In the Prologue, the play announces its setting with a large backdrop: a “giant facsimile of a newspaper front page. […] The huge masthead reads LOS ANGELES HERALD EXPRESS Thursday, June 3, 1943” (4). El Pachuco uses a switchblade to slice through the newspaper backdrop. El Pachuco straightens his clothes and “tends to his hair, combing back every strand into a long luxurious ducktail, with infinite loving pains” (5). Once he dons his hat, “His fantastic costume is complete. He is transformed into the very image of the pachuco myth” (5). El Pachuco addresses the audience in Spanish, urging them to check out his clothing and calling them square. He then switches to fluent English, explaining that the play they will witness “is a construct of fact and fantasy” (5). He describes the “pachuco,” a word used to name the youth subculture of zoot suit-wearing Mexican-American gang members, as a similarly mythical construct.

Scene 1, titled“Zoot Suit,” takes place at a dance in the barrios. El Pachuco sings in a mixture of Spanish and English about the zoot suit craze that is sweeping the country. Members of the 38th Street Gang, including