El Teatro Campesino and the Merry Pranksters

Both the Chicano Theatre movement, inspired by Luis Valdez, and the Merry Pranksters, led by Ken Kesey, demonstrate the potential of theatre and performance art to promote social change. Theatrical works can convey challenging political and philosophical messages in an entertaining format; by actively engaging the attention and participation of their audiences, performers can inspire changes in public behavior and social consciousness. As El Teatro Campesino's founder and director, Valdez sought to empower Chicanos to advocate for their own equality through the staging of his "Actos." Meanwhile, Kesey, as portrayed in Thomas Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," engaged his Merry Pranksters in performance art in order to disrupt social conventions. While both Valdez and Kesey had a profound effect on cultural and political thought in the 1960s and 1970s, Valdez's Chicano Theater movement was ultimately more successful than Kesey's advocacy of LSD in enacting meaningful social change.

Valdez's Actos were, above all, intended to be accessible to their original intended audience-migrant Chicano farm workers-and to enlist their participation. As Valdez writes in Notes on Chicano Theatre, "Audience participation is no cute production trick with us; it is a pre-established, pre-assumed privilege." The Actos were short, only one act long, and dealt with topics that Chicano workers were intimately acquainted with, such as the Patroncito's harsh, callous treatment of the farmworker in Las Dos Caras del Patroncito. Because the staging of the Actos required little in the way of sets, Valdez's troupe could travel, bringing their performance to an entire underclass of Chicanos who otherwise would never experience theater. The informality of the staging and the provocative subject matter of the Actos, which dealt with the exploitation of Chicanos and the discrimination they faced in society, encouraged the active audience participation that Valdez desired. Valdez sees his brand of political theatre, characterized by its own particular rituals, as serving an almost religious purpose in the lives of Chicanos. He writes that "at its high point Chicano theatre is religion: the huelguistas de Delano praying at the shrine of the Virgen de Guadalupe, located in the rear of an old station wagon parked across the road from Di Giorgio's camp #4." Like religious worship, the theatre brought the Chicano community together for a single purpose; however, the Actos encouraged the audience to take their own hands through political action instead of passively entrusting their fates to an unseen deity.

In Valdez's mind, it is not enough for the Actos to stand as works of art. The Actos had a purpose beyond mere entertainment. They were intended to educate the audience about their position in society and empower them to achieve concrete political and cultural change. Valdez argues that, "Chicano theatre must be revolutionary . . . it must also educate the pueblo toward an appreciation of social change, on and off the stage." Valdez recognizes the power of performance to inspire political fervor in an audience through the use of political propaganda, noting that "[i]t helps to stimulate and sustain the mass strength of a crowd."

However, Valdez also recognizes that simply educating the audience and sparking their anger against the status quo was not enough to bring about real social change. For Valdez, Chicano theatre fails if it does not spur its audience to act in a way that has a palpable political and social impact. Valdez writes: "It is particularly important for Teatro Chicano to draw a distinction between what is theatre and what is reality. A demonstration with a thousand Chicanos, all carrying flags and picket signs, shouting CHICANO POWER! Is not the revolution. It is theatre about the revolution. The people must act in reality, not on stage (which could be anywhere, even a sidewalk) in order to achieve real change. "

For Valdez, the Actos only served their purpose when they accomplished an active and permanent change of consciousness in Chicanos which would, in turn, lead them to fundamentally change the society around them. The Chicano theatre movement evolved as its audience evolved and began to address broader, more systemic issues in the world outside the farm, such as access to education in No saco nada de la escuela.

Valdez also saw El Teatro Campesino as a means of celebrating and preserving Chicano identity. Of Chicano theatre, Valdez writes, "We are talking about a theatre that is particularly our own." Valdez feared that if Chicano workers did not achieve a deeper awareness of their own social position, they were at risk of assimilating and of adopting the values of the white hegemony at the expense of their own ethnic and racial identity. For Valdez, surrendering one's Chicano identity to achieve success in the white world was akin to betrayal. His distaste for the Chicano who "assimilates" or "passes" is evident in the Anglo-fied character of the Secretary, Ms. Jimenez, in Los Vendidos. The Secretary has been accepted into white society, serving as an employee to the Governor of California. However, instead of helping her fellow Chicanos, the Secretary treats them as the rest of society does, as merchandise to be bought, sold, and put to practical use. While Valdez wanted to encourage his audiences to fight for equality in the workplace and in schools, he did not believe that Chicanos should be required to sacrifice that which makes them distinctly Chicano in order to achieve it. As a means to that end, Chicano theatre represented a cultural touchstone, an expression and celebration of Chicano tradition that served to preserve racial and ethnic identity.

Unlike Valdez and El Teatro Campesion, Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, sought not so much the formation and preservation of a communal identity as the expansion of individual consciousness through the use of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test documents how Kesey, as the champion of LSD, positioned himself at the vanguard of the counterculture movement. Although Kesey and the Merry Pranksters did not set out to create theatre, there is much that is theatrical about their antics and their constructed identities.

