Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Preview
Creation Date
2013
Description
Playwright: Luis Valdez
Director: Christopher J. Mitchell
Set Design: Christopher Gadomski
Costume Design: Karen Eisenhour
Photographs/Program/Reviews: Available Here
Keywords
Theatre Arts, Productions, 2013, I Don't Have To Show You No Stinking Badges
Plot Synopsis
“I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges!” is Valdez’s most complex, ambitious, and satisfying play. Satirical, comic, filled with puns and painful insight, the play explores the search for an authentic Chicano identity against the limiting stereotypes and restricted possibilities afforded Mexican Americans in the 1980’s United States.
The play is set in Los Angeles in the home of Connie and Buddy Villa, middle-aged Chicano bit-part actors. The conflict is sparked by the unexpected return of Sonny, their son. Defying his parents’ dreams for him, Sonny quits Harvard University Law School and thus forfeits his chance at the kind of Anglo success his parents have not been able to achieve. His return home, with his Chinese American girlfriend, and his announced intention to become an actor, writer, producer, and director—“the newest superstar in Hollywood” and “the next Woody Allen”—creates a crisis in the family that the rest of the play tries to resolve. In a tempestuous family quarrel, Sonny derides his parents’ acting; they have made careers playing stereotyped nonspeaking parts as maids, gardeners, bandits, and prostitutes.