In San Diego County’s Latine community, shopping at the swap meet is as much a part of life as sleeping and breathing. Need a new pair of shoes, toys for the kids, fresh produce, and some vintage jewelry? The swap meet has it all—and more. The sounds of people making deals, opening bags, and greeting friends holds a certain rhythm for TuYo Theatre’s artistic director, Maria Patrice Amon, which is why she and her team have created a new immersive musical dedicated to the people who give the region its flavor. Pásale Pásale runs May 29-June 30 at two different locations.
“I grew up going to the swap meet with my grandma every Saturday,” Amon said. “It holds a special place in our community.”
The musical is named for the words that many of the Latine immigrant vendors shout to invite people into 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 Bayfront Swap Meet learn that the landlord, Señor Muchascosas, is planning to double booth rent, threatening their livelihoods. With bills piling up and the American Dream on the line, the vendors band together to reclaim their destinies.
It is a deeply personal project for Vega, whose grandparents had a booth at the Paramount Swap Meet where they sold shoes. At the time Amon reached out to him to write the book, he was already working on his own swap meet play on a totally different topic. For this piece, Vega said, he really wanted to tell the stories of Latine folks trying to attain the independence of owning a business, even if they may not have the papers to operate officially. Those struggles are not too far from real-life challenges: Some frequent visitors to the South Bay Drive-in Theater & Swap Meet are concerned about the presence of an Amazon hub in the community.
Over the past year, the team has been workshopping the bilingual script in different spaces. Featuring 12 original songs with genres spanning the Latine diaspora, the music is meant to evoke the feeling of passing by the various stalls, most of which have their own radios. The production had a workshop at La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW Festival and at the California State University, San Marcos.
“Making an immersive piece is challenging as a playwright,” Vega said. “I had to figure out how to move the story forward and have the audience involved throughout the story.” What pushed his work forward, he added, is that “there is a deep longing right now, in general, for people to be a part of something bigger.”
Audiences will get that chance in the musical’s climactic protest scene, in which they’ll be invited to stand in solidarity with the stall vendors. Amon said that while the creators were initially nervous about whether people would stand, in early versions thus far, people have shown no hesitation to stand with the characters, and by extension their real-life counterparts.
Like Vega, scenic designer Jesus Hurtado’s grandmothers both had booths at the Coronado and Spring Valley swap meets in San Diego, so he has designed a completely immersive space with colorful, shoppable stalls that can be moved between the two performance locations. Upon entering the spaces for the show, attendees will be given “money” to spend for admission to shop and purchase goods, just like at real swap meets. Then they will rent a red cart for $1, which also doubles as a seat they can fill with their “purchases” before sitting in a circle to watch the scenes unfold.
“I’ve been focused on creating reusable props that are built not to break, because the audience 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 couldn’t screw anything into the floor, so everything has to be free-standing.”
A bonus: There will be a trivia contest at each performance where audience members will have a chance to win tacos from Tacos El Gordo.
This is TuYo Theatre’s fourth immersive production, but as protests sweep the U.S. in an election year, this show has acquired new resonance.
“We know we are in the margins of our community and how small we are in San Diego County,” Amon said. “We also know how being under-resourced seeps into the community. We want to show our community that we have power. It’s not just a swap meet; it’s an important space. In this time of public protests, we want to share in that energy.”
Pásale Pásale be staged at both Bay Front Charter High School in Chula Vista and National City Chamber of Commerce in National City, Calif.
Kelundra Smith (she/her) is a playwright, arts and culture critic, and the managing editor of this magazine.
