Each and every time we learn of a teacher, activist,
scholar, artist, professor, organizer, coordinator, or facilitator who is or
has used The Panza Monologues as a teaching tool, we are extremely
gratified and thankful. Our second edition of the play in publication was
specifically conceived of and designed to help facilitate its use in classrooms
of all kinds. We included numerous kinds of materials to accompany the script
in order to inspire its use as a wide reaching teaching tool.
Our blog series "Pedagogy of the Panza" celebrates
and profiles teachers and their innovative instruction using The Panza Monologues, Second Edition. These posts
showcase important, determined, and ingenious teachers of all kinds who are
taking our work to the next level of its manifestation. Are you using The
Panza Monologues, Second Edition in your classroom? We’d love to hear your
story – contact us! panzapower@gmail.com
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Name: Angie Chabram, Professor
Hometown: La Puente, California
Where do you teach?
Chicana/o Studies UC Davis, Davis, CA;
In what class/type of class did you use The Panza
Monologues?
Chicana/o Studies 155, Theater.
Why did you choose to teach The Panza Monologues in your
class?
I choose to teach The Panza because of its relevance to my
theater class. This class is geared primarily toward the study of El
Teatro Campesino and Chicana feminist theater. Students are exposed
to a multimedia study of plays, scripts, and performance artists. They
learn about the different kinds of theatrical techniques and
traditions deployed by alternative grassroots artists and playwrights.
This instruction is not based on a literary criticism or
theater criticism model. Here the objective is to reflect critically
on the use of theater as a means of popular social expression and
transformation. Students in the class absorb the lessons of the past
in order to craft their own meaningful expressions of the present. They
work in collaborative groups, write scripts, and assemble performances based on
the most important social issues facing them today. It is
my intent to act as a facilitator in this regard, providing them with an
assortment of tools which they can use in their student productions. They
then combine these with their own sources of communal knowledge and
speech.
When we looked at The Panza Monologues we did so in
relation to previous Chicana/o movement theatrical works. We had
already read Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez’s account of El Teatro Campesino and
students had launched their own critiques about the limited roles for women in
many of the skits. They were more than ready for a female-centered
work where the protagonist breaks out of inherited stereotypical
configurations. I was interested in providing other kinds of
meaningful social ideologies that could accommodate the contemporary issues of
women. I was very aware of the fact that in some early works the
battery of women had gone unchecked (El Corrido de Jesús Pelado for instance),
and that Malinchismo was alive and strong. For instance, in the play
“Los Vendidos” there is a character named Miss-JIM-enez. She acts as
the go-between. She comes to Honest Sancho’s Shoppe where she seeks
to “buy” a brown face for the governor’s office. She
translates the governor’s vision and in doing so she activates racial
stereotypes and the political interests of the dominant group. Finally,
she completes the selection process of the governor’s office and leaves with a
character that fits the bill of the token brown face. Just before
leaving she says, just call me “Jimmy.” The transaction is completed
and so is her conversion to dominant masculinity. Of course we
realize that the actors from El Teatro Campesino in Honest Sancho’s
only acted like puppets. They put on the sell-out show to be able to
enter places of representation that are forbidden to them. The used
car salesman, Honest Sancho was the biggest puppet of all. The
members of the troupe used him to gather funds for their political purpose. Although Miss JIM-enez is also a sell-out, she is the only
real sell-out. At the beginning of the play she is identified as a
Chicana, thus the model of malinchismo continues to thrive.
 |
| Miss JIM-en-ez from Los Vendidos |
What was important in CHI Studies 155 was to produce another
model where you see the self-determination and leadership of la Chicana. Here
in The Panza the protagonist takes hold of discourse and she speaks and speaks,
hurling disparate monologues into time and space. Her body is also
the locus of enunciation and a major performative tool.
This provided me with an excellent opportunity. As
I was teaching this class I was very interested in also giving the students
more exposure to the different ways the body figured into performance. The
students were well aware of Broyles-Gonzalez’s work and suggestion
that the body has memory and a form of intuition based on the oral
tradition. Unlike the early examples of Chicanas malinchistas
here in this play the Chicana performer owns every part of her body. She
is not a being for another dressed in blonde wig and the political consumes of
the mainstream. Her body occupies theatrical space, it is the stage
for a number of performances involving identity, politics, health,
migration, family, and nation. These performances are articulated
around a series of disparate narratives that shed light on obesity, domestic
violence, migration, bodily image, and the panza as the
center. I would like to suggest that Panza Monologues enact a
kind of epistemological shift that cannot be
 |
| Prof. Angie Chabram |
This shift allows a contextualization of the
performance in the historical condition of the impoverished and working poor
for whom the issue of sustenance is very real. The pangs of hunger
that are heard throughout this play of course remind the readers of the
Chicana/o Mexicana/o Latina/o populations who wage a struggle for subsistence
on a daily basis. Of course the whole issue of body image is itself
a major theme in the play that needs to be pried open in the context of
underrepresented social groups who do not control the dominant media
images. As the speaking subject emerges on the scene we see that she
performs a necessary but humorous counter discourse to bodily
ideologies that would shame those who have panzas and cannot hide them—or
refuse to hide. In a nutshell, she celebrates the panza as a representation of
the larger social body and as a relational aspect of social existence that
includes a mind-body as well as emotional connection.
