The Chicano Theatre Movement and Actor Training in the United States

Home , Bread and Puppet Theater, El Chicano, El Teatro Campesino, Los Vendidos, Luis Valdez, Maria Ouspenskaya

FROM LA CARPA TO THE CLASSROOM: THE CHICANO THEATRE MOVEMENT AND ACTOR TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES

Dennis Sloan

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

May 2020

Committee:

Jonathan Chambers, Advisor

Tim Brackenbury Graduate Faculty Representative

Angela K. Ahlgren

Dennis Sloan

Jonathan Chambers, Advisor

The historical narrative of actor training has thus far been limited to the history of

Eurocentric actor training. Put another way, it has been predominantly white. While the history of actor training has been understudied in general, the history of training for actors of color has been almost non-existent. Yet scholars including Alison Hodge and Mark Evans have made direct links between actor training and both the evolution of theatre and the development of personal, artistic, and socio-political worldviews. Since the recorded history of actor training focuses almost exclusively on white practitioners, however, this history privileges the experiences and perspectives of white practitioners over those of color. Rooted in the argument that a history of actor training based so exclusively on whiteness is incomplete and inaccurate, this dissertation explores the history of actor training for Latinx actors, especially those who participated in and came out of the Chicanx Theatre Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and who went on to engage in other training programs afterwards. Relying primarily on original archival research, I document multifaceted attempts to train Latinx actors in the United States in the mid- to late twentieth century.

In five chapters, I examine the beginnings of Latinx actor training in the United States; the Theatre of the Sphere training system devised by Luis Valdez and the El Teatro Campesino ensemble in the 1960s and 1970s; the various training opportunities offered by TENAZ (Teatro

Nacional de Aztlán), a national network of Chicano theatres that operated from the late 1960s into the early 1990s; the efforts of the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta program in the 1980s; and the short-lived MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre established by Jorge Huerta at iv the University of California, San Diego in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In examining these efforts, I argue that theatre artists and practitioners of color have historically engaged in their own training practices when white, mainstream training have failed to include them. In the process, I highlight the overall whiteness and Eurocentrism of historical accounts of actor training in the United States. I suggest that the dominance of white artists and training systems has placed extra burdens on artists, teachers, and actors of color to create more culturally specific approaches that address their specific needs. Ultimately, I argue that such approaches offer key information about how individuals and programs might begin to diversify training programs in ways that are more culturally inclusive. In sum, I argue that these largely undocumented efforts deserve a place in the history of both actor training and theatre in the United States, so that they may inform actor training moving forward. v

To David, who made it possible. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, thank you to my committee. Thank you to Dr. Jonathan Chambers, who believed that I could accomplish things I had never even considered, and whose guidance has always been both generous and wise. Thank you to Dr. Cynthia Baron, whose class first implanted the idea for this dissertation in my mind, and whose enthusiasm for her students’ work is unmatched. Thanks also to Dr. Angela Ahlgren, who has always been willing to mentor me in any way I ask. And thanks to Dr. Tim Brackenbury, from the Department of Communication

Sciences and Disorders, who has been a willing and active committee member and who has offered fresh and productive insights.

I would also like to give thanks to the professors and colleagues who have provided feedback on various parts of this work along the way. At BGSU, these include Dr. Lesa

Lockford, Dr. Eileen Cherry Chandler, Mohamadreza Babaee, Dan Cullen, Katelyn Gendelev,

Dr. Rebecca Hammonds, Seung-A “Liz” Lee, Alesa MecGregor, Leesi Patrick, Daniel Ricken,

Sejohn Serowik, Rebekah Sinewe, and Tessa Vaschel. Outside of the BGSU community, I owe similar thanks to Dr. Jon Rossini and Dr. Patricia Ybarra, along with Shelby Brewster, Lilianne

Lugo Herrera, Dr. Elena Machado, and Dr. Marcos Steuernagel. I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr. Slade Billew, who was very generous in sharing resources with me.

For my archival research, I am indebted to Amy Lynn Fry at the BGSU library, and also to the staff members of the Special Collections and University Archives department at San Diego

State University; the Special Research Collections department at the University of California,

Santa Barbara; and the Special Collections and Archives Department at the University of

California, San Diego. I am especially grateful to Daisy Muralles at UCSB and to Heather

Smedberg at UCSD for their very kind assistance while I worked in the archives and afterwards. vii Aside from my colleagues at BGSU, there are many who deserve special appreciation for their enormous support on a personal level. These include Dr. Bryan Vandevender and Dr.

Christiana Molldrem Harkulich for their frequent advice and encouragement; Mandy Rausch,

Jason Hays, and Darinne Paciotti, for cheering me onward on a near-daily basis; Sharon Benge,

Dr. Patrick Bynane, Dr. Leigh Henderson, Dr. Mary Lou Hoyle, and Dr. Adrienne McLean, for their help and encouragement in my journey to graduate school; and Gina Wilkinson, for planting a seed of a belief many years ago that I could accomplish anything.

I would also like to thank my mother, Adriana Dennis, and the late David Dennis, whose very real sacrifices started me on this path. And finally, I must give thanks to David Sloan, without whose unwavering support and unending generosity not a single page would ever have been written. viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Mainstream Actor Training in the United States ...... 5

Black American and Asian American Actor Training in the United States ...... 22

Toward a History of Latinx Actor Training ...... 43

CHAPTER I: THE RISE OF THE CHICANX THEATRE MOVEMENT ...... 53

US Latinx Theatre Before the Chicanx Theatre Movement ...... 54

La Causa: The Farm Worker’s Movement ...... 65

El Movimiento: The Chicanx Movement ...... 69

El Teatro Campesino and the Birth of Chicanx Theatre ...... 76

CHAPTER II: EL TEATRO CAMPESINO AND THE THEATRE OF THE SPHERE .... 105

Pensamiento Serpentino ...... 110

The Theatre of the Sphere: An Introduction ...... 120

The Theatre of the Sphere: A Three (or Four) Part Process ...... 131

The Veinte Pasos: The Theatre of the Sphere in Action ...... 137

Criticisms, Responses, and New Analysis ...... 148

CHAPTER III: TENAZ: TRAINING THE ACTORS OF AZTLÁN ...... 164

TENAZ: A Brief History ...... 166

Training Through Publication ...... 179

Training Through Critique ...... 187

Training Through Festival Workshops ...... 195

Training Through Other Workshops ...... 206 ix

Conclusion ...... 214

CHAPTER IV: TEATRO META: A GOAL WITHOUT BORDERS ...... 216

Teatro Meta: Beginnings ...... 221

Early Actor Training Efforts ...... 239

The Ford Foundation Years ...... 252

Endings and Assessments ...... 261

CHAPTER V: SEPARATE BUT UNEQUAL: UCSD’S MFA IN HISPANIC-AMERICAN

THEATRE ...... 268

Program Planning...... 270

The Program ...... 280

Program Challenges ...... 288

After the Review: Results and Responses...... 302

Conclusion ...... 307

CONCLUSION ...... 312

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 321 x

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 Veinte Pasos ...... 139

INTRODUCTION

The recorded history of actor training in the United States is incomplete. The historical narrative on this topic has thus far been limited to the history of Eurocentric actor training; put another way, it has been predominantly white. If the history of actor training has been understudied—and I believe that it has—then the history of training for actors of color has been almost non-existent. Though culturally specific theatre in the US and the role of artists of color in US theatre writ large have gained increasing attention in recent decades, such attention was for a time limited to institutions and playwrights. Even more recently, scholars have begun to address issues of representation, turning their attention to the bodies on stage. Rarely, however, has anyone discussed how those bodies were trained and otherwise readied before they got there.

Actor training may appear, to some, inconsequential to the socio-political import theatre and performance can carry. It is, however, one of the most pivotal components of theatre in the twentieth century. As Alison Hodge has noted, “actor training came to be central to theatrical innovation in the twentieth century, with many of its key practitioners also being responsible for landmark productions in North American and European theatre.”1 Hodge refers here to mainstream (i.e., white) North American and European theatre and her anthology reflects that in its inclusion of essays about figures including Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau, Bertolt

Brecht, Joseph Chaikin, and Anne Bogart. In his companion piece to Hodge’s book, Mark Evans collects key excerpts from the writings of many of the same figures. Evans broadens his focus on their work, however, connecting it to larger socio-political trends and movements, suggesting that innovations in actor training reflect the same desires for change and progress that constitute

1 Alison Hodge, ed., Actor Training, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010), xviii. 2 the socio-political contexts in which they arise. “The desire to change, to revolutionize, and to reject what had gone before,” he writes, “was part of a wider modernist project, linked back to the Enlightenment and its themes of change, progress, and systematic improvement.”2 He continues: “At the heart of each method, and therefore embedded in its conception, is a new way of seeing the world, a new way of understanding how and why people behave in the way that they do. Each generation seeks to clear away the preconceptions that have accumulated in the act of observing the world.”3 Thus, Hodge and Evans see in actor training a direct link to both the evolution of theatre and the development of personal, artistic, and socio-political worldviews.

If actor training plays important theatrical and socio-political roles, any history of actor training that omits training for actors of color fails to address important developments. Indeed,

Evans concedes the authority given to white trainers and theorists in the written archive, including in his own volume:

Consider whose perspectives might be missing from the extracts in this book—does it

matter, for instance, that most extracts are written by or about white, able-bodied, middle-

aged men? In what ways does the actual style of writing for each extract, as much as the

content, reveal a different way of understanding the world? How do these extracts reflect

the politics of actor training—who has access, where does power lie in the classroom,

what ideological assumptions are implicit in the training?4

I would like to extend Evans’s argument to suggest that it is not only the style of writing and the content of these excerpts that mark their connection to white, able-bodied, middle-aged men, but

2 Mark Evans, ed., The Actor Training Reader (New York: Routledge, 2015), xxvi.

3 Ibid., xxvii.

4 Ibid., xxviii. 3 their mere existence. While some acting texts by women certainly exist, most of the written material on the topic of actor training is in fact written by white men and, as a result, almost exclusively reflects the experiences and perspectives of white men. With rare exception, even acting texts written by women are written by white women. On this basis, I argue that the history of actor training in the US does not account for the experiences and perspectives of actors of color, or of the culturally specific institutions in which they have often done their work.

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the history of actor training for Latinx5 actors, particularly those who participated in and came out of the Chicanx6 theatre movement of the

1960s and 1970s, and who went on to engage in other training programs afterwards. Though it is almost entirely unaccounted for, I argue that there existed in the mid- to late twentieth century an extensive and multi-faceted attempt to train Latinx actors for work in the professional theatre in the United States. This study addresses several questions. What training has historically been available to Latinx actors? Where did they receive it, and who provided it? What did Latinx actors study? What were the specific goals of actor training designed for and aimed specifically at Latinx actors, artistically, socially, and politically? What culturally specific perspectives and ideas did such training introduce into US theatre? How have these perspectives and ideas informed (or not informed) broader arenas for actor training in the US, most specifically training in the academy? How might writing this unwritten history inform actor training in the US

5 Latinx is a nation-, gender-, and language- inclusive term that encompasses those individuals from North, Central, and South America who might otherwise be categorized as Hispanic or Latin American. I explain my use of this term later in this introduction.

