Industry Partners

El Teatro Campesino Comes to CET For Well Known Zoot Suit Performance Run

It has been the vision of CET's Executive Director, Hermelinda Sapien, to restore and convert their auditorium into a first-class performing arts theatre and then to bring Luis Valdez' El Teatro Campesino (ETC) to San Jose. Both vision and mission were accomplished and culminated during the recent co-production of Zoot Suit at the Anthony R. Soto Theater on CET San Jose campus this past August.

About El Teatro Campesino

In 1965, an aspiring playwright named Luis Valdez left the San Francisco Mime Troupe to join Cesar Chavez in organizing farmworkers in Delano, California. Valdez organized the workers into El Teatro Campesino (The Farmworkers Theater) in an effort to popularize and raise funds for the grape boycott and farmworker strike.

In 1968, El Teatro Campesino left the fields in a conscious effort to create a theater that reflected the greater Chicano experience. Within a year, the company was awarded an Obie Award, for "demonstrating the politics of survival," as well as its first of two Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards.

By 1970, El Teatro Campesino had established what would come to be known as teatro chicano. It was style of agitprop theater, incorporating the spiritual and presentational style of the Italian Renaissance commedia dell'arte with the humor, character types, folklore and popular culture of the Mexican theater, the type presented by vaudeville companies and tent theaters that had toured the Southwest earlier this century.

The development of this style can be credited to the company's relocation to San Juan Bautista, California in 1971. The small, rural town offered a quiet retreat from the city's distractions, enabling the troupe to focus on their work. Peter Brook, the former artistic director of England's Shakespeare Academy, took his Paris-based company, the International Centre of Theater Research, to San Juan for a collaboration with El Teatro Campesino. Brook's collaboration helped focus the attention of the international theater community on El Teatro Campesino, which was already a significant and definitive force in the Chicano Movement. The end result was the creation of the piece, THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS. It toured colleges and farm labor camps throughout northern and central California.

Also that year, El Teatro Campesino began experimenting with the relationship between music, dance, and theater, and as a result, LA CARPA DE LOS RASQUACHIS (The Tent of the Underdogs) was created. It toured the United States, and in 1976, when the play reached its zenith, the company launched an eight-country European tour. The following year, LA CARPA DE LOS RASQUACHIS was produced and aired on public television, to critical success, under the title EL CORRIDO.

Recognizing the need to actively venture into the commercial theater sector, El Teatro Campesino opened its workshop/playhouse in 1981. CORRIDOS: TALES OF PASSION AND REVOLUTION, written and directed by Luis Valdez, was the first major playhouse production. It was subsequently awarded eleven Bay Area Critics Awards, including Best Musical. In 1987, KQED/San Francisco, in association with El Teatro Campesino, adapted CORRIDOS for television. It won the prestigious George Peabody Award for Excellence in Television.

For over 25 years, company has produced an evolving series of plays termed "The Miracle, Mystery, and Historical Cycle of San Juan Bautista" or simply, "The Cycle Plays." During the Christmas season, either the miracle play classic of LA VIRGEN DEL TEPEYAC, or the traditional shepherds play, LA PASTORELA, is performed in the Old Mission of San Juan Bautista. In 1991, Luis Valdez adapted and directed El Teatro Campesino's film version of LA PASTORELA for the PBS Great Performances series, which starred Linda Ronstadt and Paul Rodriguez. Recently, the company has undergone major reorganization to better achieve its mission to serve as a unique institution for artists, and to develop, produce and present new works in the theater, film and video. Now in its 30th year as a professional theater-arts organization, El Teatro Campesino is especially proud of its new generation of talented actors, directors, and producers, who are spearheading the company into the 21st century. Like a serpent crawling out of its own skin, El Teatro Campesino continues to evolve and refine its aesthetic in order to realize its full artistic potential.

Learn more about CET's Facilities Rental here or call (408) 534-5242.

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