Luis+Valdez

[[image:LuisValdez172.jpg caption="Luiz Valdez"]]
Valdez was born in [|Delano, California] to [|migrant farm worker] parents. Valdez graduated from [|James Lick High School] in [|San Jose] and went on attend [|San Jose State University] (SJSU) on a scholarship for [|math] and [|physics]. He later switched his major and earned a degree in [|English] in 1964. According to Valdez when he was six years old, he watched a [|teacher] use part of a paper bag to make [|paper-mâché] masks for a theater production. This experience transformed him and would have a lasting effect. In college it helped lead him to the theater. Valdez's first full-length [|play], //The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa.// debuted at SJSU in 1963.

Career Background
====After graduation, Valdez spent the next few months with The San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he was introduced to agitprop theatre. In 1965, Valdez returned to Delano, where he formed El Teatro Campesino, a farm worker's theater troupe. Valdez's teatro was influential, according to Gale Resources, "Thanks to Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. What began as a farm workers' theater in the migrant camps of Delano now exploded into a national Chicano theater movement. Theater groups sprang up with surprising speed on college campuses and in communities throughout the United States."[3] As a media figure of the Chicano Movement, Valdez often lectures about El Teatro Campesino, media representations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and the importance of Chicano-produced media in order to help countering negative ethnic stereotypes. Mr. Valdez is a founding faculty member and director (c. 1994) of the California State University, Monterey Bay, Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department. He is credited with assisting in the development of a university program that prepares students in the entertainment industry: filmmaking, writing, sound, cinematography, and the like.====

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Valdez http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/el_teatro_campe.php http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/chh/bio/valdez_l.htm