SJSU alumnus, Luis Valdez returns to stage a revival of “Zoot Suit”

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My students and I are looking forward to seeing this production at SJSU! Thank you to all who are involved with putting together this production and to Professor Barnaby for helping us to organize this outing.

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LUIS VALDEZ (Zoot Suit playwright): Zoot Suit is set in 1942 in Los Angeles. The very loose drapes of the clothing allowed the guys to really swing. But the authorities looked down on these so-called Pachucos. I wrote Zoot Suit as a play but it was seen and eventually bought by Universal Studios and it was nominated for a Golden Globe [award]. Eventually I worked my way toward La Bamba, and to this date it is the highest grossing Chicano film to ever come out of Hollywood. It is an amazing thing for me to see my grown son directing my play in the place where I graduated fifty years ago and produced my first plays. KINAN VALDEZ (son and Zoot Suit director): Directing Zoot Suit is an absolute honor and to be doing it here in San Jose State makes it extremely special. I think when we talk about the professional American theater for Latinos my father happens to be a pioneer. Before my father there was not a voice or a space for Latinos, specifically Mexican-Americans, in the American theater until he founded the El Teatro Campesino and pioneered those particular paths. LUIS VALDEZ: Zoot Suit refers to the other America that has been struggling to enhance human liberty and freedom and freedom of expression and cultural fusion, and Zoot Suit really is about that cultural fusion. I was a migrant farm worker child, but I loved school, in contrast to some of my cousins that went another root. They dropped out, and they went the pachuco route. But what’s interesting though is I learned from them street smarts. I learned pachuco slang. That helped me as a writer and helped me to write Zoot Suit. I couldn’t have done it without having that understanding of what my cousins were going through. But in the final analysis because of my college education I was able to stabilize my life in ways that they weren’t. I’ve come back to this campus where it all began because it is important that we all learn to give. Any notions that you're special… you’re not special unless you give what you have learned to someone else. San Jose State was absolutely my ivy league college, and I got to take everything that I needed to be able to deal with the world. I tell the young that it is really important that they get to a university setting because it is there finally in the whole course of your education you finally get a complete picture of the world. The key to changing the world is being in touch with your own heart. You’ve got to resonate. You’ve got to speak the truth to yourself and then to others, regardless of what you do. You can write a piece of music and change the world, or you can go on and be a representative in congress or president, male or female. But you can change the world in odd ways; it’s just a little spark, that’s all it takes. I’ve had my plays done now in Beijing, China. They’ve been done all over Latin America, and they’ve been done in Europe, and I can only hope that they will continue to resonate around the planet. I was very lucky that in San Jose there was San Jose State, and that it became my alma mater. Transcribed by EKS Shang