Customer Reviews

Zoot Suit and Other Plays

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Reproduced are three plays by influential Chicano director/playwright Luis Valdez. They are "Zoot Suit," "Bandido!" and "I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges!" Included is a 14-pg. introduction to Valdez's creative history by Univ. of Calif. theater scholar Jorge Huerta.

I first met Valdez and his wife in San Francisco after a preview of the revised "Badges!" in March of 1990. I was impressed by his unhurried cordiality. Valdez's son Kinan was playing Sonny Villa, a Harvard undergraduate who shocks his Hollywood-extra parents with the news that he has quit school. A 1986 production of "Badges!" inspired Josefina Lopez to write her first play "Simply Maria, or The American Dream" and to go on to create more roles for Chicana/Latina actresses.

This past weekend I saw Kinan at the San Diego Rep as the gallant outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez in the fun and bawdy musical "Bandido!" Vasquez was a native Californian of good breeding and above-average education whose legal public execution by hanging in 1875 strained relations further between native Californians and Americans of that era. I read the script immediately before the production, but it's best to wait till later so you don't spoil the suspense of what's going to happen next.

Valdez became the first Chicano playwright to have access to mainstream theater and Broadway stages with the production of "Zoot Suit" in the late '70s. The play was especially successful in Los Angeles, where for people of my father's generation the Sleepy Lagoon case and the Zoot Suit/Servicemen Riots became a part of family history and a bad memory of the virulent racism against Mexicans. Actor Edward James Olmos made the narrator role of El Pachuco memorable.

Zoot Suit is the greatest play! I knew nothing about the Zoot Suit Riots until I took a class in Mexican-American Society and Culture and was introduced to this topic. When did it get erased from our history, and why don't we hear about it?

There is so much symbolism involved in the play, which adds to its appeal. Read it today! Also, take some time and learn about the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the zoot suit riots.

I enjoyed reading the play Zoot Suit. It focuses mainly on the Zoot Suit riots of the 1940's in Los Angeles and the great amount of conflict that surround the riots. The main character, Henry, goes out on a date with his girlfriend, Della. After their date they meet with friends at a club to go dancing. The Downey gang, who is their rival gang, show up at the dance and a fight breaks out. One of the members of the Downey gang is stabbed and Henry and the boys are sent to jail after an unfair trial. When Henry is sent to jail you can really feel emotion toward Henry and his family. The reader feels sympathy for Henry because of the way he is treated during the trial. The play really focuses on the treatment of the pachucos and the conflicts they go through. I was hoping for more concentration on the time period rather than the conflict. The play is very well written and is quite powerful at times. The characters seem to come alive and it feels like they are in the room with you.

This is also a book I need for a class I am taking. The book is really interesting and would like more books like this for pleasure reading. The book was not in the best condition but it is functional and usable.