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Oakland Theater Project recently announced that its 2026 season will conclude in November with the world premiere of \u201cShe Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas).\u201d Lisa Ramirez\u2019s play, to be directed by Karina Guti\u00e9rrez, is also about the life and work of the labor leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In a joint statement to the Chronicle, Benavides and Martin Koch were clear that focus should be on the survivors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply dismayed by the news of the indefensible and predatory behavior of the late Cesar Chavez,\u201d they wrote of the revelations, which the New York Times first reported Tuesday, March 17. \u201cOur hearts, first and foremost, are with Dolores Huerta and the other survivors, some of whom were children when they were sexually assaulted. It must have been horrible to carry that burden, unable to speak the truth because of Cesar\u2019s sway and power.\u201d<\/p>\n
They also stood by their work, which West Edge Opera commissioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Dolores]()
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Dolores Huerta, left, and mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra at a 2023 preview performance of \u201cDolores\u201d in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
West Edge Opera<\/p>\n
\u201cOur opera centers Dolores: her leadership, her resilience, and the many personal sacrifices she made on behalf of the union and the farm workers,\u201d the statement reads. \u201cThat has not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
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West Edge Opera General Director Mark Streshinsky reiterated the company\u2019s commitment to Huerta, Benavides and Martin Koch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe revelations of today are a reminder that no story is ever fully told and that we don\u2019t know the weight people carry with them daily,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cWe rally around Dolores, her community, Nicol\u00e1s, and Marella and will always support the need to express complex stories through art.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the opera\u2019s August world premiere at Oakland\u2019s Scottish Rite Center, it had a run at Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, N.M., in October. San Diego Opera and BroadStage in Santa Monica (Los Angeles County) have both expressed interest in mounting the title in future seasons, but no dates have been announced. Neither organization\u2019s representative immediately responded to the Chronicle\u2019s query.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Benavides and Martin Koch did not directly address whether they would revise the libretto for \u201cDolores\u201d or whether future productions would be affected. They said only, \u201cThe release of this disturbing information about Cesar Chavez brings new context that will take us time to process.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Playwright]()
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Playwright Lisa Ramirez, left, and labor leader Dolores Huerta. This week\u00a0Huerta revealed that United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar\u00a0Chavez\u00a0repeatedly raped her and preyed on young girls.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Michele Noble<\/p>\n
By contrast, Ramirez\u2019s play, which features six versions of Huerta at different phases in her life, is in an early draft. \u201cThis is going to be a part of the piece,\u201d she told the Chronicle of the news. \u201cIt has to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ramirez, who said she\u2019s also a survivor of rape, empathized with Huerta\u2019s decades of silence on multiple levels. \u201cI blacked out the memory for 20 years after, so I understand not coming out about something like this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Huerta, Ramirez continued, put the affected children and the movement first.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the same way that she fought for farmworkers male and female, she\u2019s not going to let these women now\u00a0\u2014 that were young women\u00a0\u2014 stand alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In an interview leading up to the West Edge production, Benavides, a New Mexico native, recalled<\/a> fond childhood memories of Huerta. \u201cShe would frequently be at big family reunions we\u2019d have in El Paso. She was present and attentive, particularly to children,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n![\"The]()
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The cast of West Edge Opera performs the world premiere of \u201cDolores\u201d in Oakland in August 2025.<\/p>\n
West Edge Opera<\/p>\n
He chose to focus his opera on 1968, when the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy lost Huerta and Chavez a key ally and the grueling strike had already been going on for three years. \u201cI wanted to show what it felt like to deal with such high stakes, to go through such immense loss and to discover the light on the other side,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of ancient mythological stories are built that way\u00a0\u2014 where heroes go through trials, emerge victorious and teach us something about resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Inevitably, many past reflections on Huerta and Chavez now sound rife with dramatic irony or hidden double meanings. The opera imagined heated conversations between the two leaders, and last year Benavides said his goal was to show that neither historical movements nor their torchbearers are preordained. \u201cLeadership isn\u2019t this unified, dreamy state where everyone knows what to do and how to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Now the storytellers might be less unified too in how they approach that history, as the revelations complicate both the movement and its leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For her part, Ramirez predicted that Huerta won\u2019t recede into the shadows\u00a0\u2014 and neither will Ramirez or her play. When asked if she considered abandoning the project, Ramirez said, \u201cHell no.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelly Guerra portrays Dolores Huerta, the labor leader who fought for civil rights during the 1968 Delano Grape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[329,331,143,145,144,1058],"class_list":["post-226273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-classical","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}