I was wondering if you could read through my analysis below of the answer choices on this question as I found a couple incorrect answer choices (namely C and D) tempting and as I am still not 100% confident in the text support for the correct answer choice.
Confirmation/further thoughts/responses to some of my questions would be greatly appreciated!
A) All we know is that Yolanda Broyles-Ganzalez traces the actos' connections to carpas - we do not know if she has discussed and analyzed this tradition per se and we certainly do not know anything regarding other U.S. and Mexican theater historians and whether or not they widely discussed and anaylzed the carpas tradition
B) Line 32 informs us that "the acto became the quintessential form of Chicano theater in the 1960s." It goes on to say in line 35 that the acto involves a "brief comic statement." For this reason, we can infer that comedy, as it was a part of the most prominent form of Chicano theater, was a prominent feature of Chicano theater in the 1960s.
I actually did not choose this when I took this test because I thought that line 35's mention of the "brief comic statement" made it seem like comedy was minimized - or does that really just refer to the whole statement (that happened to be brief)? I am confused on the wording there...
C) I actually chose this answer on my test. But it is wrong because #1 we don't exactly even know what audiences experienced in the carpas. Or do we? it says in lines 47 that carpas were 'informal, often satirical' - does that allow us to infer what audiences experienced???
But even if we did know what the working-class audiences of carpas experienced, we can't know that Valdez went to great lengths to simulate or recreate certain aspects of this form. All we know is that the striking farm workers' improvisations were informed by this tradition, right?
I think I just got tripped up because Valdez's actos DID indeed simulate certain aspects (the satire, etc.) of the carpas....what am I misreading here? I guess I just made a jump from mere reflection to inferring Valdez's intention and motivation? Is the first part of (C) just too specific and therefore unsupported?
D) I found this answer choice quite tempting as well. Starting at line 24, the author explains that "using the farm workers' basic improvisations, Valdez guided the group toward the creation of what he termed "actos," skits or sketches..." After understanding this carefully, I feel like (D) actually has the content inverted - it wasn't that the actos were based on the scripts composed by Valdez, but the base was the farm workers' improvisations with Valdez just guiding the group.
Also, even if my analysis above is wrong and even if "many of the earliest actos were based on scripts composed by Valdez, which the farm-worker actors modified..." as part of (D) says, the rest of (D) is totally off - where do we have any indication that any modifications or improvisations on the part of farm workers were done "to suit their own diverse aesthetic and pragmatic interests." All they did was act out what happened on the picket lines. We know nothing of their own motivations or agenda.
E) We have no idea as to what was happening in the early 1970s (aside from the Chicano theater reaching its apex).