Satya Chávez displays anger in Where Did We Sit on the Bus? Photo by Kevin Berne.

Whipping back and forth onstage like a famished tiger about to pounce, Satya Chávez attacks her audience with passion and poignancy.

Along the way, she transforms into a one-woman band and chorus, a one-woman story hour, and a one-woman immigrant history lesson. And she’s mesmerizing in all of it.

In Where Did We Sit on the Bus? — a solo show at the Marin Theatre Company (MTC) in Mill Valley — she musically and verbally, comically and melodramatically traces how the daughter of undocumented Mexicans becomes a consummate performer.

Audience members clap, laugh aloud, and replicate her various rhythms with their toes as she talks, in character as Bee Quijada, about metaphorically being a composite Spanish soap opera, challah French toast, piñata, and, as Emma Lazarus’ poem is quoted at the base of the Statue of Liberty, an integral part of “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

By far the most fascinating part of her performance is live looping, whereby she records vocals and/or instrumental riffs and, after hitting pedals or pushing buttons on a pad that contains software, instantly plays it back in real time. She uses that technique, which allows her to sing or play over the recorded track, throughout.

Lighting in Where Did We Sit on the Bus? is spellbinding. Photo by Kevin Berne.

The set itself — a deep cavern containing a series of linear flashing lights that she alternately retreats into and escapes from — also becomes a spellbinding element of the show.

As does the comedy, which ranges from her idol-worshipping imitation of Michael Jackson to her schtick about mythological big-jawed Latinos eating whole chickens, pigs, and cows.

So do her rapid mood changes.

To help set those feelings (and evolving thought patterns), she shifts from ukulele to two guitars, from mouth organ to recorder, then to keyboard. She switches musically from a variety of Latin rhythms to hip-hop to self-composing. Her vocals, sometimes at triple speed, move the plot-less, life-journey along (“everything is happening so fast,” she sings).

Yes, a word or a line can be missed unless a theatergoer is paying real-close attention.

It’s also possible to not fully grok Chávez’s perspective as an “intersectional feminist” — that is, one who can provide insight on the blending of a person’s varied social and political identities that in turn can create different modes of discrimination and privilege. The bespectacled performer actually points out her own multiple aspects, being a first-generation American Latina, partner of a White woman, and an actor/singer/instrumentalist/composer.

Satya Chávez is Bee Quijada in Where Did We Sit on the Bus? Photo by Kevin Berne.

As for change, she never alters her outfit — a white blouse, bland brown cargo pants, and white Nike shoes. They’re comfortable enough, apparently, to cover all bases, and to do a somersault in.

The first part of the show, penned by Brian Quijada and directed by Matt Dickson, rockets along, going from a womb-like experience and bomb-like birth through Sunday churchgoing to education in a white-bread neighborhood in Illinois (“all my friends are Jewish”) to the University of Iowa to a New York City relationship with a Caucasian woman. Opening night, however, the performance lasted 15 minutes longer than the advertised 90-minutes. A mistake. The excess was palpable while Chávez crammed in too much of a laundry list before hitting some fire-eating anger.

When it’s over, the performer has answered the title question (and its obvious reference to civil rights spearhead Rosa Parks) with a Latina perspective and depth that can’t help but be admired — and she emphasizes hope, even in situations where many underdogs have been so beaten down.

It occurs to me, upon reflection, that any review of this show may be superfluous: Where Did We Sit on the Bus? must be experienced to be appreciated. It’s that dense, that different, and that’s a good thing.

Where Did We Sit on the Bus? will play at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 28. Tickets: $25 to $65. Info: 415-388-5208 or marintheatre.org

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.

At a rehearsal of Pride & Prejudice – The Musical in Ross are, from left, songwriter Rita Abrams and actors Carrie Fisher-Coppola, Landers Markwick and Pennell Chapin. (Photo by Jack Prendergast)

Rita Abrams can be a mega-inspiration — for older folks who think their creative lives may be over or for those whose 15 minutes of fame dissipated many years ago.

