Playwright Enters World of Cockfighting in ‘Roosters’

When she was a baby, Milcha Sanchez-Scott used to go to cockfights. “I was surprised when my father told me about it, because my parents aren’t the kind of people who go to cockfights,” said the recent Rockefeller Grant recipient, whose play “Roosters” opens Friday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. “But in Indonesia, where I was born, it’s like a religious ceremony.”

To research her play, Sanchez-Scott, 33, dutifully re-entered the world of cockfighting. “I was obsessed,” she said frankly. “There’s that sense of the underworld about it, the shady side. Like you want to observe it because it’s hidden. And there was a mini-pageantry; it was entertaining and beautiful in terms of color. It reminded me of bullfighting. Now, I can’t stand to see a bullfight--or a cockfight. If I have to look at it, I get repulsed. But I’m also fascinated, because it’s my culture. It’s ... there . I don’t know what it is and I want to find out.”

Most fascinating to the playwright (who immigrated to the United States at age 13) was what others seemed to get out of the spectacle.

“We’re always told that we’re such nice people,” she said sarcastically, sitting cross-legged on a rehearsal room floor at the theater center. “Everything is reasonable, everything is nice. But everything is not reasonable in the world--certainly not with men. And cockfighting is a very male-oriented sport. It’s like rock ‘n’ roll was 30 years ago: outlaw, sexy, macho. But there’s more to it than that. Aside from the high rollers, most of the people there are foreigners, right off the boat: Iranians, Koreans, Filipinos, Mexican laborers. The birds are like their hope .”

Her story revolves around a contemporary fifth-generation Mexican-American family that raises roosters for cockfighting. The father (who carries the proud nickname “El Gallo”) stabbed a man to death seven years ago and is now returning from prison, “eager to create the perfect bird: a high flier--one that can fight in the air--and that has a great kick.” His son, Hector, has been minding the family business out of obligation but now wants to leave. “The son is a different kind of bird,” the playwright said with a smile. “When the father comes home, there’s the typical father/son (clash).”

There’s also a daughter “who’s 16 but behaves and dresses as if she were 12. She has a whole interior life under the house with saints and angels. It’s not that she’s a religious fanatic; it’s that fantasy is her escape from the harshness of reality: living in the desert with a very poor family and typical Latin role models--her mother is the long-suffering madonna and her aunt is a whore. So she’s living under the house, not coming out of childhood. She’s waiting for her father. Something about his approval and his love is going to release her into womanhood. Unfortunately, the father is obsessed with cocks.”

At times, Sanchez-Scott (her first play, “Latina,” was produced by L.A. Theatre Works in 1980 and received a California Arts Council grant to tour the state) echoes the sensibilities of her characters.

“Although my family is removed from cockfighting, the primal stuff is the same,” she said. “I didn’t have a brother; I’m an only child. But I had the same things with my father, needing his approval. You know that point of your life when you cannot move unless they say, ‘OK, I suppose it’s all right for you to be in the theater’? Then there’s the thing about accepting womanhood--which I find a really heavy burden. It’s like, ‘I don’t want to have a real relationship.’ It’s like I’m still under the house. And there’s something so sad about remaining a child. You feel like an open bud, full of promise. Stunted.”

Although the candor flows easily in conversation, the playwright (whose award-winning “The Cuban Swimmer” and “Dog Lady” were included in “Best Short Plays of 1985-86”) admits she doesn’t enjoy revealing herself in her work. “I like hiding,” she said with a sly smile, “creating imaginary characters--and having the actors reveal them. Being open is a real love/hate thing. Yes, the play feels personal. But not autobiographical.” So will people know her through her work? “Maybe.”

Sanchez-Scott is less amused at the labeling of “Roosters” as a Latino product. “The culture just happens to be Hispanic,” she said stubbornly. “But the things I wanted to go for are in every culture. We all have to leave our parents. We all have to grow up and leave home, face the various stages of life, grow old. These people in this play are mythical, archetypal characters: mother/father, madonna/whore, son/daughter. And they are Americans . They’ve been here for five generations. Audiences--especially in Los Angeles, where everyone knows a Hispanic person in some way--are going to relate.”

Her own influences have been the South American authors whose use of “magical realism” has recently come into its own as a theatrical style.

“It’s very natural for me, because those are my roots,” she explained. “It’s a way with language and a heightened reality.” Such as? “When Hector has a fight with his father and doesn’t kill him, throws down the knife, the sister levitates. She (literally) rises up. The message is that we have the ability to grow, that we are better than our animal natures.”

Speaking of animals, don’t look for Sanchez-Scott at your neighborhood cockfights now that “Roosters” is completed: “I was crazed,” she nodded. “But now I’m crazed with the Los Angeles dump; I go there a lot. I’ve also gotten obsessed with Samoan people.”