STORIES THAT CAPTURE HISTORY
Project to collect oral histories of Chicano Park, Logan Heights community members for theater performance
ESAN DIEGO fforts are under way to bring to life stories of long time Barrio Logan and Logan Heights residents and community artists who helped create Chicano Park, the largest concentration of Chicano murals in the world.
The Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center and Herbert Siguenza, a playwright in residence for the San Diego Repertory Theatre, are collaborating to collect oral histories from people in the community, with plans to transform the stories into a play.
Organizers are recruiting residents in those communities now to receive acting training and participate in rehearsals for a stage performance next year. They’re also still discussing how to do all that if people can’t gather because of pandemic, said Siguenza.
Dubbed “Resistance Creates Beauty,” the project could take a year to complete. The first couple of months will involve interviewing community members and placing those stories in a historical context, said Siguenza.
Josephine Talamantez said there is significant value in collecting those stories.
“We are just excited, we can’t get going fast enough,” said Talamantez, board chair of the Chicano Park
Museum and Cultural Center, which is still under construction.
The California Arts Council is partially funding the project, which will produce documented stories and performances by fall 2021.
University of San Diego professor Alberto Pulido and students previously led an oral histories project to preserve stories of struggle from community members. Those audiotaped and videotaped stories