On Nov. 1, El Teatro Campesino turns 50, and on that day begins a year-long and well-deserved look back at its storied voyage.
From its 1965 birth performing one-act actos on the backs of flatbed trucks that were essentially PSAs for Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers Union, to 1970s work with Peter Brook’s Paris-based International Centre of Theater Research and shows at the Popular Comic Theatre Festival in France – there is plenty to see.
That includes the heights of Zoot Suit on Broadway, later adapted into a film, to perennial musical favorites like La Pastorela and La Virgen del Tepeyac, still performed around Christmastime at Mission San Juan Bautista. From earning a Peabody and Obie to mentoring successive generations of Latino theater artists to shaping the creative landscape ahead.
And though Valdez created a new work two years ago in Valley of the Heart (his first new play in 13 years), the legacy has, in the words of its website, been in the process of changing hands:
“Whereas the previous generations had engaged in American farm worker labor struggles, the new ensemble embraced world wide contemporary struggles such as growing corporate control and the environmental movement.”
It is a Teatro Campesino for tomorrow. Before proceeding forward, they kick off the year-long commemoration with the annual Dia de los Muertos celebration this weekend in San Juan.
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