Electricidad

Set in a barrio on an urban Eastside, where the crackle and hiss of live electric wires are ever-present, and infused with Luis Alfaro’s sly humor and use of uniquely expressive Spanglish, Sophocles’s 2,500 year-old text is transformed into a vibrant, vital and thoroughly unforgettable myth for the modern age.

This contemporary look at the power and consequences of revenge, and the damage it causes to a family and a community, is dominated by Electricidad, who is mourning the loss of her father, the former leader of the South Side Locos, who was murdered, his body placed on a makeshift altar in the family’s front yard. Driven by all-consuming passions of love and loyalty, hate and vengeance, Electricidad keeps a 24-hour vigil by her father’s side and waits impatiently for her brother, Orestes, to return from exile in Las Vegas. In their grief, Electricidad and Orestes both begin to believe that their father’s death must be avenged; the murderer must be punished, not by the courts but rather by the swift retaliation of barrio justice.