Description

Guillermo, a young Chicano, is searching for his place in the world now that his mother is getting married, for the first time, to an Anglo man. Guillermo demands to know the truth about his real father, but his mother gives him an insufficient answer, as she has all his life. It is on the day of his mother’s wedding that Janel, a 23-year-old half-Chicana, half-Anglo woman escaping her problems at New Mexico State University, enters town. She crosses Guillermo’s path at the gas station in Las Vegas, New Mexico. With his encouragement, Janel’s car is ‘borrowed’ by Jorge, Sammy, and Cresp’n while Janel is paying for her gas. Guillermo becomes infatuated with Janel and gives her the runaround as to where her car really is. She in turn must endure Guillermo and Frank, the quirky gas station attendant. But while alone, Guillermo and Janel confront racial prejudices about each other and help each other to look beyond these differences. It is not a smooth road nor is it all serious. Along it, Guillermo and Janel have to deal with gas station cappuccino powder, a unicycle, and Nutty Buddy’s Blackout Whiskey, not to mention Frank’s many anecdotes and philosophies on life. Gas shows that love, indeed, can conquer all and has the power to show the absurdity of racial prejudice. Unit Set. Area staging. Approximate running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.