Luis Valdez
| Luis Valdez | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 26, 1940 Delano, California |
| Occupation | Film director, producer, writer, playwright, actor, teacher. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | San Jose State University |
| Literary movement | El Teatro Campesino |
| Notable works | Zoot Suit (play and film), La Bamba (film). |
| Notable awards | Peabody Award, Aguila Azteca Award, Golden Globe nominations |
Luis Valdez (born June 26, 1940) is an American playwright, actor, writer and film director. Regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
Luis Valdez was born in Delano, California to migrant farm worker parents. The second of ten children in his family, Valdez began to work in the fields at the age of six. One of his brothers is the actor Daniel Valdez. Throughout his childhood, the family moved from harvest to harvest around the central valleys of California. Due to this peripatetic existence, he attended many different schools before the family finally settled in San Jose, California.
Valdez began school in Stratlord, California. His interest in theatre began in the first grade. Throughout grammar school, Valdez organized plays at school and put on puppet shows in his garage, which, he recalls, were usually about fairy tales. In high school, Valdez was part of the Speech and Drama department and acted in several plays. He described himself as "a very serious student." Valdez graduated from James Lick High School in San Jose and went on to attend San Jose State University (SJSU) on a scholarship for math and physics. During his second year of college, he switched his major to English. While in college, Valdez won a playwriting contest with his one-act play The Theft in 1961. Two years later, in 1963, Valdez's first full-length play, The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, was produced by the drama department and debuted at SJSU.
After graduation, Valdez spent the next few months with The San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he was introduced to agitprop theatre and Italian commedia dell'arte. These two techniques greatly influenced Valdez's development of the basic structure of Chicano theatre: the one-act presentational acto (act).
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