Annotations for Artistic Medium: Theater

I see the work of the Teatro as being a Chicano Latino theater company over the years, but it's been more than that. It's been a cultural institution. I think we've had an impact not just as a theater company, but as a mover, a mover and a shaker.

I'm Maria Martin. For more than 35 years now, the theater company El Teatro Campesino has brought the Chicano and Latino experience to the American stage.

Once a ragtag troupe performing in the great fields of California, it staged the back of a flatbed truck. El Teatro Campesino has made its mark from movies to Broadway, training a now veteran generation of Latino actors and directors and influencing a new generation.

Like most days, it's busy at the old packing shed that Teatro Campesino converted to its theater and headquarters. Kinan and Anahuac Valdez, both young directors, actors and filmmakers, are busy rehearsing a new play.

And in the Teatro's recording studio, their uncle, singer, composer and actor Daniel Valdez, is recording the soundtrack of the Teatro's annual miracle play, The Virgen of Tepeyac.

Many of those who will act in this play this year have done so countless times before. Some 10, 20 or even 30 years. Like the Teatro Campesino itself, it's become a tradition, an expression of community and familia.

At that time, I was aware that the problem with trying to be a Chicano playwright in America was that there was no such thing as Hispanic theater in America.

There was community Hispanic theater, but professional Hispanic theater in America was almost nonexistent.

So I saw it as a challenge, you know. Here's a challenge to try to fill this gap, this hole, this enormous vacuity.

Teatro's early performances were simple, agitprop pieces. Valdez called them actos.

Bilingual, one-act skits using broad characters. The grower, el patroncito. The strikers, los huelguistas. And los esquirolaes, the scabs.

In those days, there were no sets, no costumes. The actors wore signs around their necks with their characters' names. The stage was the back of a flatbed truck. It was, says Valdez, our own brand of commedia dell'arte.

So back when we started, it was basically an empty plane. And I knew that as a playwright. Here I was a playwright without an audience, a playwright without a theater that could produce my works, a playwright without actors, Latino actors that could do my roles.

So I had to begin to write to my reality. And so agitprop and the acto level, and later the mito and the corrido, was the way that I could survive as a theater artist by not overtaxing, if you will, the preparation of my actors and my audience.

Political theater made perfect sense. It was free. That makes a lot of sense to an audience.

But it was passionate. And it was pointed at an action that they could also participate in. So that allowed our survival.

That led to my being invited to commission to write a play for the Mark Taper Forum.

By that time, the audience in Los Angeles was willing to pay for theater tickets.

So that proved that, oh, Latinos can finally sustain commercial theater. The problem is that there has not been another one since then.

And so Zoot Suit became a symbol of Chicano identity, but also a symbol of American identity. So that's what the play's about.

Four hundred thousand people saw the production of Zoot Suit at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where it ran for 46 weeks, with actor Edward James Olmos in the lead role of El Pachuco.

Before I got that phone call, I could not work in this community because there was nothing for me to do. I've been entertaining people since 1961. Here it is, 1978. I had not gained one penny from the American theater. The first paycheck I ever got was from Zoot Suit when I made 250 bucks a week for acting on stage.

Actor Edward James Olmos, star of Stand and Deliver and Miami Vice, recalls he was a furniture mover when he was asked to audition for Zoot Suit and saw a script of the play.

What makes America great is that it is dynamic, and what makes any theater great or dynamic is the audience.

Though Luis Valdez is widely considered a pioneer, he himself doesn't consider his work nearly done yet. Last year, Valdez premiered a new original play, The Mummified Deer. Zoot Suit had a successful revival in Chicago. And in the long term, a number of important film projects remain on El Teatro Campesino's horizon.