Abrams, at 79, is deep in rehearsal with the Ross Valley Players for “Pride & Prejudice – The Musical,” for which she created music and super-sweet lyrics. The ex-hippie says it’s going well, particularly due to director Phoebe Moyer’s ability to draw extra humor from the show’s pun- and alliterative-laden tunes by suggesting actors change the tiniest gesture or turn of the head.

From left, Heren Patel, Justin Hernandez and Rita Abrams work on a song from Pride & Prejudice – The Musical.  (Photo by Heather Shepardson) 

The musical opens March 17 at The Barn in Ross and runs through April 16.

It’s a short geographic distance but a far cry from 1970, when the songwriter’s “Mill Valley” became a pop chartbuster while she was in her mid-20s and a teacher in that city. Abrams and her third-grade class at the Strawberry Point School sang her tune on a Warner Bros./Reprise vinyl.

“It was a sudden thing, overnight, they put a rush-release on it, and we were getting calls from all over the world,” she recalls in a recent phone interview. “At first the fame was very exciting, but then I got off-balance. It felt strange to me — the song was my whole life, and it was dizzying. It was hard to handle. If it were now, in the age of social media, I’m guessing I might have been mercilessly ridiculed.”

Rita Abrams (at keyboard) and third graders sing “Mill Valley.” (Photo by Annie Leibovitz, with permission by Rita Abrams) 

After Abrams and her small charges generated a follow-up album, the hit song catapulted her into a lifelong music career. She worked on kids’ records and films, pop and novelty songs, commercials, greeting cards, books and musical theater productions such as the well-received “For Whom the Bridge Tolls” and “Aftershocks.”

She has written songs for “Sesame Street,” collaborated with Elmo (Shropshire), who performed the holiday song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and worked with John Gray to mount a show based on his best-seller, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.” London in 2012, presented by the Ruislip Operatic Society.

“We had nothing to do with the production, and we were barred from it,” she remembers. “They didn’t want the writers anywhere near it because they were afraid that we might change what they wanted. Later, when I watched a video of it, I saw so many things I’d have changed.”

Still, she says, “Emotionally, I really like to sit back and let other people do it. For me, the joy is in the writing.”

San Francisco’s IAM Theatre, now inactive, produced another version, and there was a high school incarnation in Peoria, Illinois, last year. A company in Hong Kong is working on doing a production sometime this year, possibly in the fall.

Brown’s passion for the tale jumpstarted the project, and she convinced Abrams to do the music. Brown isn’t on site for the Ross Valley Players’ rendition, “but she’s accessible by phone or computer” if needed, Abrams says.

“Pride & Prejudice,” of course, is the story of the emotionally repressed 19th century English family, the Bennets. Mother wants to marry off her five daughters and father just wants to be left alone. Enter the iconic love interest Mr. Darcy, and we’re off to the chapel (ultimately).

Ex-Strawberry Point School third graders gathered outside Throckmorton
Theatre on the 45th anniversary of the song “Mill Valley” include, from left, Marisa Tomasi, Kathleen Trudell, Jaina Delmas, Greg Berman, Kelly Martin, Caroline Van Buuren, Cindi Koehn, Scott Garbutt, and Scott Victor. (Photo by Rita Abrams)

Abrams’ favorite song in the show is “‘What Is a Man to Do?” which she calls “a parody that says everything’s a woman’s fault. I like that it has a lot of catchy rhymes and it’s like a tango.”

Currently in a relationship with bandleader-bass player Jack Prendergast, Abrams long ago was married for eight years to a documentarian, and has a daughter, Mia, who was an actor for film and TV in Hollywood but now, at 41, is shifting into a food industry setting.

A few years back, Abrams had to leave the town she helped make famous because she could no longer afford to stay. She says she has no regrets about it: “I love living in a lovely, affordable mobile home park in Novato. And I’m still an honorary citizen of Mill Valley.”

As for what’s next in her future, she says, “I’ve come to the age where the reality is, unless you don’t care if anyone likes it or not, the average time of getting a show from stage to page is seven years, and that’s too hard to deal with. Instead, I want to nurture the shows I’ve already written.”