ACTING 101: Learning how to be a Real Chola, when you are not really a Real Chola

Today we blog with New York Actress Claudia Acosta on her upcoming stint as ELECTRICIDAD.
In case anyone wondered, I am not a chola or ever was. I was a big geek when it mattered to be anything in high school. Califas born, I grew up on the eastside of El Paso, otherwise known as El Chuco. It is the birth place of the forefather of the Cholo, el Pachuco, but there was no chuco or cholo or chimigangas in my house growing up. Unlike Electricidad, I was under lock and key.

I wanted to be on the drill team and wear GAP clothes, but couldn’t. I didn’t own a pair of Vans, went to church and I raised my hand in class. Not an eastside Loca, but a walking bullseye. Luckily, I knew how to deflect the glares under intimating eye-brows and incessant insults from those burgundy lined lips. I pretended they didn’t exist while I got rubber bands in my hair, but I watched them closely.

In my process with Electricidad, I learned five things about myself and a culture I had to run away from growing up. Just because I can use black eye liner like I am some Diego Rivera doesn’t automatically make me a chola. I had to dig deep.

• I couldn’t play this role if I was younger. The imagination is a powerful thing, but when coupled with experience you get the Google Earth of road maps for any performance. In my life, I think I have some reference to grief, betrayal, pain, and want for vengeance…ok maybe a lot.

• Look for the chola inside. Isn’t everybody loyal, protective, tough, and committed to a code of honor, pride and style? Or is it just me? I too have learned how to smile now and cry later.

• Being a chola means you can kick someone’s ass if you needed to. Despite some people’s assumptions, I have never raised a fist to anyone (accept on the occasions when a loco tried to get fresh). How do I find the street fighter inside? Pos training at the 24hour fitness with my old kick-boxing routine.

• Embrace the voice. I worked hard as an actor to be regionally neutral only to find, that is what casts actors that look like “us”. When I talk to anybody from El Paso, I speak more Spanglish than a Tide commercial on Univision. The musicality, cadence, and sounds come back. Luis Alfaro captures the voice of his Califas and mine where my sisters gave me the oldies and feathered bangs. It is the voice of an American who straddles the fence. The voice like a cruise on a boulevard. It is the voice of two cultures and a history wrestling with economics for place to call home.

• Instead of seeing a Young Chola, see a Young Woman. A young woman who believes in ideals. A young woman who wants to preserve honor and dignity the best she knows how. A young woman who loves her father. Electricidad sees and feels nothing else, but loss. Her world has left her betrayed. I shudder to think of life when my parents are gone. I don’t know how I would move on if I thought I lost my brother. What if no one was there to believe in my grief? Electricidad has love beyond all bounds. That is something, I know very well. I hope the audience does too.

Photo by Shannon Atkinson