Local playwright Luis Valdez’s nationally acclaimed period
drama
”
Zoot Suit
”
is kicking off a nationwide 25th anniversary tour at San Jose’s
Center for Employment Training (CET) this month.
Local playwright Luis Valdez’s nationally acclaimed period drama “Zoot Suit” is kicking off a nationwide 25th anniversary tour at San Jose’s Center for Employment Training (CET) this month.
“It was such an enormous success in 2003, we figured the play is strong enough to justify a tour,” Valdez said.
El Teatro Campesino produced “Zoot Suit” in October 2003, in Valdez’ home base of San Juan Bautista, where it sold out for six straight months. Now, with a new generation of the Valdez family and El Teatro actors, it is time to tell the story again.
The backbone behind this production are Valdez’s three sons – Kinan Valdez, who directs the show; Anahuac Valdez, who plays The Press and is a producer; and Lakin Valdez, who plays Henry Reyna.
“They are the company now. They do everything,” Valdez said.
El Teatro Campesino has been touring with shows since 1965. While “Zoot Suit” is a huge production, the company has found many venues willing to invest the time and money to host it. After performances in San Jose, they will travel to Austin, San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, Albuquerque, N.M. and Phoenix. Ariz. Valdez hopes to continue booking shows to take the tour through January.
The Center for Employment Training, which trains and places people for vocational positions, will present “Zoot Suit” in its Antonio R. Soto Theater. Any profits the center makes from the run of the show will help fund more training programs.
“It’s back by popular demand,” Max Martinez director of communications at CET said. “It has a message that people from different perspectives can relate to, and it’s just good theater.”
The show recreates World War II-era Los Angeles with its portrayal of the Sleepy Lagoon murders, the railroading of numerous young Mexican-Americans through the justice system and the infamous “Zoot Suit Riots” that followed, in which sailors in “Taxicab Brigades” set about attacking Mexican-American Zoot suiters.
“It’s a piece of history that was swept under the carpet for a while,” Valdez said.
He said people, especially teenagers, are intrigued by the story and the music.
“[Zoot suiters] were struggling to achieve an American identity and Zoot suit was the hip streetwise American identity,” Valdez said.
“Today you see hip hop and other forms of music that young people tap into as an expression of the time.”
He hopes this tour will bring the story to a new generation of young people.
“‘Zoot Suit’ was a Broadway musical but it was home grown. Now we are taking it to communities where people don’t normally get the chance to see these types of shows,” Valdez said.
The musical made its world premiere in 1978 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where it ran for an unprecedented 12 weeks. Zoot Suit broke all attendance records at the Taper and subsequently moved to the larger Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood. It opened on Broadway in 1979 and was adapted for the screen and released as a film starring a young Edward James Olmos by Universal Pictures in 1981.
The Antonio R. Soto Theater is located at 701 Vine St. in San Jose. Shows are scheduled Aug. 27 through Sept. 11, Thursday through Saturday at 8pm with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm and Sunday evening performances at 7:30pm. Student matinees are held at 11am. Tickets prices range from $22 to $45 and can be purchased online at www.cetweb.org or charged by phone at (925) 275-9005.
