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.
