Luis Valdez

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Luis Valdez

Born June 26, 1940 (1940-06-26) (age 67)
Delano, California
Occupation Film Director, Producer, Writer and Teacher.
Nationality United States
Literary movement El Teatro Campesino
Notable work(s) Zoot Suit (play and film), La Bamba (film)
Notable award(s) Peabody Award, Aguila Azteca Award, Golden Globe nominations
Official website

Luis Valdez (born June 26, 1940) is an American playwright, writer and film director.

He is regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Education

Valdez was born in Delano, California to migrant farm worker parents. Valdez graduated from James Lick High School in San Jose and went on attend San Jose State University (SJSU) on a scholarship for math and physics. He later switched his major and earned a degree in English in 1964.

According to Valdez when he was six years old, he watched a teacher use part of a paper bag to make papier-mâché masks for a theater production. This experience transformed him and would have a lasting effect. In college it helped lead him to the theater. Valdez's first full-length play, The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa. debuted at SJSU in 1963.[2]

[edit] Career background

After graduation, Valdez spent the next few months with The San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he was introduced to agitprop theatre.

In 1965, Valdez returned to Delano, where he formed El Teatro Campesino, a farm workers' theater troupe. Valdez's teatro was influential, according to Gale Resources, "[T]hanks to Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. What began as a farm workers' theater in the migrant camps of Delano now exploded into a national Chicano theater movement. Theater groups sprang up with surprising speed on college campuses and in communities throughout the United States."[3]

As a media figure of the Chicano Movement, Valdez often lectures about El Teatro Campesino, media representations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and the importance of Chicano-produced media in order to help countering negative ethnic stereotypes.

Mr. Valdez is a founding faculty member and director (c. 1994) of the California State University, Monterey Bay, Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department. He is helping develop a university program that prepares students in the entertainment industry: filmmaking, writing, sound, cinematography, and the like.[4]

[edit] Zoot Suit (play and film)

Valdez's first work that brought him some attention to larger audiences was the play Zoot Suit which ran in 1978 at the Mark Taper Forum, in Los Angeles and played for forty-six weeks to more than 40,000 people. With Zoot Suit, Valdez became the first Chicano director to have a play presented on Broadway in 1979. Later, it was made into a film in 1981.[5]

In Zoot Suit, Luis Valdez weaves a story involving the real-life events of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial--when a group of young Mexican-Americans were wrongfully charged with murder--and the Zoot Suit Riots.

[edit] La Bamba

The film that brought Valdez his "breakthrough into mainstream America" was La Bamba which debuted in 1987.

The film, about Ritchie Valens, a popular Chicano 1950s rock and roller, "was an overwhelming box office success" according to BookRags.[6]

[edit] Filmography

  • The Cisco Kid (1994), writer and director. Valdez also had a small role as Presidente Benito Juárez.
  • La Pastorela (1991), writer and director.
  • Corridos: Tales of Passion & Revolution (1987), writer and director.
  • La Bamba (1987), writer and director.
  • Chicanos Story (1982), writer and director.
  • Zoot Suit (1981), writer and director.

[edit] Honors and awards (not inclusive)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Luis Valdez at the Internet Movie Database.
  2. ^ Bedford/St Martin's Literature web site.
  3. ^ Gale Resources web site.
  4. ^ Harry Walker Speakers Agency biography.
  5. ^ Hayward, Carl. Community Arts Network interview with Valdez.
  6. ^ BookRags web page.

[edit] External links

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