Co-Sponsored by MALFA, The Office of the Dean of Faculties, Hispanic Studies, Creative Writing and Performance Studies
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About Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez was born into a migrant farmworker family in Delano, California on June 26, 1940. He is the second in a family of ten children. From an early age, Valdez managed to do well in school despite the interrupted schooling due to the constant relocation of his family as they followed the crops. He developed a special interest in puppet shows at an early age, and while in high school appeared on a television program regularly. These preferences toward the entertainment field foreshadowed his later work in film and video. After high school, Valdez entered San Jose State College. It was while in college that Luis Valdez fully developed an interest in theater. After his graduation in 1964, he worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe for some time before founding El Teatro Campesino.
Valdez became the Artistic Director as well as resident playwright for this troupe of striking farmworkers creating and performing brief ‘actos’ about the need for a farmworker’s union. These small sketches became the signature form and style for the Treatro and Valdez. Soon after its creation, El Teatro Campesino was performing away from the fields and educating the general public about the farmworker’s struggle and earning revenue for the Union. By 1967 Valdez decided to leave the union and instead to focus on his theater where he could now explore issues important to the Chicano beyond the fields; he could begin to develop a core of actors no longer committed to one cause and one style alone.
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Zoot Suit Excerpt
“The Pachuco Style was an act in Life
and his language a new creation.
His will to be was an awesome force
eluding all documentation…
A mythical, quizzical, frightening being
precursor of revolution
Or a piteous, hideous heroic joke
deserving of absolution?
I speak as an actor on the stage.
The Pachuco was existential
for he was an Actor in the streets
both profane and reverential.
It was the secret fantasy of every bato
in or out of the Chicanada
to put on a Zoot Suit and play the Myth
más chucote que la chingada.
¡Pos órale!”
-El Pachuco
Zoot Suit (Act I, Prolouge)
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