AMERICAN THEATER | New Swap Meet Musical Opens Store in San Diego

In San Diego County’s Latino community, shopping at an exchange is as much a part of life as sleeping and breathing.. Need a new pair of shoes, toys for the kids, fresh produce and vintage jewelry? The swap meet has it all, and more. The sounds of people doing business, opening bags and greeting friends have a certain rhythm to TuYo Theater artistic director Maria Patrice Amon, which is why she and her team created a new immersive musical dedicated to people which give its flavor to the region. . Pasale Pasale takes place from May 29 to June 30 in two different locations.

“I grew up going to the swap meet with my grandmother every Saturday,” Amon said. “He holds a special place in our community.”

The musical owes its name to the words that many Latin immigrant vendors shout to invite people to enter their stalls. In the book, written by Mario Vega, with music and lyrics by Eliza Vedar, a group of vendors who have stalls at the fictional Rive Swap Meet learn that the owner, Señor Muchascosas, plans to double the stall’s rent, threatening thus their means of subsistence. As the bills pile up and the American dream hangs in the balance, sellers come together to take back their destiny.

This is a deeply personal project for Vega, whose grandparents had a booth at the Paramount Swap Meet where they sold shoes. By the time Amon contacted him about writing the book, he was already working on his own swap game on an entirely different topic. For this article, Vega said, he really wanted to tell the stories of Latinos trying to achieve the independence of owning a business, even though they may not have the necessary paperwork to officially operate. These struggles aren’t far removed from real-life challenges: Some frequent visitors to the South Bay Drive-in Theater & Swap Meet worry about the presence of an Amazon hub in the community.

Over the past year, the team has worked on bilingual writing in different spaces. Featuring 12 original songs in genres spanning the Latin diaspora, the music is meant to evoke the feeling of walking past the various booths, most of which have their own radios. The production had a workshop at the WOW Festival at La Jolla Playhouse and at California State University, San Marcos.

“As a playwright, creating an immersive piece is challenging,” Vega said. “I had to figure out how to move the story forward and engage the audience throughout the story.” What has driven his work forward, he added, is that “there is, in general, a deep desire right now for people to be part of something bigger.”

Audiences will get that chance in the musical’s climactic protest scene, in which they will be asked to show solidarity with the stall vendors. Amon said that although the creators were initially nervous about whether people would stand, in early versions so far people have shown no hesitation in standing alongside the characters and, by extension, from their real-life counterparts.

Like Vega, set designer Jesus Hurtado’s grandmothers both had booths at the Coronado and Spring Valley exchanges in San Diego. He therefore designed a completely immersive space with colorful and purchasable stands that can be moved between the two performance locations. Upon entering the show spaces, attendees will be given “money” to spend to enter the store and purchase merchandise, just like in real swap meets. Next, they’ll rent a red cart for $1, which doubles as a seat that they can fill with their “purchases” before sitting in a circle to watch the scenes unfold.

“I focused on creating reusable props designed not to break, since the public will touch most of them,” Hurtado said. “Another challenge was finding hanging points, because we’re in spaces where nothing can hang from the ceiling and we can’t screw anything to the floor, so everything has to be freestanding.

A bonus: there will be a trivia game at each performance where audience members will have the chance to win tacos from Tacos El Gordo.

This is TuYo Theater’s fourth immersive production, but as protests sweep the United States in an election year, this show has gained new resonance.

“We know how on the fringes of our community we are and how small we are in San Diego County,” Amon said. “We also know how the lack of resources seeps into the community. We want to show our community that we have the power. It’s not just an exchange meeting; it’s an important space. In this time of public protests, we want to share this energy.

Pasale Pasale will take place at Bay Front Charter High School in Chula Vista and the National City Chamber of Commerce in National City, California.

Kelundra Smith (she/her) is a playwright, arts and culture critic, and editor-in-chief of this magazine.

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