6 Though I have not seen the term “Chicanx” elsewhere, I pattern it after the term “Latinx” in this dissertation. When quoting directly from other sources that use terms such as “Chicano,” “Chicano/a,” etc., I retain these original terms. 4 moving forward?

In some ways, these last two questions were raised by scholars in the 2010 anthology,

The Politics of American Actor Training, edited by Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud.7

Some essays in this volume deal with the relationships between government authorities and artists, between institutions and artists, and between teachers and students, while others deal more specifically with the identity politics of race, gender, sexual identity, and ability. These essays, particularly Micha Espinosa and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman’s “Identity Politics and the

Training of Latino Actors,”8 prove useful to my study in that they highlight the ways in which mainstream actor training currently fails Latinx actors. None of these essays, however, deals with the history of culturally specific training that has been made available to Latinx actors or other actors of color in the US. Part of my goal, then, is to begin to record that history, at least as it pertains to Latinx actor training. In part, this is because I feel it important to recognize the labor of those Latinx artists who worked to make such training available and who, in doing so, made heretofore unrecognized contributions to the history of US theatre. Also, though, I want to suggest that some of the questions raised by essays like those in The Politics of American Actor

Training—particularly those related to how we can better train actors of color, and how we can incorporate culturally specific experiences into existing training models – have in some ways already been answered.

Though they have not always had access to mainstream training programs, actors of color

7 Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud, eds., The Politics of American Actor Training (New York: Routledge,

2010).

8 Micha Espinosa and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, “Identity Politics and the Training of Latino Actors,” in Margolis and Renaud, The Politics of American Actor Training, 150-161. 5 have not spent the whole of US history waiting for white artists to decide how to train them.

Instead, they have in many cases taken their training upon themselves—sometimes with the collaboration of white artists, and sometimes without it. My project in this dissertation is to document how Latinx artists went about creating and engaging in these training opportunities, and to consider their potential effects on broader actor training practices, and on US theatre overall. In order to begin this study, it is important to provide some context. To that end, in the balance of this introduction, I will first provide a brief history of mainstream actor training in the

US. Then, to demonstrate that culturally specific actor training has a complex and largely unstudied history and to contextualize my study of Latinx actor training, I will touch upon training for Black American and Asian American actors. I will conclude by turning my attention to outlining the parameters of my study, wherein I seek to address the rich history of actor training in and after the Chicanx theatre movement.

Mainstream Actor Training in the United States

Although actor training in the US began as early as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (and I will address some of these efforts in this introduction), most historical accounts of such training begin with the arrival of Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre to the United States in 1923. From there, many histories trace the American adaptation of

Stanislavsky’s ideas by organizations like the Group Theatre and the Actor’s Studio, and by acting teachers including Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner. Few scholars have explored actor training in the US beyond this mainstream understanding, but some have sought out its history before, outside of, and within the gaps of this narrative. Because existing scholarship on actor training beyond mainstream, System-based approaches nevertheless references the influence of Stanislavsky’s System, however, it is necessary to begin by briefly 6 recounting how that work came to be so dominant.

Sharon Carnicke notes that Stanislavsky took members of his Moscow Art Theatre to tour Europe and the US in 1923 and 1924 to help address financial difficulties both he and the company faced at that time.9 The US, especially, offered a hospitable artistic environment; many

Russian artists had become popular in the States, and Stanislavsky’s name and reputation were already known from a 1906 European tour.10 While in the US in 1923, the company received such praise for “the actors’ seamless portrayal of character, their creation of an illusion of real life without obvious theatricality but with clear artistry, and their ensemble work” that they quickly “became the measure against which all acting could be judged.”11 As Carnicke points out, however, “the productions that arrived in the US had been created without the System.”12

Thus, though the actors whose work was so admired on the US tour sparked a deepened interest in Stanislavsky, it was not their performances that introduced his System to US actors.

Cynthia Baron notes that Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya deserve credit for distributing the ideas of Stanislavsky’s early System in the United States.13 Originally members of the Moscow Art Theatre, Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya taught at the American Laboratory

9 Sharon Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (New York:

Routledge, 2009), 21.

10 Ibid., 22.

11 Ibid., 24.

12 Ibid., 28.

13 Cynthia Baron, Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre (London: Palgrave Macmillan,

2016), xiv. 7

Theatre, a repertory company and acting school that operated from 1923 to 1930.14 Boleslavsky would go on to publish Acting: The First Six Lessons in 1933, providing the first published articulation of Stanislavsky’s ideas in English.15 It is in this text that Boleslavsky introduces concepts so central to Stanislavsky’s early work on the System. Here, through fictional dialogue between “I” (the teacher) and “The Creature” (the student), he suggests the same emphasis on concentration that would later feature in Elizabeth Hapgood’s translation of Stanislavsky’s An

Actor Prepares.16 Boleslavsky also includes a lesson on “Memory of Emotion,” which he later refers to as “affective memory,” crediting French psychologist Théodule Ribot.17 Stanislavsky also makes use of Ribot’s work in a chapter of An Actor Prepares entitled “Emotion Memory.”18

In both texts, emotional memory or memory of emotion suggests that the actor focus on a past experience in order to call up and relive the emotions experienced when the event(s) occurred.

Boleslavsky’s third lesson, “Dramatic Action,”19 correlates to Stanislavsky’s third chapter,

14 Ibid., 97.

15 Though Boleslavsky’s text has been published in many versions and editions, I am relying on a recent collection of works edited by Rhonda Blair, because it pairs Boleslavsky’s text with information from his lectures at the

American Laboratory Theatre, as well as a collection of essays by Maria Ouspenskaya; see Rhonda Blair, ed., Acting

The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2010).

16 Konstantin Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Hapgood (New York: Routledge, 1936). I use

Hapgood’s translation rather than more recent and more complete versions because it was the dominant translation in use for much of the twentieth century.

17 Blair, Acting: The First Six Lessons, 15.

18 Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, 177.

19 Blair, Acting: The First Six Lessons, 22. 8

“Action.”20 Here, both texts encourage the actor to focus not solely on what their characters feel on stage, but also on what they do. Actions can be outward physical actions, as Stanislavsky often describes—to wait, to look, to light a fire21—or, as Boleslavsky argues, inner psychological actions—to love, to scorn, to reproach.22 In this way, both Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky introduced the central ideas that would come to dominate mainstream actor training in the United

States. From this point on, actor training would focus heavily on relaxation, concentration, and verb-based action performed in pursuit of an objective or a goal.

As some scholars have discovered, however, such ideas were not entirely new to actors in the US in the 1920s and 1930s. A broader investigation of training approaches both before and after Stanislavsky’s arrival shows that these concepts were in many ways in line with, rather than in contradiction to, the trajectory on which actors in the US were already traveling.

Garff B. Wilson and James H. McTeague have chronicled the early stages of actor training in the United States. Wilson divides stage acting in the nineteenth-century US into informal “schools” of acting. These schools were not the formal institutions we might think of today, but schools of thought, each led by a group of notable actors who modeled a particular style of acting from the heroic to the classical to the emotional. In Wilson’s account, “the force of training, example, and experience” were integral factors that determined acting style.23 Thus, formalized training was only one aspect of an actor’s learning; apprenticeship and active stage work were equally important.

20 Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, 35.

21 Ibid., 38-46.

22 Blair, Acting the First Six Lessons, 26-27.

23 Garff B. Wilson, A History of American Acting (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), 9. 9

Training during this period was neither uniform nor uniformly specific to acting. Rather, actors like Edwin Forrest and Edwin Booth trained in the practices of declamation and elocution, which they then applied to the performance of dramatic roles. Additionally, physical training varied from school to school. Forrest worked to observe the physicality of persons he deemed similar to those he portrayed.24 The “ladies” of the “classical school,” on the other hand, “learned to move with grace and dignity; they learned to execute their actions economically and effectively.”25 Like others in Wilson’s history, these actors were often self-taught. Many received no formal training and learned through apprenticeship and/or production work.

Though Wilson is critical of Steele MacKaye’s influence on acting in the United States, he concedes that MacKaye was an influential teacher.26 A student of Delsarte whom Wilson places in the classical school, MacKaye also trained at the Theatre Francaise.27 MacKaye emphasized the “science of movement” and argued for the body as the vehicle through which all experience and emotion are expressed.28 McTeague also recognizes MacKaye’s importance.

McTeague examines the earliest formalized actor training programs in the US, beginning with

MacKaye’s Lyceum Theatre School in 1884 and ending with F.F. Mackay’s 1898 founding of the National Dramatic Conservatory. McTeague argues that such schools provided a prototype for the most visible training programs that would succeed them, even after the 1923 arrival of

24 Ibid., 23.

25 Ibid., 41.

26 Ibid., 100.

27 Ibid., 99-100.

28 Ibid., 101. 10

Stanislavsky’s work in the US.29

McTeague’s history depicts a departure from the repertory and apprentice system of actor training described by Wilson, in favor of formal schools dedicated to teaching the art and craft of acting. McTeague divides these schools into two major categories: the “speculative,” which aimed to equip the actor with tools and knowledge in preparation for the stage, and the

“practical,” which emphasized training the actor in amateur production rather than in the classroom.30

McTeague also highlights the evolution of acting theory in the US, calling attention to the ways in which ideas later made popular by Stanislavsky had already begun to enter actor training programs even before the turn of the century. MacKaye’s work suggested the importance of attention and relaxation, and even hinted at the notion that each character must have an objective in each scene.31 Frank Sargent, who took over the Lyceum theatre after a disagreement led to

McKaye’s departure, prioritized action over speech32 and emphasized the psychological/inner life of a character.33 Indeed, much of McTeague’s argument rests on the claim that acting schools prior to 1923 taught many of the principles that have often been credited solely to Stanislavsky’s

System.

Baron connects the training detailed in McTeague’s book with training offered in the

29 James H. McTeague, Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory, 1875-1925

(Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1933), x.

30 Ibid., xvi-xvii.

31 Ibid., 42.

32 Ibid., 49.

33 Ibid., 55. 11

1930s and 1940s in both theatre and film.34 She argues that acting techniques taught from 1875 through the 1940s, which have often been neglected both by scholars and in the American cultural imagination, have been more influential than previously acknowledged. Seeking to unseat the dominance of Lee Strasberg and his Method in understandings of acting in the US,

Baron explores the ways in which a commitment to truthful acting both predated and coincided with fuller understandings of Stanislavsky’s System. Her claims are borne out by an examination of primary sources. Acting coach Sophie Rosenstein’s 1936 acting manual (coauthored with

Larrae A. Haydon and Wilbur Sparrow), for instance, includes chapters on observation, imagination, concentration, and characterization35—the same chapter titles appear in either

Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons or in Hapgood’s later translation of An Actor

Prepares. Citing not only rarely mentioned teachers and coaches like Rosenstein and Josephine

Dillon, but also icons like Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, Baron argues for a separation of what she calls Modern Acting techniques from those belonging to what came to be known as

Strasberg’s Method.

