Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1968 East L.A. Student Walkouts, About…Productions is producing the Evangeline Initiative with multiple educational components serving East L.A. and other youth, and restaging the critically acclaimed production of Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe for the first time in East L.A. The show will run March 29-April 8, 2018 at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights.

It is the first and only original play to incorporate the Grammy Award-winning songbook of Louie Pérez and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. The show’s lead singer will be the Grammy-winning chanteuse Gaby Moreno. The Guatemalan-born, L.A.-based singer-songwriter will interpret the music in an acoustic style that will compliment this intimate restaging.

Told through story and song and set in 1968, it is co-created by Theresa Chavez, Rose Portillo, and Louie Pérez, and centers on an East L.A. high school grad who is a devoted daughter by day and a West Hollywood go-go dancer by night. Inspired by the time period, she spreads her wings and lands in the distinctly different world of the Hollywood art and music scene. As East L.A. begins its own civil rights movement, she must reconcile her own individual journey with the need to hold on to her relationship with her family and her neighborhood.