Guadalupe Spreads Her Theatrical Wings

A play-with-music in Spanish and the Aztec language Nahuatl, “La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin” has become a two-night holiday tradition at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. A production of the Latino Theater Company, it is staged on the Thursday and Friday before the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is Wednesday. But this year, for the first time since it opened at the cathedral in 2002, the play will continue beyond its performances there, moving to the newly renovated Los Angeles Theater Center for seven more shows Thursday through Sunday and Dec. 20 to 22.

“La Virgen” re-enacts the 1531 story of the brown-skinned, Nahuatl-speaking Virgin who offers her embrace to the beleaguered Aztecs in the wake of the conquest by Roman Catholic Spaniards. She appears to an Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, who is not believed when he tells the Spanish bishop that she wants a church built on the hill of Tepeyac. The Virgin fills Juan Diego’s cloak with roses to meet the bishop’s demand for proof, and when he presents the roses to the bishop, the story goes, her image appears imprinted in the cloth..”*

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