While I agree with Baron’s arguments, it is hard to escape the fact that Stanislavsky’s immediate influence has been most visible in the work of the Group Theatre, and of acting teachers like Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner. Susan Russell argues that the Moscow Art Theatre tour arrived in the US amidst a trend of “spectacle and opulence” in theatre, which was at that

34 Baron, Modern Acting.

35 Sophie Rosenstein, Larrae A. Haydon, and Wilbur Sparrow, Modern Acting: A Manual (New York: Samuel

French, 1936), ix. 12 time dominated by commercial goals tied to the marketing of stars.36 As the “little theatre” movement took hold around the country, however, there arose in many an interest in “theatre as art instead of entertainment.”37 Russell sees this movement as a form of cultural resistance akin to that which she believes ties the Moscow Art theatre to the Bolshevik revolution, which

“resisted the spectacle of the tsar and his court, the wealth of the aristocracy, and the status afforded the mass population of Russia. Stanislavski resisted the artificiality and spectacle of the

Russian stage, the star system, and the lack of status of the actor and the playwright.”38

According to Russell, it was this set of similar desires that led Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford to found the Group Theatre. 39

David Krasner agrees that “the Group consolidated around a collection of actors dedicated to producing new American plays, and performing them in a style derived from

Stanislavsky’s,”40 and Blair argues that the work there “was permeated by the teachings and philosophy of Boleslavsky.”41 Significantly, the Group Theatre is where the trajectories of

Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner—whom Peter Zazzali rightfully calls the “triumvirate” of System- based acting teachers in the US”42—intersect. Both Strasberg and Adler had studied with

36 Susan Russell, “The Revolution Continues: A New Actor in an Old Place,” (PhD diss., Florida State University,

2007), 42.

37 Ibid., 43.

38 Ibid., 28.

39 Ibid., 44-49.

40 David Krasner, “Strasberg, Adler and Meisner: Method Acting” in Hodge, Actor Training, 145.

41 Blair, Acting: The First Six Lessons, xvii.

42 Peter Zazzali, Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in Higher Education (New

York: Routledge, 2016), 29. 13

Boleslavsky at the American Laboratory Theatre (though Strasberg had attended only a few lectures in one semester), and both Adler and Strasberg worked at the Group Theatre, where

Strasberg was one of the leaders.43 Though Meisner did not study with Boleslavsky, he also worked at the Group Theatre, where Boleslavsky’s ideas were so foundational.44 The approach that developed there, however, did not ultimately stay entirely true to Boleslavsky and

Stanislavsky’s original ideas. Krasner suggests that the Group Theatre used ideas from the

System to develop what came to be known as the Method, which “evolved from the ensemble techniques and collective rehearsal procedures developed by Group actors, providing the company with a practical and theoretical grounding that differed considerably from the acting systems in the American theatre at the time.”45 In the process of developing these ideas, however, disagreement arose.

Much of the conflict at the Group Theatre revolved around how best to interpret

Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky’s work, and it existed primarily between Strasberg and Adler. The central disagreement between the two stemmed from Strasberg’s emphasis on affective memory and Adler’s focus on script analysis though study of given circumstances and action. Indeed, though Blair highlights the ways in which Strasberg also incorporated action into his teachings,46 both Carnicke and Baron place him in opposition to Adler and others. Carnicke notes that “while

Strasberg emphasized emotion, [Elia] Kazan focused on intentions behind a character’s actions” and that Strasberg “brooked no…artistic disagreements and tolerated no challenge to his

43 Blair, Acting: The First Six Lessons, xi.

44 Ibid., xvii-xviii.

45 Krasner, “Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner,” in Hodge, Actor Training, 145.

46 Blair: Acting: The First Six Lessons, xvii-xviii. 14 authority.”47 Adler presented perhaps the most aggressive challenge to Strasberg’s authority in

1934. Having spent time with Stanislavsky in Europe, she returned to the Group Theatre to argue for the importance of physical action over the emotional memory techniques which Strasberg so prized.48 Though Krasner argues that Adler and Strasberg’s acting pedagogies had more in common than is often recognized,49 Baron finds enough difference between the two to argue that they belong, ultimately, to separate traditions:

Despite the well-publicized lineage connecting Strasberg’s Method to the multifaceted

System developed by Stanislavsky, Strasberg’s emphasis on actors’ need to mine

psychological traumas constitutes a profound split with Stanislavsky’s modern view of

the actor as a creative artist who builds characterizations and executes performances ‘by

paying strict attention to the “facts” of the play.’50

For Baron, Strasberg’s Method constitutes its own approach to acting, while both Adler and

Stanislavsky belong in the broader tradition of the Modern Acting approach, though she also suggests that Stanislavsky’s ideas have been so tied to Strasberg’s Method in the popular imagination, and that the principles of Modern Acting have been so overshadowed by the name of Stanislavsky, that it would be most productive to separate the two.51

Whatever the differences between Strasberg and Adler, between the System and the

Method, and between both of these and Baron’s conception of Modern Acting, they constitute a

47 Carnicke, Stanislavsky in Focus, 54.

48 Ibid.

49 Krasner, “Strasberg, Adler and Meisner” in Hodge, Actor Training, 145-146.

50 Baron, Modern Acting, 31.

51 Ibid., 246-247. 15 collection of ideas that form the basis of mainstream actor training in the US, at least where acting theory and pedagogy are concerned. The ideas put forth by these early theorists continue to dominate the most popular acting textbooks. Such texts include Robert Benedetti’s The Actor at Work,52 which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2005 and its tenth edition in 2008; Robert

Cohen’s Acting One and Acting Two,53 in its fifth edition in 2007; and the multi-authored Acting is Believing,54 in its twelfth edition by 2015. Each of these texts features sections on topics including relaxation, concentration, imagination, objectives, tactics, obstacles, and script analysis, as well as a variety of techniques for using memory and stimulating or simulating emotion.

While Stanislavsky and those whose approaches grew out of his System have dominated actor training in the US, the 1960s and 1970s brought other major influences. However, whereas

Strasberg and Adler became star teachers who taught their respective techniques as the most (or only) valid approaches, Joseph Chaikin resisted any suggestion of an approach with universal utility. Chaikin, who owed some of his approach to Bertolt Brecht, rejected the idea of a

“system” and eschewed concepts like objectives, actions, and obstacles, as well as techniques like sensory attention and emotional recall.55 Chaikin, who did much of his training work through the Living Theatre in the 1960s and then through his own Open Theatre thereafter,

52 Robert Benedetti, The Actor At Work, 10th ed. (Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2009).

53 Robert Cohen, Acting One/Acting Two, 5th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

54 Kenneth L. Stilson, Charles McGaw, and Larry D. Clark, Acting is Believing, 12th ed. (Australia: Wadsworth,

2015.”

55 Dorinda Hulton, “Joseph Chaikin and Aspects of Actor Training: Possibilities Rendered Present” in Hodge, Actor

Training, 169. 16 focused more on abstract movement and sound exercises, relying heavily on musical terminology and physical improvisation.56

Another key figure who emphasized physical movement was Jerzy Grotowski., though

Lisa Wolford has suggested that Grotowski was heavily influenced by Stanislavsky.57 Like

Chaikin, however, Grotowski did not work toward a unified, universal method or system; instead, he believed any acting strategy should be designed especially to address the specific task at hand in any given moment.58 For Grotowski, who advocated a “poor theatre,” the actor needed to be the central vehicle of expression, which should occur primarily through vocal performance and through gesture and movement, relying less on technical elements such as costume, make-up and lighting.59 Much as Stanislavsky did in his later work—which largely did not carry over into those approaches championed by Strasberg and Adler—Grotowski advocated daily training that was both physical and vocal in nature; this work was not, however, practiced in service of a role, but “as a type of work on oneself.”60 This, he believed, helped to train not only actors’ physical and vocal instruments, but their imaginative and creative impulses; thus, he considered his approach a “psychophysical” method of actor training.61

Most recently, this type of psychophysical training has been taken up by Anne Bogart, whose Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI) combines training in what she terms

56 Ibid., 169-178.

57 Lisa Wolford, “Grotowski’s Vision for the Actor: The Search for Contact” in Hodge, Actor Training, 200.

58 Ibid., 202.

59 Ibid., 203.

60 Ibid., 205.

61 Ibid., 205-212. 17

“Viewpoints” with the physical training of Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki. The Viewpoints, as described by Bogart and Tina Landau, were first conceived by choreographer Mary Overlie, whom Bogart met in 1979, as “a way to structure dance improvisation in time and space.”62 The

Viewpoints, which Bogart and Landau expanded from Overlie’s original six to “nine Physical

Viewpoints (Spatial Relationship, Kinesthetic Response, Shape, Gesture, Repetition,

Architecture, Tempo, Duration and Topography) and [five] Vocal Viewpoints (Pitch, Dynamic,

Acceleration/Deceleration, Silence and Timbre)”63 serve as frameworks within which actors can explore texts, characters, actions, moments, and ideas improvisationally. This work, as Bogart and Landau point out, has not remained within the confines of the SITI company, nor has it been offered and explored only by Bogart, Landau, and Overlie.64 Rather, like all of the ideas sketched out here, those contained in the Viewpoints work have been distributed far and wide, among private acting teachers and larger acting studios, and within the academy. It is to this question— that of distribution and dissemination—that my overview of mainstream actor training in the US now turns.

Peter Zazzali’s recent contribution to scholarship on the history of actor training in the

US will likely prove invaluable to the field in many ways. Beginning with Clurman and the

Group Theatre, Zazzali painstakingly retraces the path of actor training from professional theatre companies, through acting studios, and into the nation’s universities. According to Zazzali, one of the most interesting aspects of the Group Theatre’s work was its desire “to create theatre that

62 Ann Bogart and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (New

York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005), 5.

63 Ibid., 6.

64 Ibid., 5. 18 addressed sociopolitical issues and their relevance to humanity.”65 The collectivist approach taken by the Group, which “located the ensemble at the center of the theatrical experience,”66 was in part a reaction to the star system that at that time dominated theatre in the US. In this system, most of the attention and preparation was given to those actors whose names who could draw large crowds. Like Stanislavsky in Russia, the Group Theatre emphasized the collective in an attempt to move away from the commercialism and individualism that had taken over the US following World War I. It is especially interesting, then, that one of the most significant developments to come out of the Group’s initial work was the invention of the “star teacher” through figures like Strasberg and Adler. Rosemary Malague finds the roots of this phenomenon in the “Stanislavskian pedagogical model,” which “places at its center a figure who functions as director, coach, and critic”; “the teacher, in this model, becomes the arbiter of truth.”67 It was this model that birthed the acting studio, and the practice of actors taking classes with what

Malague terms a “guru.”68 Such studios became well-known beginning in the 1950s with

Strasberg and Adler and enjoyed continued popularity through the 1980s with teachers including

Meisner and Uta Hagen. Though such acting studios still operate successfully today, they are typically led by lesser known teachers, many of whom are carrying on the respective legacies of the star teachers who came before them.

Zazzali argues, however, that in the 1960s acting studios began to give way to university programs as the center for actor training in the US, noting that in this decade “schools such as

65 Zazzali, Acting in the Academy, 28.

66 Ibid.

67 Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and “the Method” (New York: Routledge, 2012), 13.

