of this play are when the characters are blindly groping about, unaware of history, unsure of what to do: living, breathing, sweating people. When the eldest son returns home from war, his behavior stuns the family. They are unsure of how to respond to him. This is the heart of the play and it is heartbreaking to watch. Carlos Pratts does an excellent job of holding the attention of the audience with his portrayal of this complex character.
To do honor to the past means resisting simplicity, and this play succeeds when it does that.
CASA 0101, 2102 East First Street, Boyle Heights. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm. Sun., 3 pm; thru June 21. https://www.casa0101.org 2 hours 15 minutes, with intermission.
