Texas playwright Rodney Garza has long taken the stage as the zoot suit-wearing El Pazchuco. Now a new show puts a political twist on the character.
SAN ANTONIO — A new show making its world premiere in the Alamo City this week grabs a Texas artist’s onstage altar ego – El Pazchuco, a zoot suit-wearing, rhyme-deploying, unapologetically Chicano agent of chaos – and plops him into the middle of a political campaign unfolding in an alternate universe.
It was 2016, a turning point year in the U.S., when Rodney Garza first came up with the idea for “El Pazchuco for Prez,” having electrified a Dallas audience and gotten the attention of a theater director hungry for more of the character.
“Since it was an election year, I started imagining what it would be like for El Pazchuco to find himself in a presidential debate,” Garza recalls. “There was a candidate running that year that I wanted to satirize, but when I pitched the idea to the executive director, he balked.”
Garza – a self-described “comedian, poet, activist and teacher” – put the idea on ice.
Fast-forward to 2024, San Antonio’s Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center helped secure a national grant opportunity that could help resurrect El Pazchuco once more… poetically, in yet another year dominated by political headlines.
“I re-thought the previous concept,” he said. “Rather than having two characters debating, I wanted to explore the possibilities of spoofing the whole election cycle.”
The result is “El Pazchuco for Prez,” a production that “blends humor and bold commentary” as the eponymous character navigates the electoral scene in Los United Estates of Aztlan.
His first campaign stop was also the show’s debut: Garza’s show had its world premiere Thursday night at San Antonio’s SAY Si Black Box Studio. Additional performances are scheduled for Friday and Saturday night for the comedy (tickets here), which Garza calls “an absurdist piece of theater with fictional characters that resemble people we may see in our world.”
“I’m of the opinion that most humans yearn to live in peace and harmony,” he said. “When we are up against the mightiest of challenges, it is through unity that we can overcome those challenges.”
Civil rights, social justice, misinformation, political manipulation—Garza says it’s all on the table for El Pazchuco. They’re also things that have been on the creator’s mind for years; while in Austin in the ’90s, he also cofounded a sketch comedy group that explored politics head-on.
“I’m motivated by having something to say in my own unique way. Being that most everything has been said before, I like the challenge of coming up with new angles and perspectives.”
An, in turn, encouraging El Pazchuco’s newest Alamo City friends to see things from new perspectives themselves.
“I hope audiences take away that we’re all in this together,” Garza said. “That laughing at ourselves can be part of a healing process.”