68 Ibid, 12. 19

Columbia, Stanford, NYU, and Julliard joined Yale” in starting actor training programs.69 Much of Zazzali’s argument rests on the fact that these programs were tied to the rise of the regional theatre, which had begun with Margo Jones’s Theatre ‘47 in Dallas and her desire to create a

“permanent ensemble.”70 As Zazzali points out, Jones’s goals in creating a permanent ensemble were not merely artistic. Rather, she felt that developing a resident company in a given community would make theatre an integral part of the local cultural fabric, leading to a deeper mutual investment between the theatre and its community and giving the theatre company a more productive social and cultural role.71

The rise of regional theatre in the US led to a significant increase in the number of resident acting ensembles and thus an increased demand for trained actors. Zazzali traces this growth to the Ford Foundation, which provided “over $16 million to seventeen regional theatres” in the 1960s.72 In 1961, the Ford Foundation helped establish Theatre Communications Group

(TCG), “a service organization for America’s repertory theatres that would provide members with a network through which they could exchange administrative and artistic information.”73

Between continued significant funding and the establishment of TCG, regional theatres continued to grow. So, too, did the need for fully trained, highly versatile actors who could play a variety of roles.

The rapid expansion of regional theatre and the increasing demand for fully trained actors

69 Zazzali, Acting in the Academy, 36.

70 Ibid., 36-38.

71 Ibid., 39.

72 Ibid. 40.

73 Ibid. 20 led the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to provide funding for new actor training programs, which universities stepped up to provide. Zazzali argues that actors who had previously trained in various versions of the Method, having spent their time working primarily with emotional recall and script analysis techniques, lacked the physical and vocal training necessary to play a variety of roles that acting in a stage ensemble required.74 Once universities began providing programs that offered this training, many banded together to form the League of

Professional Theatre Training Programs, which would ultimately provide “a pedagogical template for specifically developing stage actors, an approach which remains the basis for

BFA/MFA conservatories today.”75 These programs typically focused on psychophysical training techniques championed by figures like Jacques Copeau and his nephew, Michel Saint-

Denis.76 The goal, then, of these early training programs in the academy, was to equip actors with the skills to play a variety of roles on stage, so that they could populate the repertory ensembles of the nation’s many regional theatres.

Zazzali presents this history of actor training programs in the US in large part to demonstrate his argument that they have become outdated. Resident companies began to break up in the late 1960s and in the 1970s, which leads Zazzali to question why the training model built to satisfy their needs remains the predominant one.77 Too, he suggests that the more

System-based, studio-style training has often been seen as better suited to film and television work, where physical acumen is sometimes considered less necessary. The League schools, on

74 Ibid., 41.

75 Ibid., 43.

76 Ibid., 43-44.

77 Ibid., 47. 21 the other hand, “were training the actor’s entire instrument for the exclusive purpose of having a stage career—a feat that has become rare in the US.”78 However valid Zazzali’s call for rethinking actor training in the twenty-first century may be, it is beyond the purview of my study.

I rely on his work only insofar as it provides an historic and socio-political understanding of actor training in the twentieth century US.

The individuals and institutions discussed in the preceding pages are by no means the only players important to mainstream actor training in the US. A more complete account would have to include names like Michael Chekhov, Antonin Artaud, Moshe Feldenkrais, Rudolf

Laban, Uta Hagen, and Peter Brook, among others. There are, however, many volumes and articles analyzing the theories these individuals put forth and tracing the trajectories of their respective careers. It has been my goal in this summary to provide a brief and skeletal overview of major figures and ideas in mainstream actor training in the US, rather than a full account.

What emerges from this overview—and from the many more complete accounts that others have authored—is a clear picture of a primarily Eurocentric (not to mention almost entirely male) tradition. As Zazzali argues, these programs have typically “catered to a select constituency identified as white, educated, and upper-middle class.”79 The established history of actor training in the US, then, is primarily white. It rarely, if ever, accounts for training conceived, offered, and taken specifically by actors of color.

Although the history of training for actors of color has largely not been written and is thus incomplete, it does exist. With this dissertation, I fill just a few of the existing gaps by

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid., 38. 22 providing an extended analysis of only some of the history of training specifically for Latinx actors. Since this is in many ways uncharted territory, I have very little on which to model my approach. I have relied heavily on archival research, the nature of which I will address later in this introduction. I have also made use of other primary and secondary resources that, while not focused on actor training, nonetheless offer valuable information on the topic.

In the next few pages, I offer a similar, if heavily truncated, overview of the information and materials available for study regarding the training of Black American and Asian American actors. In doing so, I hope to model some of the ways in which I approach the history of Latinx actor training. Additionally, I hope to demonstrate that these histories are rich, complex, and ripe

(even overdue) for academic study.

Black American and Asian American Actor Training in the United States

Carlton and Barbara Molette have recently engaged in significant historical and critical analysis of what they term Afrocentric theatre, based on Molefe Kete’s “three broad views of cultural reality: Afrocentric, Eurocentric, and Asiocentric.”80 Arguing that cultural values, aesthetic values, and modes of communication shape significant elements of a culture’s creative practices and output, the Molettes offer a theory of an Afrocentric theatre that is in many ways similar to and in many ways different from, but in no way inferior to, Eurocentric theatre. These claims are central to Sharrell Luckett and Tia Shaffer’s 2017 study, Black Acting Methods.81 In their edited volume, Luckett and Shaffer have gathered essays on Afrocentric approaches to actor training with roots in African and Black American theatre. Before Luckett and Shaffer’s book,

80 Carlton W. Molette and Barbara J. Molette, Afrocentric Theatre (Bloomington: Xlibris Corp, 2013), 3.

81 Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer, Black Acting Methods (New York: Routledge, 2017). 23 however, there have been (to my knowledge) no published studies dedicated the training of

Black actors in the US. Still, other sources provide information that is illuminating in this regard.

Errol Hill’s The Theatre of Black Americans (1987) offers a starting point for identifying landmark individuals and institutions involved in early training for Black actors. The earliest attempt Hill identifies comes in 1896, when Bob Cole, best known for his work on the hit song

“Under the Bamboo Tree” and the musical A Trip To Coontown, founded Worth’s Museum All-

Star Stock Company; at the same time, Cole established “the first training school for Black performers.”82 While Hill provides no details on what might have transpired at this school, its mere existence suggests that Black theatre artists recognized a need for their own training programs even before the twentieth century. Whether Cole’s school was formed with any intention of providing culturally specific training, or simply because admission to white-centered programs was not available to Black actors, is the subject of much needed further research. In any case, Cole’s school offers an early example of a culturally specific training program, at least in terms of the actors it targeted. That there was a wider interest in such efforts is evinced by

Alain Locke, who in the 1920s spoke out against the caricatures prevalent in Black minstrel shows, and who “saw hidden resources in the folk arts of Negro song, dance, and pantomime which could be exploited and transposed to the serious stage.”83 Locke, who “reaffirmed the importance of the African continuum in the arts of African-Americans” by calling for African

American drama influenced by African life, represented an early advocate of the Afrocentric

82 Errol Hill, “Chronology of Important Events” in Erroll Hill, ed., The Theatre of Black Americans: A Collection of

Critical Essays (New York: Applause, 1980), 351.

83 Erroll Hill, “Introduction” in Hill, Theatre of Black Americans, 5 24 approaches to actor training described by Luckett and Shaffer.84

Though it did not establish any formal training schools, Ronald Ross identifies the

Federal Theatre Project (FTP) as a primary source of training for Black actors in the 1930s. As part of the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the FTP

“established special ethnic theatre projects so that these groups would be able to do plays of their own literatures.”85 Ultimately, the FTP created “black theatre units” in twenty-two cities across the US.86 Ross does not report that any of these units offered formalized training, but several of his remarks are telling. New York was the site of the Federal Negro Theatre, and Harlem was home to the Negro Youth Theatre, which the New York Times noted was “designed to develop inexperienced and lesser known talents.”87 Additionally, Ross’s claim that Black theatre units in the FTP challenged a popular belief that Black Americans were “natural born” actors who required no teaching suggests that these units provided some level of visible training. While Ross indicates that training offered by the FTP often emphasized the importance of developing Black playwrights, he also notes that the Black units “demonstrated conclusively that playwriting, directing, stage designing, and serious acting were well within” the capabilities of Black artists.88

Whether or not formal schools were available to Black American actors during the FTP’s time is uncertain; Ross makes it clear, however, that the FTP provided otherwise rare opportunities for

Black theatre actors to learn their craft. Records and archival materials describing the training

84 Ibid.

85 Ronald Ross, “The Role of Blacks in the Federal Theatre, 1935-1939,” in Hill, Theatre of Black Americans, 234.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid., 235

88 Ibid. 25 actors might have received under the FTP certainly warrant further study.

The wide range of opportunities opened to Black theatre artists through the FTP almost certainly paved the way for the establishment of the American Negro Theatre (ANT) in 1940.

The ANT was founded by Abram Hill and Frederick O’Neal, with the goal of creating a community-based theatre “not dominated by the actor, but one where directors, writers, technicians, and actors were equally important, and where there would be a training program for young theatre artists.”89 While the ANT placed significant emphasis on stage productions and radio shows, “training workshops and a school of drama” constituted a third and equal arm of its mission.90 The training was well-attended; operating on a paid membership basis, “ANT established workshops in theatre skills for its members, and ninety percent of the active membership received its basic training in the company.”91 As with other organizations, specific acting theories and techniques taught are not immediately available. According to Ethel Pitts

Walker, however, ANT offered its members “courses in acting, body movement, voice and speech, stagecraft, choral singing, playwriting and radio.”92 These courses were not offered to performers and technicians in segregated fashion, however, since “the school sought to develop

‘completely-rounded’ actors, knowledgeable and trained in every aspect of theatre.”93

While the immediately available information about the ANT does not indicate whether it advocated culturally specific approaches to acting or actor training, Walker provides a few

89 Ethel Pitts Walker, “The American Negro Theatre,” in Hill, Theatre of Black Americans, 247.

90 Ibid., 253.

91 Ibid., 256

92 Ibid., 257.

93 Ibid. 26 potentially revealing details. O’Neal, who had failed in an earlier attempt to develop a training program in St. Louis,94 had previously trained with Russian teacher Theodore Komisarjevsky.95

It is possible that this training informed the programs he helped develop for the ANT.

Additionally, Walker notes that the ANT hired at least some white acting teachers, and lists

Nadya Ramanov and Doris Sorrell among them.96 Ramanov has been described by ANT co- founder Virgil Richardson as “a Russian master who taught the famous techniques developed by

Konstantin Stanislavski” and “focused on…improvisation, affective memory, imagination, rhythm, dynamics, and characterization” and “gave special emphasis to gesture, posture, and body movement as related to character and emotion.”97 Richardson also studied with Sorrell, whom he identifies as the one-time head of voice studies at the New Theatre School in New

York, and who counted celebrated Broadway actress Helen Hayes among her students.98 It is likely, though in no way certain, that Ramanov trained actors at the ANT according to her understanding of Stanislavsky’s System at the time. It is unlikely, however, that either Ramanov or Sorrell engaged in much culturally specific training, especially since Hill notes that “students presented such dramas as Wilder’s Our Town, Gabrielson’s Days of Our Youth, and Feber and

94 Ibid., 249.

95 Ibid., 250.

96 Ibid., 256.

97 Ben Vinson, III, Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, a Tuskegee Airman in Mexico (New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2004), 17.

98 Ibid. 27

Kaufman’s Stage Door.”99 Moreover, Hill lists Sidney Poitier among ANT alumni100 and

Richardson notes that “it was Stanislavski’s modern theater concept that eventually helped

Sidney Poitier and many others become successful.”101 While further research may indicate some efforts in the ANT program to include culturally specific approaches, it appears that Black actors at ANT were trained in the same techniques as white actors.

