Luis Valdez

Photo of Luis Valdez from San Jose State University

Biography

Luis Valdez, award-winning Latinx playwright and director, is considered the father of Latinx theatre. He was born in Delano, California to migrant farmworker parents. His family lived around Northern California before settling down in San Jose. He attended San Jose State University where he originally majored in Mathematics and Physics before switching to English and graduated in 1964. After college, Valdez started to work with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the National Farm Workers Association where he would write plays that highlighted farmworkers’ struggle. In 1965, Valdez created El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theater) which stands as the longest running Chicano theater in the United States. His plays include Zoot Suit, Valley of the Heart, Mummified Deer, I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges, and Los Vendidos. Zoot Suit stands as the first Chicano play to be produced on Broadway. Valdez is also a theater and film director. He directed all the world premieres of his plays, as well as the film adaptation of Zoot Suit stands as the first Chicano play to be produced on Broadway. Valdez has received honorary doctorates from the University of Rhode Island, the University of South Florida, Cal Arts, the University of Santa Clara, and San Jose State University. He has received the National Medal of Arts, the Peabody Award, the Aguila Azteca award, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe in recognition for his work.

Career Highlight

In 2016, Luis Valdez won the 2015 National Medal of Arts and Humanities. This was awarded to him by President Obama.This award was created in 1985 and awarded every year since then except from 2016-2018. It is given by the current President to individuals who “are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States.”

Website for National Medal of Arts

Zoot Suit

  • Genre: Drama, Documentary Theatre
  • Breakdown:
    • 40 characters
    • 16M Anglo
    • 1W Anglo
    • 15M Latinx
    • 8W Latinx
  • Synopsis:
    • Inspired by the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial, Zoot Suit, set in Los Angeles 1942, follows Henry Reyna and his gang after they were framed for murder. The trial is stacked against them. With the only real evidence being their style and the fact that most of them were Mexican, they were sentenced to prison for the murder. This play explores the appeal of the case with the help of some Anglo advocates and Reyna’s self-discovery of his heritage and discrimination of Mexican-Americans.
  • Development/Production History:
    • Premiere Mark Taper Forum (1978) 
    • Broadway (1979)  
    • Film (1982) 
    • Revival, Mark Taper Forum (2017)
  • Photos from production:
Zoot Suit Original Production (1978).
Photo taken by Jay Thompson

I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges

  • Genre: Dramedy
  • Breakdown:
    • 2M Latinx
    • 1W Latinx
    • 1W Asian
  • Synopsis:
    • Set in 1985, Sonny is a young Mexican-American prodigy from Monterey Park, California who dropped out of Harvard Law School in pursuit of his dream to become a Hollywood superstar. Sonny returns home with his Asian-American girlfriend Anita to visit his mom and dad, both Hollywood “extra” actors. This play deals with the lack of representation in Hollywood and how detrimental stereotypes portrayed in the media can have real effects on all people.
  • Development/Production History:
    • World Premiere at the Los Angeles Theater Center in 1986 (5 months)
    • Production in San Diego in 1987 from April-May
    • Josefina Lopez’s New Casa 0101 Theater (February 8 – March 10, 2013)
  • Photos from production:
Casa 0101 Production of I Don’t Have To Show You No Stinking Badges.
Photo by Ed Krieger
  • Plays
    • Las dos caras del patroncito (1965)
    • Los Vendidos (1967)
    • No saco nada de la escuela (1969)
    • Vietnam Campesino (1970)
    • Zoot Suit (1979)
    • Bandidos (1981)
    • Corridos (1982)
    • Bernabe (1985)
    • I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinkin’ Badges (1986)
    • Valley of the Heart (2013)

Reflection on Contribution to Anti-Racist Theatre

Anti-racist work is work that deconstructs past and present racist narratives about a cultural group. In the case of Valdez, his work focuses on the Latinx experience, especially, the Mexican-American experience. Valdez’s work is very foundational to Latinx theory with his work in Zoot Suit and I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges highlighting the struggles of Mexican-Americans in the judicial system and the media. Valdez unapologetically uses Spanish and Caló throughout his plays as a way to highlight certain experiences. His knowledge of a specific dialect is clear and helps show Mexican-Americans as a group. Although some of his work might be problematic for certain racial groups, his work powerfully highlights problems that Mexican-Americans and Latinxs face in the United States. By showing characters confronting real-life discrimination, Valdez showcases a segment of United States society that is not often portrayed in theatre and film. In Zoot Suit, a play that focuses on Mexican-Americans in the 1940s, Valdez examines problems that were, and still do, albeit, present to underserved Mexican communities. The racism that the characters experienced in the play was not dramatization. It was something that many Mexican-Americans had to face during that time, and now in a different manner. The same is true for I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges where Valdez explores problems of representation that were true in the 1980s and persist even now. Although both these plays at times offer problematic representations of certain groups, Valdez does a great job at exploring hardships that are common in the Mexican-American community.

Compiled by Cristina Ruiz, Anthropology and Sociology, 2022.