Picture Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Day by day Beast/Monique Carboni/Flickr Commons/Courtesy of David Anzuelo
When he was in highschool within the Nineteen Eighties, David Anzuelo remembers seeing the now legendary punk gods, The Conflict, at a live performance on the native college in his hometown of El Paso. “INXS opened for them,” he recalled to The Day by day Beast. “The viewers was all pissed off as a result of they couldn’t rip out the seats.”
Over 30 years later, Anzuelo is channeling that very same punk rock rage in his new off-broadway debut play, Día Y Noche, which opens March 26 at 59E59 Theater as a part of Labyrinth Theater Firm’s thirtieth anniversary season.
A semi-autobiographical story set to the music of Black Flag, Joan Jett, and extra, the play tracks Danny and Martin, two younger music lovers who really feel like outsiders, as they navigate their adolescence in 1984 El Paso. Medicine, intercourse, and rock and roll, after all, are all featured closely.
Freddy Acevedo, Emma Ramos and the solid of Día Y Noche.
Monique Carboni
“Mexicans and Chicanos love heavy steel,” Anzuelo says. “And so they at all times have.” That, partly, is as a result of advanced id points Mexican People face rising up on the border, in between two cultural worlds. Anzuelo says he didn’t really feel really Mexican or American rising up, which led to ostracization and feeling marginalized in each communities.
For Anzuelo and numerous others in El Paso, punk music was not solely an escape from that binary, however their being, inherently subversive, actualized as music. Raucous all-age reveals at now lengthy gone golf equipment that hosted bands like The Germs weren't solely the norm for Anzuelo and youngsters like him in El Paso, they have been essential. Moshing, scream singing and even getting clocked within the face whereas the loud scrappy music blared was cathartic Anzuelo says. “It’s a type of joyful aggression.”
El Paso, in actual fact, has a wealthy historical past of punk, steel, and hardcore music the place a DIY neighborhood of working class youths, lots of whom have been Mexican People, got here collectively to specific that joyful aggression within the face of racism, prejudices, and the patriarchy. That custom has continued on via profitable bands like The Mars Volta and Sparta and is central to the play. “My story isn't an immigration story,” Anzuelo says. “It’s the story of navigation of twin id…the reclamation of language and historical past.”
In Día Y Noche protagonist Danny, Anzuelo’s avatar, recounts to his new pal, Martin, who's Black and deeply within the closet, how an older Anglo lady as soon as known as him a “soiled Mexican” when he was solely 4 years outdated. “I by no means noticed that lady once more,” he says. “However I’ll bear in mind her for the remainder of my life.” It’s simply one of many many actual life particulars that punctuate the present’s narrative and spotlight Anzeulo’s broader aim of reclaiming his historical past.
David Anzuelo, left, circa 1984 with overseas trade buddies.
Conrad Bower/Courtesy of David Anzuelo
“On a molecular stage,” he instructed The Day by day Beast, “I simply need to inform my story and create.”
That story is one in all subversion and survival. As a theater main on the College of Texas El Paso within the 80s, racist professors instructed him he’d by no means e book gigs due to his appears. “You appear like a servant,” they instructed him.
Anzuelo bought his childhood bed room set for the cash he wanted and transferred to a college in New Mexico the place he frolicked with goth youngsters and based an experimental theater firm. Directors, although extra accepting and useful, have been satisfied he was a satan worshiper due to his black garments, costume make-up, and on the market theater work. “I ran across the campus at night time beneath the complete moon as a part of a werewolf collection as soon as,” he stated with amusing.
After graduating, Anzuelo moved to New York Metropolis in 1989 the place he rapidly acquired work as an Elvis impersonator for a music and dance evaluate that toured the New England carnival circuit. “We opened for Reba McIntire,” he stated proudly, earlier than including a caveat. “Different instances we opened for dancing donkeys.”
David Anzuelo singing together with his band, MonsterRally circa 2007. To his proper on bass is actor Raul Castillo.
Courtesy of David Anzuelo
Since then he’s ditched the donkeys and steadily has labored as an actor in movie, TV, and stage productions throughout the nation and is a member of the Labyrinth appearing ensemble. Music and the punk scene, nevertheless, have by no means been too far. He fronted his personal band, MonsterRally, within the early aughts with fellow Tejano actor Raul Castillo and has carried out with native rockers, The Gotham Roots Orchestra. He’s at present obsessive about L.A. rocker Alice Bag. “Look,” he says, exhibiting me an image of a dark-skinned lady with lemon yellow hair. “She’s a middle-aged Mexicana punk chick, she’s simply so cool.”
Now 57 and fortunately married, Anzuelo continues to subvert and survive. Medical doctors instructed him he wouldn’t stay previous the age of fifty when he was identified with HIV at 35. “However right here I'm,” he stated. A self described pansexual, he runs with a crowd that features radical faeries, drag queens, and child gays all looking for their very own creative expression. “I’m Uncle Dave to them,” he stated.
He hopes Brown and Black queer youths see themselves in Día Y Noche and are impressed to make their very own artwork, the identical means he was impressed when his father confirmed him the VHS of Luis Valdez’s musical drama Zoot Go well with again when he was 16. “I had by no means seen theater that was in regards to the Chicano and Mexican expertise,” he says. “I solely had Cheech and Chong.”
For Chicano punks and queerdos on the lookout for themselves onstage, they now have Día Y Noche.