The story of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) and its training program is somewhat like of the ANT. While the NEC’s current website lists 1965 as the year of the group’s founding, the New York Public Library (NYPL), where the organization’s historical papers are archived, marks it as 1967.102 The NEC was established largely to address Douglas Turner Ward’s call for

“a repertory company that would produce work germane to black life, with a training company for both actors and technicians, thus promoting black professionals in front of and behind the scenes.”103 In May of 1967, the NEC received a grant from the Ford Foundation “to found and develop a black repertory company to present works on social themes, expand opportunities for black theatre artists, and offer professional training to potential new talent with materials that emphasized black identity”; the training program focused not just on acting, but on “playwriting, directing, design, and technical areas,” as well.104 According to the archives at the NYPL,

99 Walker, “The American Negro Theatre,” 257.

100 Ibid.

101 Vinson, Flight, 17-18.

102 New York Public Library. “Negro Ensemble Company Records,” accessed January 19, 2019, http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20880.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid. 28 performance-related classes and workshops were given on subjects including acting, dance, speech, and “related disciplines,” with the goal of “raising up a generation of black talent to go out into the larger theatre world.”105 While there is no indication that the NYPL collection includes curriculum details (further investigation may prove otherwise), the online description reveals a large cadre of instructors headed by Paul Mann, a white artist from Yale who taught courses for the NEC’s professional troupe until acting was cut from the training program following the end of the Ford Foundation grant in 1971.106

Gus Edwards’s interviews with NEC founder Douglas Turner Ward, portions of which were published in 2004, offer an understanding of what might have been the broad basis of the

NEC’s actor training program. Though Ward advocates passionately for a System-based approach to acting, 107 he also insists on the necessity of a racially and culturally specific approach. While “all actors are going to use the same muscles,” he explains, there is a “particular rhythm to the cultural experience.”108 Too often, he argues, Black actors are “taught to be everything else but themselves” on the basis that playing characters like themselves is “too easy”—a criticism never leveled at white actors playing white characters.109 It is important,

Ward argues, that “if a black person wants to become an actor, the rout [sic] is an exploration of

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.

107 Gus Edwards, Advice to a Young Black Actor: Conversations with Douglas Turner Ward (Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann, 2004), 41.

108 Ibid., 19.

109 Ibid. 29 self.”110 Still, the NEC was criticized for the role white artists and teachers played in its curriculum and in its production seasons. While PBS celebrates the NEC for “[paving] the way for black Americans to present a voice that had been aggressively stifled for three hundred years,”111 John O’Connor notes that some black artists “didn’t think the Negro Ensemble

Company was militant enough in its overall policies” regarding the centering of black voices.112

Actor Ernie McClintock, who would go on to found his own actor training school, criticized the lack of young Black playwrights featured by the NEC, and “critics [were] especially soured by

Mann’s appointment…feeling that this very sensitive post must be filled by a black director if the theatre [was] directed towards a black audience.113 There exists a potential discrepancy, then, between Ward’s thoughts on acting as offered to Edwards, and the production practices employed by the NEC. To what extent this discrepancy found its way into the classroom is currently unknown. Further study might include an examination of Mann’s teachings, as well as those of the other instructors employed by the NEC at the time.

Ernie McClintock is himself an important figure in the history of Black actor training. In a May 1974 article for Black World, McClintock claimed a commitment “to the task of developing training techniques that could be utilized in increasing the creative potential of the

110 Ibid., 18

111 Public Broadcasting System, “The Negro Ensemble Company: About the Company,” American Masters, accessed January 19, 2019. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/negro-ensemble-co-about-the-negro- ensemble-co/666/.

112John J. O’Connor, “Profile of Negro Ensemble Company.” New York Times, September 14, 1987.

113 Peter Bailey, “Is the Negro Ensemble Company Really Black Theatre?” Black World 17 No. 6, April 1968, 17-

19. 30

Black actor.”114 At that time, McClintock’s Afro-American Studio offered over thirty classes and workshops in Acting Fundamentals, Audition Preparation, Black History, Black Theatre History,

Movement, Speech, Karate, Yoga, and a specialized technique variously called the “Afro-

American Studio technique” and the “commonsense technique.”115 McClintock’s approach was built on the actor’s own imagination, experience, and devices, and based on a set of questions designed to help the actor complete character analysis studies, as well as to identify details regarding relationships, environment, and (presumably Stanislavskian) objectives.116 Central to

McClintock’s training was also his idea that “for the majority of Black people, music is a most significant part of their experience.”117 “A Black actor certainly must make his characters live to the music,” McClintock suggested, arguing further that “when the black audience sees these things, they know what it’s about, if it’s real for the character.”118 McClintock’s interest in tying acting to music eventually led him to develop what he called the “Jazz Actors Technique” at the

Jazz Theatre of Richmond, which he renamed the Jazz Actors Theatre in 1992.119 Also referred to as a “common sense approach,” this technique is “grounded in the physical elements of performing as they pertain to character and situation”:

Character, of course, deals with the physical, mental, social, and economic make up of

114 Ernie McClintock, “Afro-American Studio: Perspectives on Black Acting,” Black World 23 no. 7, May 1974, 80.

115 Ibid., 82.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid., 84.

118 Ibid.

119 D.L. Hopkins, “Ernie McClintock,” African American Repertory Theatre of Virginia, accessed January 19, 2019. http://www.aartofva.org/aart/?p=233 (site no longer available as of December 28, 2019). 31

the person an actor portrays. Situation embodies the following elements: Environment

(that which effects the natural, social, political, and economical climate of a place), Place

(how the character relates to the physical space as required by the dictates of the play),

Relationships (to characters seen and mentioned) and Objective (What does my Character

want? Dictates behavior).120

Stanislavskian in nature, the Jazz Technique also bears some similarities to the Modern Acting techniques identified by Baron, focusing on performance choices an actor makes to deliver information to an audience and accomplish objectives. It is in the rehearsal process that

McClintock incorporates the principles of jazz. Here, actors experiment with text as jazz musicians come together and “take a piece of written music and experiment with it’s [sic] many nuances by stretching phrases, elongating notes, or toying with staccato.”121 The technique, then, was used in concert with many of the ideas from white actor training programs, primarily with works by Black playwrights.

There is much work yet to do in uncovering the history of training for Black actors. A short video biography of McClintock, for instance, reveals that he once studied acting at “Lou

Gossett’s acting school,” about which much remains to be discovered.122 The Afrocentric work that Luckett and Shaffer describe grows out of the Black nationalist movement, which informed much of the criticism of the ANT and the NEC, and which may have inspired separatist approaches to Black acting techniques. A single 1976 issue of Black World magazine lists the

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid.

122 SuavaeMitchell. “Ernie McClintock Presentation,” YouTube Video, 6:51, October 11, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygy21LHlpKE&t=. 32

Inner City Cultural Center, the Mafundi Institute, Black Arts/West, and the Performing Arts

Society of Los Angeles, and the West Coast Black Repertory Theater in San Francisco as organizations with dedicated training programs for African American actors.123 This brief overview of training for Black actors represents only the beginning of a far-reaching study or series of studies in an area ripe for examination. Likewise, the history of training for Asian

American actors deserves significant attention.

Though I am aware of no study of Asian American actor training that parallels Luckett and Shaffer’s Black Acting Methods, Esther Kim Lee has begun to cover this ground.124 The overview I provide here begins with a review of Lee’s work before incorporating my own research in the Asian American Theatre Company Archives at the University of California, Santa

Barbara. Although my use of the term “Asian American” contradicts a central argument that appears in later chapters of this dissertation—that the conflation of many Latinx identities under the government-sanctioned, homogenizing term “Hispanic” is problematic—I use it in this introduction because, in relation to the actor training I discuss in the following pages, the term is somewhat timebound. Lee begins her history of what she refers to as Asian American theatre in

1965, the year when this term came into use as an intentional departure from racist terms like

“oriental” and “Mongolian”; it was at this time, she argues, that Asian Americans made strong visible efforts to move away from images of exoticized Asianness.125 Thus, I engage the term not in an attempt to homogenize a diverse group of cultures under a single identity, but because the

123 Cynthia Cotton Bayette, “Annual Round-Up: Black Theatre in America,” Black World 25 no. 6, April 1976, 75-

82.

124 Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

125 Ibid., 7-8. 33 term was commonly used during the period to which my analysis applies.

Actor training has been a central component of the Asian American theatre movement since its inception. Lee has placed the beginning of this movement in 1965, with the founding of

East West Players (EWP) in Los Angeles.126 According to Lee:

… it was in the 1960s and 1970s that Asian American actors decided to … take charge of

their careers … forming coalitions with three primary goals: (1) to protest “oriental”

stereotypes; (2) to increase awareness of Asian American actors’ wide-ranging talents;

and (3) to demand that they be allowed to play all roles, both Asian and non-Asian.127

The EWP began as a way for Asian and Asian American actors to showcase themselves to

Hollywood producers and non-Asian audiences.128 Incorporating Asian and Asian American actors into mainstream Hollywood required a certain level of training, much of which was rooted in mainstream, Eurocentric traditions. Actor Makato Iwamatsu (Mako), who was heavily involved with the EWP in its early days, “insisted on rigorous acting training” as part of the group’s activities because “he strongly believed that quality acting was the best weapon against

‘oriental’ stereotypes and wanted to shape the EWP into a repertory theatre.”129 Mako, who served as the group’s acting teacher, had studied acting in Los Angeles and New York and claimed a deep understanding of “Stanislavsky’s method as taught by Lee Strasberg.”130 He had previously been involved in the founding of New York’s Theater for Asian American

126 Ibid., 1.

127 Ibid., 25.

128 Ibid., 26-27.

129 Ibid., 28

130 Ibid. 34

Performing Artists (TAAPA), as well as the Basement Theatre Workshop in the same city; at the latter, he taught acting for six months.131 Though there is little information available about what methods or techniques Mako taught, the workshops also focused on creating original Asian

American scenes for performance; the workshops continued under other instructors after Mako’s departure.132

From the beginning, actor training seemed to be one of the EWP’s primary goals. A 1968 grant from the Ford Foundation was intended not only for the development of original plays and productions, but also to “train actors in a workshop situation.”133 The details of this training are again unclear, but the inclusion of the phrase “in a workshop situation” may indicate that it took place in conjunction with the development of scripts and productions, rather than in a classroom or studio setting dedicated wholly to the development of acting skills. This was in many ways the

EWP’s strength as a company. Though the Ford Foundation grant was ultimately not renewed,

“according to Mako, workshop was ‘the only thing keeping [the EWP] alive.’ Focusing on workshops for actors in [a] new space, the EWP began a new era. Kathleen Freeman, who taught acting at the EWP assisted on starting workshops as soon as possible.”134 According to Lee, actor training is still a major part of the EWP’s mission, and the company continues to serve as a leader for Asian American theatre in this and other areas.135 The company currently provides training under the umbrella of the East West Players Actors’ Conservatory Program, which

131 Ibid., 40.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid., 46.

134 Ibid., 49-50.

135 Ibid., 53. 35

“offers a comprehensive theatre arts curriculum for those who are honing their craft as professional actors as well as those seeking personal expression.”136 According to the EWP website, “students have ranged in age from 17 to 65, are of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds, and possess skill levels that stretch from beginning to advanced.”137 The EWP also operated the Alliance of Creative Talent Service Directory, which provided a resource for directors and casting professionals seeking Asian Pacific American actors and other artists based in Los Angeles.138

Though Lee briefly discusses actor and other theatrical training offered by the Northwest

Asian American Theater in Seattle, it is perhaps San Francisco’s Asian American Theater

Company (AATC) that stands at the forefront of actor training in Asian American theatre. The

AATC began as a project of the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco; first named the Asian American Theater Workshop (AATW), it was initially intended to develop plays by Asian American playwrights in a workshop setting much like the one used by the

EWP.139 Playwright Frank Chin, whom ACT executive director Edward Hastings had tapped to lead the AATW, “quickly realized there were no trained Asian American theatre artists to participate in the workshops. It was imperative to first provide basic training to cultivate” not

136 “Actor’s Conservatory.” East West Players, accessed February 9, 2019. http://www.eastwestplayers.org/professional-enrichment/actors-conservatory/

137 Ibid.

138 Ibid. (When I originally accessed the EWP webpage on February 9, 2019, the company listed its work with the

Alliance of Creative Talent Service Directory; as of December 28, 2019, this information is no longer included on the “Actor’s Conservatory” page.)

