La Virgen del Tepeyac at Old Mission San Juan Bautista

When: Friday, November 30, 2012, 8 p.m.
Where: Mission San Juan Bautista, San Juan Bautista
Cost: $15 - $38
Age limit: Not available
Categories: Theater

This popular musical spectacle of evocative music, theater, dance and costuming by El Teatro Campesino returns to the Mission every two years and is anticipated with fervor. Playwright Luis Valdez adapted the miracle play from an anonymous 17th century text to convey the story of the blending of Catholicism into indigenous religions in Mexico when, in 1531, Indian messenger Juan Diego, played by Teatro veteran Ruben C. Gonzalez, whose TV and film credits include Selena, La Mission (with Benjamin Bratt) and Medium, meets four apparitions of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, played by Bay Area cumbia band singer Stephani Garcia Candelaria in her first feature role with the 40-year-old theater company. It begins with a musical procession into the big, hallowed chamber of the mission, led by a priest's blessing of incense, a powerful opener to pageant of musical theater that follows. ETC Producing Artistic Director Kinan Valdez directs his father's masterpiece in classical Spanish and Nahuatl (Aztec), with an English libretto that barely needs referring to because the action is so expressive. The mission will be reliably packed with faithful farm worker families and theater fans. Rightly so. [WR]
8pm Fri Nov. 23 opens; 8pm Thu-Sat; 4pm and 7:30pm Sun; 8pm Wed Dec. 12; runs through Dec. 16. Old Mission San Juan Bautista, 406 Second St., San Juan Bautista. $15-$38; discounts for seniors over 55 and older, students, children. 623-2444, www.ElTeatroCampesino.com.

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