Luis Valdez: Aesthetics of El Teatro Campesino

Luis Valdez, acclaimed Chicano playwright, and filmmaker, will discuss, with Theatre professor Jorge Huerta, Valdez’s career and his new book, Theatre of the Sphere: The Vibrant Being—an actor’s guide that fuses ancient Mayan and contemporary Western performance aesthetics within an interdisciplinary framework.

The book is also an insight into the unique aesthetic process of Teatro Campesino—from shows staged on the backs of flatbed trucks by the participants in the Delano Grape Strike of the 1960s to international hits like the 1979 play Zoot Suit, the first Latino-authored play to appear on Broadway. Teatro Campesino served as the catalyst for the first Chicano Theatre Festival in Fresno (1970) and as the avant-garde of a young, creative, and politically engaged Chicano theatre that bloomed in California and across the country. Valdez’s now classic films, Zoot Suit (1981) and La Bamba (1987) also helped shape the first wave of Chicanx-Latinx filmmakers that paved the way for others to enter that industry as shapers of their own image.

The event will be accompanied by a display of dozens of images by photojournalists John Kouns and Emmon Clarke, as part of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center’s Farmworker Movement Collection. These photographs capture Teatro Campesino's early performances in union meetings, in the fields, in marches, and on college campuses.

Sign-language interpreters will be provided. To inquire about additional disability support services, please e-mail library.event@csun.edu 5 days in advance of the event.

Sponsors:

The Diversity & Equity Innovation Grant of the President’s Commission on Diversity & Inclusion; the University Student Union; Graduate Studies Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program; the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, the Departments of Theatre, Chicana and Chicano Studies, Cinema and Television Arts, and Journalism; and the University Library.