139 Lee, History of Asian American Theatre, 56. 36 only Asian American actors, but also designers and technicians.140 In 1973, ACT helped rectify this problem with a special scholarship that allowed ten Asian American actors to take classes with ACT personnel.141 For the next year, acting classes for AATW participants were taught by

Janis Chan, “a white actress, an acting teacher by profession, and wife of Jeffrey Paul Chan, writer and friend of Frank Chin.”142 Due in part to Asian students’ discomfort with a white instructor who they claimed did not understand “the Asian American sensibility,” Chan stepped down in 1974.143 In the same year, the AATW articulated a new list of objectives, the first of which was “to provide a training ground for Asian American actors, directors and technicians.”144

1979 brought further changes to the AATW. It was in this year that the group changed its name to the AATC; the group also changed its leadership model, replacing the previous role of

Artistic Director with an Artistic Committee.145 According to Lee:

The artistic committee … strengthened the training programs, which included classes in

voice, movement, acting, improvisation, political theatre, tap dancing, musical theatre,

and theatre management. Some classes were part of the professional training programs at

the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and some were offered to teach a

140 Ibid., 57.

141 Ibid.

142 Ibid.

143 Ibid., 60.

144 Ibid.

145 Ibid., 69. 37

variety of theatre styles to anyone who was interested.146

The continuing relationship between the AATC and ACT is particularly interesting in that it ties the training offered to Asian American actors directly to mainstream actor training in the US.

The tension that arose from Janis Chan teaching Asian American actors was not necessarily resolved once she resigned. Indeed, Lee points out that instructors from the ACT continued to teach classes after that point.147

The close relationship between Asian American actor training and mainstream actor training reflects a desire among Asian American actors to work in mainstream, Eurocentric US theatre and film. Though Lee notes the influence of cultural nationalism on Frank Chin’s founding of the AATW,148 and while many of the training opportunities provided by Asian

American theatre companies focused on writing and producing plays about the Asian American experience, they emphasized creating such works within the confines of Eurocentric dramatic and theatrical models. Mako’s insistence on teaching System-based acting techniques and his invocation of Stanislavsky’s name to increase his own credibility suggest a desire to move Asian

American actors into mainstream, Eurocentric US theatre and film as much as to create new works designed to feature them. This is reflected also in the third of the goals that Lee identifies for the early coalitions of Asian American actors, “to demand that they be allowed to play all roles, both Asian and non-Asian.”149 The training offered by the EWP and the AATW/AATC, then, had two aims: both to create roles specifically for Asian American actors, and to equip

146 Ibid., 70.

147 Ibid., 60.

148 Ibid., 53-54.

149 Ibid., 25. 38 those actors to play roles in mainstream, Eurocentric theatre.

Materials available in the AATC archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara corroborate the suggestion that training offered by the AATC was designed to prepare Asian

American actors for Eurocentric theatre. According to an AATW summary of its own history, its early programs featured “volunteered instruction by ACT faculty.”150 An archival copy of the organization’s by-laws lists “to provide a training ground for Asian-American actors, directors, and technicians” first among six core purposes; the remaining five purposes focus on educating the world at large about the Asian-American experience.151 The actor training offerings reflected in the archives, which range from 1973 to 1993, show an interest in the same topics addressed by

Eurocentric training approaches. Over the years, courses were consistently given in various levels of acting, movement, dance, voice, and improvisation. Course descriptions also indicate a

Eurocentric style of actor training. In a 1977 memo to AATW students, Chan described the emphasis of her scene study class to be “on rehearsal technique: application of sense memory and substitution techniques to scenes; character development, and the application of other

150 Asian American Theatre Workshop Organization Summary, Undated, CEMA 9, Box 40 Folder 6, Asian

American Theatre Company Archives, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of

California, Santa Barbara. Note on archival citations: Full information will be provided for the first citation in a chapter from each individual collection. Subsequent citations will be shortened to include Item Description and/or

Name, Date, Call Number, Archival Site, Box Number and Folder Number. As an example, the shortened version of this citation would read: Asian American Theatre Workshop Organization Summary, Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB,

B40 F6.

151 “Bylaws of Asian American Theatre Workshop,” September 16, 1975, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F6. 39 techniques to scripted scenes.”152 Stanislavsky, Boleslavsky, and others taught sense memory, while Uta Hagen famously advocated the extension of this concept into what she called

“substitution.”153 In the fall of 1977, Chan dug even more deeply into these techniques, even suggesting a Strasbergian influence. That year, she offered a “Sense Memory Lab,” which she described as “a workshop in the techniques of sense memory and its various uses for the actor, including expanding awareness; methods of sensorial and emotional recall; substitution; the application of these techniques to acting problems.”154

In the same year, the AATW made a rare attempt to move beyond the typical System- based approach. Broadening their offerings to reflect a larger trend of incorporating more extensive movement training, the AATW offered a course in mime and a course titled “Kinetic

Theater.”155 The mime course promised to teach “techniques based on the work of Etienne

Decroux [sic], the father of modern mime. Physical expression for the actor, exploring corporal acting problems, stylized movement and physical characterization.”156 An advertisement for the

“Kinetic Theater” class was less clear in what it offered: “Nonverbal language is very strong, but it is often placed secondary to dialogue. Here we will play with movement concepts for developing skills and ideas for presentation.”157

152 Memo, Janis Chan to AATW Training Program Students, “Scene Study,” January 4, 1977, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40

F17.

153 Hagen, Uta, Respect for Acting (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1973).

154 Flyer, “Asian American Theater Workshop Fall Training Program,” 1977, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F22.

155 Ibid.

156 Ibid.

157 Ibid. 40

In 1978, the AATW organized “a three-part program designed to bring together the elements of musical/cabaret theater, creative and lyric writing for the stage, and acting”; the goal of this “Musical/Cabaret Theater” workshop was “to create a production arising out of [company members’] experience as Asian Americans.”158 In the first part of this workshop, participants were expected to provide source material—“poetry, lyrics, story ideas, scenes, one acts, etc.”—to be developed into performance pieces.159 The second phase focused on acting technique and character building, while the third and final phase culminated in a public performance of individual or group pieces.160 While this workshop offers an excellent example of the ways in which the AATW sought to create theatrical experiences about Asian American identity, it also highlights its desire to train Asian American actors and other artists in Eurocentric forms like cabaret.

Only in a few rare instances did the AATW show an interest in working with culturally specific forms and techniques, at least insofar as the company’s archives reveal. An undated, handwritten flyer advertises a “master class in Chinese dance theater” led by Chinese American actor Tzi Ma.161 Since the hand-drawn flyer features the name AATC rather than AATW, it is clear that the workshop took place no earlier than 1979. The flyer provides no other details, however, and the workshop is not referenced in any other archival documents. As part of

AATC’s winter 1993 training program, “Charlie” Chin led a voice workshop titled “The Tao of

158 Flyer, “The Asian American Theater Workshop Spring Training Program,” 1978, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F23.

159 Ibid.

160 Ibid.

161 Flyer, “Asian American Theater Co. Presents a Master Class in Chinese Dance Theater by Tzi Ma,” Undated,

CEMA 9, UCSB, B41 F14. 41

Sound.”162 Described as “the perfect introduction to voice training for actors,” the workshop promised to help actors “learn the natural way to gain more power, presence and precision in

[the] speaking and singing voice using Western and Asian disciplines. Learn the tips, tricks and secrets in using [the] voice the way professionals do … never fear speaking, auditioning, or singing in public again.”163 The archives offer no further details on what “Western and Asian disciplines” the workshop employed, but it marks the only time the AATW/AATC advertised the teaching of any Asian techniques beyond the Chinese dance theatre workshop. Interestingly, the

“Tao of Sound” workshop was not the only unusual offering in the 1993 winter session. Along with a beginning acting class, the session included an eight-week “Intensive Theater Workshop,” in which students “[learned] to produce a stage play from its initial reading through its culmination in a 2 week run,”164 and a class in the Alexander technique for movement and voice.

The advertisement for the latter boasted President Bill Clinton’s success in using the technique to recover his lost voice.165

By and large, and much like the work provided by the EWP, the training offered by the

AATW/AATC was intended to create places in Eurocentric US theatre for Asian American actors, and to train those actors to fill them. As Mako had at the EWP, Janis Chan and other ACT instructors based the AATW/AATC training sessions primarily in System-based acting techniques. Indeed, a schedule for the 1976 fall training session reveals that Mako also taught at

162 Flyer, “Winter 1993 Training Program,” 1993, UCSB, B41 F10.

163 Ibid.

164 Ibid.

165 Ibid. 42

AATC.166 Undated documents also suggest the dominance of System-based modes of actor training. One such document describes a technique known as “The Process,” which was to be taught in two weekend sessions over the course of a month.167 The Process begins by focusing on relaxation before moving on to “layer inner emotional stimulous [sic] with external intentions and relationships.”168 These terms, like “emotional memory” and “high stakes,” which are also mentioned in the document, are those used by Stanislavsky, Boleslavsky, Strasberg, and those who came after them. An undated flyer for a master class taught by Dom Magwili parallels

Strasberg’s work in emphasizing “emotional training,” recalls Stanislavsky and Boleslavsky’s focus on concentration in “building the actor’s awareness,” and suggests a shared interest with many Eurocentric teachers in focusing heavily on using techniques to stimulate imagination.”169

At other times, the AATW offered sessions focused on Shakespeare,170 audition techniques,171 speech,172 dialects,173 and acting for the camera.174

166 “1976 Fall Training Program Revised Schedule & Budget,” November 5, 1976, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F21.

167 “The Process,” Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F7.

168 Ibid.

169 Flyer, “Master Acting Class Taught by Dom Magwili,” Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F13.

170 Flyer, “Asian American Theatre Company Fall Training Program,” Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F24; Flyer,

“Asian American Theater Company Training Program,” December 17, 1988, CEMA 9, UCSB, B41, F12.

