Reviews for El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement

The average rating for El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-11-06 00:00:00 Charles Smith This is such an interesting book. First of all, Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez was not allowed to quote from any of her interview with Valdez or get permission to quote from Los Actos, because she would not let Valdez review and approve her work prior to publication. She critiques earlier academic discussions of El Teatro Campesino as emphasizing European over Mexican theatrical influences, focusing on Valdez at the exclusion of many other key players, and focusing on the texts when really the bodily humor of the play's performance were key. Her book covers the period from 1965-1980. It is not chronological. Each chapter focuses on the same time period to add layers to our understanding of El Teatro Campesino. The first chapter focuses on El Teatro Campesino as part of the Mexican Popular Performance Tradition. As such, her work calls for a revaluation of Chicano Theater more broadly in the 1960s and 1970s. The second chapter highlights that the vast majority of the plays were composed through a collective improvisation mode or a collective oral composition process rather than as a single authored texts. She urges us not just to react to performances but to understand how the theater troop sought to embody a "practice of communicative action based on Native American (Mayan and Aztec) wisdom and teachings," termed The Theater of the Sphere (80). The third chapter explores the roles of women in El Teatro Campesino. Broyles-González has critiqued academic discussions of Los Actos for prioritizing the involvement of Valdez in the production of the plays at the expense of the anonymous others who were just as involved in the productions, including the writing process (130). Broyles-González presents her chapter about women in El Teatro Campesino as a collectively-written project, emphasizing the women's voices through oral histories. Here in the form as well as content she elects for the chapter, she writes back against Valdez's reception as either sole or most important author. This chapter's discussion of women's experiences in the theater included discussion of the limited portrayal of women in the plays themselves. I was really drawn into her discussion of Socorro Valdez's appropriation of male roles. The final chapter focuses on the transformation of El Teatro Campesino from an alternative to mainstream production company. She specifically focuses here on Zoot Suit . The author feels that attempts to mainstream the company destroyed the vitality of the theater "was a function of its rootedness in the oppositional working-class cultural practices of the Mexican popular performance tradition" (239).

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-01 00:00:00 Jamie Erhard Interesting history of the use of theater during the farm workers' strikes in California in the 1960s-70s. They used skits as a social justice movement and a way to educate and organize the farm workers.