Luis Valdez creates anomalous realities in two of his plays, "The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa" and "The Mummified Deer," in order to defy dominant expressions of reality as well as classifications of "Chicano" and "Mexican." The anomalous realities, represented primarily by a bodiless head in the first play and an eighty-four-year-old Yaqui woman with a sixty-year-old fetus in her womb in the second play, alter audience members' expectations and their identification with the characters. This alteration allows spectators to question their own classification and the ability to define it. Valdez's performances of anomalous realities allow for an alternate space of expression where classifications can be challenged in terms not contaminated by dominant ideologies. The anomalous realities in these two plays present a departure from dominant modes of expression, a departure that resists an identity of closure and oversimplification that has been imposed on Chicana/os by a primarily Anglo American discourse. These two plays provide an alternate space for legitimizing and authorizing aspects of Chicana/o identities that Anglo American society marginalizes and/or occludes. (Contains 11 notes.)