171 Flyer, “Asian American Theatre Company Fall Training Program,” Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F24; Flyer,

“Fall Session,” Undated, CEMA 9 B41 F2; Flyer, “Looking for an Outlet,” Undated, CEMA 9, UCSB, B41, F14;

Flyer, “Summer Training Session,” 1984, CEMA 9, B41 F8.

172 Flyer, “Fall Classes,” 1980, CEMA 9, UCSB, B40 F25.

173 Press Release, Amy Hill, 1981, CEMA 9, UCSB, B41 F1; Press Release, Amy Hill, Undated, CEMA 9, B40 F17.

174 Flyer, “Spring 1991 – Training Program,” 1991, CEMA 9, UCSB, B41, F13. 43

There is much yet to uncover about training for Asian American Actors. My exploration of the subject has focused primarily on two companies and, in some ways, on work already done by Esther Kim Lee. Still, the time I spent with the AATW/AATC archives shows that many aspects of Asian American actor training have yet to be studied. Like the history of Black actor training in the US, the history of Asian American actor training will certainly contribute to providing a fuller picture of US theatre history. These, however, are not the purview of my project. Since my aim is to perform this work on the history of Latinx actor training, it is to that subject that I turn my attention now.

Toward a History of Latinx Actor Training

In many ways, US Latinx theatre began in a tent. Early plays performed in tents around the US inspired the name of a genre, the carpa, which is the Spanish word for tent. My study of

Latinx actor training will begin with these plays and the companies that performed them. Since records of these organizations are scant and records of their training practices are all but non- existent, however, I will discuss them only briefly. The bulk of my study will begin in 1965 with the birth of the Chicanx theatre movement. It was during this time, I argue, that organized training specifically for Latinx actors in the US began in earnest. Though the conclusion of this document will reach into the twenty-first century and make some attempt at projection, the dissertation will generally be limited to the years between 1965 and 1992. I choose this end point in part because it represents the last new and significant attempt I have found at actor training aimed specifically at the US Latinx population. Additionally, I end my study here because I want to trace actor training approaches from the Chicanx theatre movement to the academy; thus, the study begins with the training offered by Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, the best-known company of the Chicanx theatre movement, and ends with the specialized MFA program in 44

Hispanic-American Theatre founded and run by Dr. Jorge Huerta at the University of California,

San Diego (UCSD) from 1989 to 1992.

The study ahead is by no means a complete history of Latinx actor training. A full account of training programs offered to Latinx actors would take many more pages than a dissertation allows; moreover, due to incomplete records, it would also be impossible. Thus, while I acknowledge many theatre groups that offered training in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s

(and inevitably leave some out), my study is focused most centrally on a few primary examples.

Charting the course from informal training passed down through families and other artists who performed carpas across the US to more formal training organized within US higher education, I take as my case studies El Teatro Campesino, the Teatro Nacional de Aztlan (TENAZ), the

Teatro Meta program at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, and UCSD’s MFA program in

Hispanic-American Theater. Though the Chicanx theatre movement thrived in other areas of the country—namely in Texas, New Mexico, and Indiana—California was home to its most concentrated activity. Additionally, the influence of the California-based El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ stretched across both time and geography, helping to inform the work of many other companies. For these reasons, I am content to focus my study on these California institutions, organizations, and programs.

Because the history of training designed specifically for Latinx actors has scarcely been written about, my study relies primarily on archival research. Such research has both advantages and disadvantages. As Antoinette Burton has elegantly defined them, archives are “traces of the 45 past collected either intentionally or haphazardly as ‘evidence.’”175 Key to Burton’s definition are her use of the word “traces” and her placement of the word “evidence” in quotation marks.

The word “traces” accurately suggests the inevitable incompleteness of archives. As Burton points out, the materials in any archive are present within it as a result of complex selection processes.176 Such processes occur at various points before, during, and even after an archive’s creation and organization—by those who initially generated, received, and dealt with the archived (or archivable) documents and items; by those who chose whether to include them in the archive; and by those who chose which archived items to include in their telling of a particular history. Likewise, Burton’s choice to qualify the term “evidence” with quotation marks highlights the inability of any archive to produce objective and indisputable truth. The same biases (whether conscious or unconscious) that guide the selection process help shape interpretation, for as Burton points out, “history is a highly interpretive act.”177

Over the course of several months, I spent time gathering evidence for this study in three sets of archives: in the Old Globe Theatre Records at San Diego State University (SDSU); in the

El Teatro Campesino Archives, which are housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara

(UCSB); and in the Jorge Huerta Papers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). As I made my way through each of these archives, and as I have worked with the materials I encountered in them, I have tried to remain cognizant of the ways in which my personal biases might inform what I found and how I have interpreted and presented my findings. My experience

175 Antoinette Burton, “Introduction” in Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, Edited by

Antoinette Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 3.

176 Ibid., 7-9.

177 Ibid., 8. 46 at each archive, for instance, was not the same. My time at SDSU was by far the most limited, which led me to record some information incompletely; I ultimately had to send a proxy back to the archives to correct my records. At both SDSU and UCSB, I was permitted to photograph archival materials, which I examined at my leisure at home in Ohio. At UCSD, however, I was permitted no photographs and restricted to a certain number of costly scans. Once I had reached my scan limit, I took as many notes as my time in the archive would allow. These notes constitute the bulk of my work in that archive and working from them was naturally a very different experience from working from photographs and scans. Though I cannot identify all of the biases I might have held when I worked in and interpreted these archives, I am certain that I was driven not only by a desire to find that Latinx actor training has existed in the United States, but also by a desire, as a Latinx scholar, to find that it has mattered. The work I have done in and with these archives is, in many ways, unavoidably personal.

The inability of archival research to lead to objective truth is troubling to some. Burton notes “an ever-growing divide between the multiplicity of interpretive possibilities many historians hope to see the archive yield and the expectations of absolute truth which a variety of more general publics, undergraduate and graduate students included, not only desire but demand.”178 I want to make clear that I have no such desire and make no such demands. The chapters that follow this introduction include a great deal of archival evidence. They also include my own interpretations, though these are at times inspired and/or bolstered by secondary sources.

My approach, however, is not positivistic. I believe that the evidence in these archives (and others on the subject that have yet to be studied) may be open to a variety of valid

178 Ibid., 19. 47 interpretations. It is my hope that this study will encourage such further interpretations, which will build productively upon my own. I also hope that my own and others’ future engagement with additional archives and materials will help illuminate the findings of this dissertation to help create a more complete picture of Latinx actor training in the US.

My time in the archives at SDSU, UCSB, and UCSD brought me into contact with a variety of documents and artifacts, some more immediate and complete than others. In many instances, I have enjoyed the advantage of first-person accounts from the key figures at the institutions and organizations whose work I analyze in the chapters ahead. While some of the information in these collections is available in other places, much of it is not. I have had the pleasure of viewing letters, memos, articles, photographs, newsletters, personal notes, flyers, programs, and myriad other documents. Altogether, the materials I have reviewed have provided insight that is not otherwise available. On the other hand, archival research brings with it both limitations and pitfalls. In many instances, I have seen only one side of a story. I may, for instance, have seen a memo from one individual to another, without the benefit of having seen the response. I have read about events after they have passed, and in many cases only from one individual’s perspective. Additionally, since actor training occurs not on the page but in the body, and since it was given and received in a specific time and place, my only access to it comes through what has been written down. Certainly, much of what I might wish to learn is not recorded on paper. It never existed there. Rather, it was experienced and embodied. It belongs, in the words of Diana Taylor, not to the archive but to the repertoire.179 Finally, and again, as

179 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). 48

Esther Kim Lee corroborates, archival materials are “prone to interpretation.”180 As much as possible, I have endeavored to let the artists and practitioners and administrators involved in these materials speak for themselves by incorporating direct quotations. In the process, I have taken it as my interpretive role to make connections, to identify contradictions, and to contextualize archival materials in ways that I hope will illuminate and clarify their significance to theatre history.

Before I begin my exploration of Latinx actor training, it is important to note the nuances of some of the terms with which I will engage—particularly those that describe race and ethnicity. As Chapter IV reveals, the US government began to use the term “Hispanic” as a catch-all classification for a variety of Spanish-speaking and Latin American groups in the

1970s. Because this term is so prevalent in many of the primary sources on which I rely, it appears frequently in this study—especially in Chapter IV and Chapter V. As much as possible, however, I will limit my use of the term to direct quotations and direct references to specifically named programs like UCSD’s MFA in Hispanic-American Theatre. Outside such references, I will typically use the term “Latinx,” a nation-, gender-, and language- inclusive term that encompasses those individuals from North, Central, and South America who might otherwise be categorized as Hispanic or Latin American. Since this term is more often used in current scholarship from a variety of disciplines, I use it outside quoted materials as much as possible.

In most cases, I have also opted to use the word “Eurocentric” rather than “white” to describe dominant, non-Latinx culture. I do so for two reasons. First, I choose the term

Eurocentric because many of the acting systems and theories that dominate actor training in the

180 Lee, History of Asian American Theatre, 4. 49

US have their roots in specifically European or European American theorists and practitioners.

Second, race and ethnicity are defined and divided in the US along lines that can be tricky when discussing Latinx identity. Most importantly, it is possible, in the US, to be Latinx and to also be considered “white.” Since the Chicanx movement is rooted heavily in claims of indigeneity, it thus seems more appropriate to refer to dominant practices and individuals as Eurocentric.

My account of the history Latinx actor training in the US is divided into five chapters. In many ways, Chapter I, “The Rise of the Chicanx Theatre Movement,” lays the foundation for the chapters that follow. Here, I give a brief history of Latinx theatre in the US up to the 1980s, beginning with itinerant Mexican and Spanish theatre companies. After providing contextual information on the Farm Worker’s Movement led by Cesar Chavez and the associated Chicanx

Movement, I conclude with an account of the first fifteen years of El Teatro Campesino, which grew out of these two movements and was led by Luis Valdez. In the process, I examine the ways in which Valdez and the early El Teatro Campesino company trained migrant workers in acting, collective creation, and agit-prop techniques. Serving in part as a literature review,

Chapter I lays the groundwork for the actor training efforts I discuss in the remainder of the study.

In Chapter II, “El Teatro Campesino and the Theatre of the Sphere,” I rely on archival documents and secondary sources to summarize and analyze the acting, collective creation, and life training method that Valdez and El Teatro Campesino devised in the 1970s, known as

“Theatre of the Sphere.” I examine the ways in which Valdez incorporated Mesoamerican mythology into a philosophical poem, Pensamiento Serpentino, and the ways in which this philosophy was embodied in Theatre of the Sphere training. I also explore the ways in which this philosophy and training helped move the work of El Teatro Campesino from overtly social and 50 political goals to more personal and spiritual aims. In the process, I argue that the Theatre of the

Sphere training method reflected Valdez’s and El Teatro Campesino’s focal shift from the separatist ideals of cultural nationalism to a philosophy designed to move beyond the Chicanx experience and use Chicanx thought to help heal the world.