I also believe that the issue of social, ideological and
narrative consumption is at the heart of these monologues. The play
asks: What kinds of social ideologies of the body, the community,
the state of Chicana/o Latina/o health are we consuming? Which
of these ideologies need to be rejected or modified by a population which
is still (as Anzaldúa would say) “carved and tattooed by the sharp needles of
experience?” This is a population which aside from waging a struggle
for survival must also wage a struggle for educational and political access,
social and political equity, and a struggle for control over the mechanisms of
representation in order that dangerous stereotypes and dangerous initiatives be
displaced.
As a professor who cares deeply about the formation of
alternative health narratives, I view The Panza Monologues from this
angle. I think that these monologues break open the medicalized
languages ascribed to the Chicana body which are apparent in its generic
descriptions within medicalese. Often these descriptions separate
the body from life histories, they also wrestle them away from larger social
communities and cultural expressions. By making the panza speak we
see how the connections have been reconfigured through a kind of
personification on stage. In addition we see how Chicana
bodies “talk back” to mainstream health solutions that don’t take into account
such important aspects of life and culture such as the Mexican palate. There
is also a rejection of the kind of self-hatred and othering that takes place in
society in relation to obese people and Mexican people at large. There
is a sense that the panza (and obese body) is a body which is alive and should
not be dehumanized or disciplined to conform to a mainstream model in order for
it to be healed of all of its ailments.
How did you teach The Panza Monologues (any fun or
meaningful activities or panza teaching tools you want to share)?
An issue that we brought up in the viewing of the DVD was
the issue of how the play dealt with the issue of the rampant obesity and
diabetes in community. It was clear that the mainstream medical
approaches assigned to the little sister did not suffice, that starvation isn’t
a goal. But we remarked that we were not fully sure about what the
healing path could be, other than self-healing, spirituality, and community understanding. It
was clear that there could be another Monologue added that dealt with these
issues.
Why is The Panza Monologues important to your field of
study? What conversations/issues did the book raise?
Aside from the themes I have developed above I think that
there were a number of interesting strategies deployed in the performance such
as the [zapateado] scene which relied on the dance to dramatize the serious
issues facing Latina/o communities. I had a math student
in the class who wanted to downplay this a bit by stating that as far as
statistics presented in this scene the Mexican population didn’t
fare far worse that other groups. I don’t know how often these
statistics are changed. We talked about how a comparative dimension
could be worked into these monologues especially with the high incidence of
diabetes in Native American, African American, and many global populations
throughout the world, including India.
What did you learn about your teaching or about your students from teaching The Panza Monologues?
The main thing I appreciated were the bodily movements that
accompanied the play that hit the ball out of the park and were vastly more
developed than what we saw in the early use of pantomime. I also enjoyed the
kind of gestures toward audience population that were evident throughout the
play and the way the audience became part of the performance. I also thought
that there were a number of welcoming gestures enacted by the lead actress
which invited the audience to engage in a kind of co-creation of the
panza. This is productive work in the field of representation that
needs attention at this moment in time in relation to this and other
aspects of the feminine body of color from working class background. Finally
I would like to see a kind of intertextual dialogue between works on Latina/o
diabetes and the play that could furnish an interesting conversation on the
play. I am aware of the huge challenges posed by obesity and
diabetes, and I believe that The Panza Monologues could be expanded to
accommodate these issues, maybe even have a bit of communal health literacy
(back and forth) go on in the play.
Favorite Quote from The Panza Monologues Book?
"I throw Chingazos for my Raza." - from "Cha-Cha to Panza"
Because it reminded me of "I throw Punches," I never thought
this would make it into a play. Self-serving, maybe, but true!
You can find Dr. Chabram's essay in the book The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Angie Chabram, published by Routledge in 2006.
You can also order The Panza Monologues DVD here.
More About Angie Chabram:
I have taught for 30 plus years at UC Davis in Chicana/o
Studies. I am the fourth child of a single parent from the San
Gabriel Valley. I work hard to provide educational access to
students about Chicana/o Latina/o culture. I support the need to
develop archives that bridge the arts, the academy, and the community. I
want very much to help produce cultural narratives that can empower and assist
people suffering from social, political, and health ailments.
