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Luis Valdez

 
Writer: Luis Valdez
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Jun 26, 1940 in Delano, California
  • Occupation: Writer, Director, Actor
  • Active: '80s-'90s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Western
  • Career Highlights: La Bamba, Zoot Suit, La Pastorela
  • First Major Screen Credit: Zoot Suit (1981)

Biography

Luis Valdez has spent the bulk of his career using plays and film to raise consciousness and campaign for the rights of Latinos in the United States. Of Mexican-American heritage, Valdez spent much of his youth as a migrant worker. Following graduation from San Jose State University where he studied theater, Valdez worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. With them, he went on a cultural exchange trip to Cuba. In 1965, Valdez teamed up with Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers to found "El Teatro Campesino," a theater group designed to educate audiences and to promote the grape boycott. To this end, he staged short vignettes to dramatize the dreadful living and working conditions suffered by exploited migrant workers. He remained with the troupe through the late '70s when he penned the musical drama Zoot Suit (1978), a look at the racism inherent in the notorious Sleepy Lagoon case that rocked Los Angeles in the early '40s. In 1981, he filmed the production and earned critical acclaim. Valdez is probably best known for his sophomore effort, La Bamba, a biopic chronicling the brief life of 1950s pop star Richie Valens that examined the effects of a cross-cultural upbringing of a talented youth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
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Wikipedia: Luis Valdez
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Luis Valdez

Born June 26, 1940 (1940-06-26) (age 69)
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

Biography

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 paper-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]

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, "Thanks 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 credited with assisting in the development of a university program that prepares students in the entertainment industry: filmmaking, writing, sound, cinematography, and the like.[4]

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.

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]

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.

Hrs and awards (not inclusive)

• No Saco Nada de la Escuela Loco (1970)

See also

References

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

External links

Open book 01.svg Literature portal

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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