The Pranksters themselves are identified by their costumes, which range from brightly tie-dyed clothing to American flag coveralls. Wolfe describes Ken Babbs, one of the Merry Pranksters this way: "A tall guy comes into warehouse wearing some kind of blue and orange outfit like a mime harlequin's and with an orange Day-Glo mask painted on his face." Wolfe describes "Furthur," the bus that the Pranksters travel in, as painted "in a frenzy of primary colors, yellows,oranges, blues, reds" and outfitted with microphones and a powerful sound system. As Wolfe portrays the Pranksters and their chosen vehicle, the psychedelic bus is a traveling theater caravan and its occupants itinerant circus performers. In using language to evoke the atmosphere surrounding Kesey, Wolfe alludes not only to harlequins and mimes but also to freak shows, likening the Pranksters and their accoutrements to a "random carnival."

The Pranksters consciously and deliberately recreate themselves as dramatic characters. They even take stage names like "Mountain Girl," "Doris Delay," "Zonker," "Speed Limit," "Intrepid Traveler," and "Swashbuckler." Wolfe makes trenchant observations of the Pranksters' self-centered and raucous theatricality: "The fact that they were all high on speed or grass, or so many combinations thereof that they couldn't keep track, made it seem like a great secret life. It was a great secret life. The befuddled citizens could only see the outward manifestations of the incredible stuff going on inside their skulls. They were all now characters in their own movies or the Big Movie."

Valdez's Chicano Theatre movement sought to unite Chicanos in a communal celebration of their ethnic identity. El Teatro Compesino directed itself outward toward society, with the aim of effecting visible political change. The Pranksters, on the other hand, were fascinated by the psychedelic experiences within the private space of their own heads: "With these drugs your perception is altered enough that you find yourself looking our of completely strange eyeholes. All of us have a great deal of our minds locked shut. We're shut off from our own world. And these drugs seem to be the key to open these locked doors."

Although they sought to some degree to recruit new supporters to the cause of LSD, the Pranksters also deliberately alienated those who belonged to what they considered mainstream society. Those who had used LSD were part of a select and special group, and those who had not used LSD were denied admissions. To some extent, the Pranksters violated societal norms simply for the sake of violating them. Indeed they delighted in shocking and offending those who clung to convention. As Wolfe describes it: "They took a test run up into Northern California and right away this wild-looking thing with the wild-looking people was great for stirring up consternation and vague befuddling resentment among the citizens. The Pranksters were now out among them, and it was exhilarating-look at the mothers staring!-and there was going to be holy terror in the land."

If the Pranksters were a theatrical troupe, then Kesey was the leading player. As Wolfe waits at the San Mateo jail for Kesey to be released after being arrested on a marijuana charge, he observes that the jail waiting room is "more like the stage door at the Music Box Theatre" crowded with Kesey's admirers and followers who mill about "full of cheerful anticipation" for the appearance of "the star who [is] still inside."

Even more than the Chicano Theatre movement, Kesey's Merry Pranksters and their indulgence in LSD convey religious overtones. Kesey is described variously as a "saint" and a "prophet" and the taking of drugs as a sublime spiritual experience. Wolfe notes that Kesey was "trying to fight a marijuana charge on the grounds that marijuana was a religious sacrament for him." As Wolfe describes it, the Merry Pranksters clung to Kesey in a cult of personality. Ultimately, the emphasis on individual experience over societal impact limited the effect of Kesey's attempts to create a real social and spiritual movement. When Kesey decides that it is "time for the psychedelic movement to go 'beyond acid'", many of his followers balk. In one telling scene, Wolfe shows the efforts of a news reporter to stick with LSD: "A lot of people are opening the doors in their minds for the first time, but people like you have to help them. There are only two directions we can go, Ken. We can isolate ourselves in a monastery or we can organize a religion, along the lines of the League for Spiritual Discovery and have acid and grass legalized as sacraments."

Kesey's efforts to stage an "acid graduation" ceremony were met with a "Stop Kesey" movement. The individuals that Kesey had converted to LSD had no intention of moving beyond the pleasurably psychedelic and purely personal experience of tripping on acid. In the end, they were interested not in opposing cultural norms or expanding their self-awareness; what they truly wanted was to enjoy the interior experience of being on drugs.

Both Valdez and Kesey used the devices of theatre and performance art to promote a certain cultural awareness and a resistance to the traditional norms imposed by society. Their theatrical projects succeeded because they promoted messages that had mass appeal and brought their performances directly to their audiences, thereby encouraging audience reaction and participation. However, while Valdez managed both to create art and inspire his audience to take action in the real world, Kesey and his Merry Pranksters ultimately failed to make fundamental and lasting cultural and political changes. Valdez succeeded where Kesey failed because his Chicano Theatre movement, unlike the LSD movement, was directed not inward toward the individual but outward towards society and the creation of a shared, communal identity.