Roosters by Milcha Sanchez-Scott

STC Theatre’s production of Roosters was awarded the 2013-2014 McAllen Arts Council Grant, which made it possible for the college to host the playwright Milcha Sanchez-Scott to direct one of her most well-known plays. The production also received co-sponsorship from STC’s Center for Mexican American Studies and the English Department.
 
The daughter of a Colombian father and an Indonesian mother, Milcha Sanchez-Scott was born on the island of Bali.  She was educated in England until her early teens, when her family immigrated to California. A graduate of the University of San Diego, Sanchez-Scott lives in Los Angeles. Her first play Latina, premiered by L.A. Theatre Works in 1980, won seven Drama Logue awards. Dog Lady and The Cuban Swimmer, a pair of one-acts written in 1982, were produced in 1984 by INTAR in New York, and selected for TCG’s Plays in Progress series. Dog Lady was subsequently published in Best Plays of 1986.
 
Sanchez-Scott is a Vest Award recipient, given each year to a West Coast woman artist, and has been honored with the Le Compte du Noüy Foundation Award, which goes to “a young writer with a unique voice.”  She holds a First Level Award for American playwrights from the Rockefeller Foundation for 1987. 
 
Roosters tells the story of a family at odds: the father, Gallo, a cock-fight advertiser just out of prison; his dreary wife, Juana; their son, Hector, who raises roosters for cock-fights; and, their daughter, Angela, who attaches cardboard angel wings to her back. Within the play, each family member embodies a basic element of humanity and Americanism, and the cockfight oddly enough serves as a shared experience of pride for each family member.   The Sunday, March 2 matinee production will be interpreted in American Sign Language by interns from the STC’s Interpreting Training Program.