In Chapter III, “TENAZ: Training the Actors of Aztlán,” I broaden my investigation of actor training in the Chicanx theatre movement to include other teatros around the US. I focus especially on Teatro Nacional de Aztlan (TENAZ), an organization that served as a national network for teatros to share their needs and news, but that also hosted and encouraged a variety of conferences and festivals at which actor training was offered in the 1970s and 1980s. After providing a brief history the organization, I use archival evidence to argue that TENAZ and its member teatros created a complex infrastructure of actor training through publications, through a practice of performance critique, and, most significantly, through a series of national and regional workshops. I conclude the chapter by highlighting the ways in which TENAZ leaders encouraged Latinx actors to seek training in both professional and academic theatre institutions.

This chapter relies on evidence from both the El Teatro Campesino archives and Jorge Huerta’s papers.

In Chapter IV, “Teatro Meta: A Goal Without Borders,” I turn my focus to Teatro Meta, a program at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre designed to bring Latinx ideas and artists into mainstream theatre in a border city in the 1980s. For this chapter, I make use of documents from both the Old Globe archives at San Diego State University and, again, Jorge Huerta’s papers at

UCSD. I pay special attention to Teatro Meta’s changing aims, which first dealt specifically with

San Diego history and Chicanx identity, but which eventually fell victim to the trend of professionalization and “mainstreaming” that accompanied the neoliberal and globalist 51 conflation of disparate Latinx populations under the name “Hispanic.” Highlighting the differences between this training and that offered by El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ, I explore the ways in which, as Teatro Meta grew and as its goals shifted, the role of actor training in the program changed. Noting especially the role major foundation funding played in the program at its height, I then trace and analyze its demise.

Finally, in Chapter V, “Separate but Unequal: UCSD’S MFA in Hispanic-American

Theatre,” I examine the brief rise and fall of an MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre for actors and directors at the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 1989 by Jorge Huerta, a leading figure in the activities of nearly all the previous chapters, this program was designed to provide culturally specific training and experience to meet the unique needs of Latinx actors.

Relying primarily on documents I encountered in Huerta’s papers at UCSD, I trace the program from the first records of its planning, through its end in 1992. Along the way, I examine the program’s recruitment efforts, its curriculum, the challenges it faced, and the ways in which it sought to meet those challenges. Ultimately, I explore the logistics and politics of how the program met its end only three years after it began, along with what it might tell us about the possibility of future Latinx actor training.

Although my study ends with the demise of UCSD’s MFA program in Hispanic-

American Theatre in 1992, the questions it raises are far-reaching. Margolis and Renauld’s anthology, after all, was still asking questions about how the academy can and should train

Latinx actors as recently as 2010—nearly twenty years after UCSD graduated its only class of

Hispanic-American Theatre MFA students. While actors and educators of color, along with white allies, have long known that mainstream actor training does not always offer culturally universal tools and experiences, these questions have not yet been answered. It is my hope that 52 documenting this previously untold history and others like it will encourage those who design curricula and conduct training to consider what has been attempted in the past—both what has succeeded, and what has failed. Beyond that, it is my hope that documenting the work of Latinx artists and scholars as it relates to actor training will bring new understandings of their role in the history of a nation, a culture, and a theatre that has all too often ignored them. 53

CHAPTER I: THE RISE OF THE CHICANX THEATRE MOVEMENT

In 1990, Nicolás Kanellos declared US Latinx theatre “an underground or forgotten tradition, a forgotten part of … our national history and culture.”1 In the public imagination, US

Latinx theatre was born when Luis Valdez and his ensemble of farm workers founded El Teatro

Campesino in conjunction with Cesar Chávez’s California labor movement in 1965. Indeed, few scholars other than Kanellos have given much attention to the history of US Latinx theatre before that event ignited what is now known as the Chicanx Theatre Movement. This movement, however, did not simply spring into existence, fully formed; nor were its elements entirely new.

Chicanx Studies scholar Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez contends that “the inordinate strength of El

Teatro Campesino was not so much a function of innovation as its reliance on tradition: its grounding in Mexican oral culture.”2 Since the 1980s, Kannellos, Broyles-Gonzalez and Chicanx theatre scholar Jorge Huerta have painstakingly recorded the history of Latinx theatre in the

United States. In this chapter, I bring together their findings, along with the histories of the

Farmworker’s Movement and the Chicanx Movement and my own research in the El Teatro

Campesino archives, to demonstrate how the stage was set for the Chicanx Theater Movement that began in 1965 and that, in some ways, continues even today. I then give an overview of El

Teatro Campesino’s history from its inception in 1965 to the conclusion of its existence as a permanent ensemble in 1980. In the process, I lay the historical and conceptual groundwork that led to El Teatro Campesino’s actor training system, the Theater of the Sphere, which also ended

1 Nicolás Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940 (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1990), xiv.

2 Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1994), 5. 54 in 1980 and which is at the center of Chapter II.

US Latinx Theatre Before the Chicanx Theatre Movement

Though Kanellos’s A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940 includes the history of US Latinx theatre in Los Angeles, San Antonio, New York City, and

Tampa, the brief summation I provide here will focus primarily on California and Texas. The first reason for this limitation is that the type of work that was popular in New York and Tampa was similar to that which was offered across the country, and to recount it for each city would result in tedious redundancy. The second reason relates to relevance. New York and Tampa both have rich and complex histories of US Latinx theatre, but neither is necessarily germane to my study of Chicanx theatre. While it is true that the advent of mutual aid societies was instrumental in training Latinx actors in Tampa,3 and that at least one such organization offered training for

Latinx actors in New York,4 there is no evidence that this training bore any relationship to what would eventually develop in the Chicanx Theatre Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed,

Latinx theatre in both New York and Tampa developed in large part around Puerto Rican and

Cuban culture, rather than the Mexican culture that ultimately informed Chicanx theatre. Further investigation may well reveal that these organizations played an important role in the training of

US Latinx actors overall, but that investigation is better suited to a separate or more extensive project than this dissertation. For these reasons, the history I recount here is largely that of Latinx theatre in the Southwest US—California, Texas, and the places in between. As I will demonstrate in Chapters II and III, it was largely these traditions that informed the earliest

3 Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre, 146-161.

4 Ibid., 119 55 organized, culturally specific training of Latinx actors through Luis Valdez’s El Teatro

Campesino and the national network of Latinx theatres it inspired.

Kanellos traces the history of regularly performed Latinx theatre in the Southwest to professional “troupes of itinerant players” who toured “from Mexico to perform melodramas accompanied by other musical and dramatic entertainments” in the coastal California cities of

San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego in the mid-nineteenth century.5 Often composed of family units, these troupes typically included actors from Mexico and/or Spain and presented a variety of entertainments at any given performance.6 As early as the 1860s, such touring companies as the one run by Mexican actor Mariano Luque “began to settle down as resident companies in California.”7 Newspaper documentation suggests that Spanish-language theatre companies were established and active “from the 1850s to the 1880s”; by this time, other companies were also present in San Francisco and Santa Barbara.8 Smaller, amateur companies were also known to tour alongside the professional companies, often recruiting local amateur actors “to play minor roles in their melodramas.”9

The types of entertainments presented by traveling and resident Spanish-language theatre companies in the US during this period were varied. Along with short comic pieces, many companies regularly performed melodramas inherited by Mexico from colonizing Spain.

Luque’s company provides a glimpse at a typical offering:

5 Ibid., 1.

6 Ibid., 4-6.

7 Ibid., 4.

8 Ibid., 9.

9 Ibid., 12. 56

Each program was a complete evening’s entertainment that included a three- or four-act

drama, song and dance entertainment, and a one-act farce or comic dialogue to close the

performance. The full-length plays that were at the heart of the program were mostly

melodramas by peninsular Spanish authors such as José Zarilla, Mariano José de Larra,

and Manuel Bretón de los Herreros…10

Evenings such as the one Kanellos describes above, which would have occurred in or around

1870, were common in Southwest US Latinx theatre throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. The comedies, dramas, and melodramas these companies produced were often the works of Spanish and, less frequently, Mexican or Cuban playwrights. Throughout his study of the nineteenth century, Kanellos also mentions the traditional pastorela,11 the juegete and the juegete cómico,12 the zarzuela,13 the circo,14 religious and historical drama,15 and at least one play by Molière.16 The content of the performances, then, were not generally Mexican American or US Latinx in origin, but primarily Spanish or Mexican. Indeed, many of the companies that toured the Southwest during this period came from Mexico.17 For the second half of the nineteenth century, such companies toured on regular theatrical circuits “up and down the coast

10 Ibid, 5.

11 Ibid., 2-3.

12 Ibid., 7-8.

13 Ibid., 10.

14 Ibid., 13-15.

15 Ibid., 10.

16 Ibid., 9.

17 Ibid., 1. 57 of upper and Baja California, across Baja into Northwestern Mexico and up to Tuscon, and across San Diego and Los Angeles.”18

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the influx of Mexican immigrants increased; with this increase came an increase in Mexican theatre performance in the US. Los

Angeles and San Antonio, especially, became hubs of Mexican theatrical activity from 1910 to

1920, “when thousands of refugees took flight from the Mexican Revolution and settled in the

United States from the border all the way up to the Midwest.”19 In this period and through the

1920s, during which time vaudeville performance also reached its zenith in the US, both the zarzuela and the revista grew in popularity with Latinx audiences. The zarzuela, a Spanish theatrical form, can in many ways be likened to the operetta, though Robert Francis Mardis notes that they are not identical:

…the zarzuela is done in one act, is usually satirical, and often depicts the life of a low

comic character. The operetta and zarzuela are similar in that both tend to be romantic

comedies with melodramatic overtones; both are set to music; and both feature a happy

ending. Essentially, they differ in act structure, the protagonist’s station in life, and in the

use of satire.20

The revista, on the other hand, is essentially a lighthearted revue tinged with political commentary. Developed in Mexico, “revistas criticized and lampooned those in power and their

18 Ibid., 15-16.

19 Ibid., 18.

20 Robert Francis Mardis, “Federal Theatre in Florida” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 1972), 156. 58 institutions” and “projected a minority view of prevailing social conditions.”21 According to

Kanellos, the revista was created “under the influence of the Spanish zarzuela, the French revue, and vaudeville but had taken on [its] own character in Mexico as a format for piquant political commentary and social satire.”22 The political nature of the revista was due in part to the fact that

“in Mexico and later in Los Angeles, most of the revista writers were also newspaper men who naturally exhibited an interest in politics.”23 This tradition was carried across the border, where

“with their low humor and popular musical scores, revistas articulated grievances and poked fun at both the US and Mexican governments.”24 In part, then, though Los Angeles certainly began to develop its own Latinx playwrights, it was through the revistas that a Mexican American theatre began to develop and thrive. Even as the Depression, the post-revolution repatriation of some Mexican citizens, and the rising popularity of film “devastated Hispanic theatre in the

Southwest and the Midwest,”25 the revista survived. It did so not in theatres, but in tents.

Kanellos traces the carpa, or “tent theatre” tradition, to the nineteenth century. At this time, “there existed a … humble, poor man’s circus that traveled the poorer neighborhoods of

Mexico City and the provinces and set up a small tent, or carpa, to house its performances.”26

21 Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause: La Farándula Chicana: Carpas y Tandes de Variedad” in

Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre in the United States (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984), 56.

22 Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre, 59.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., 60.

25 Nicolás Kanellos, “An Overview of Hispanic Theatre in the United States” in Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre in the

United States (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984), 10.

26 Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre, 97. 59

Though “circus-type diversions” were known to have occurred in the days of the Aztec empire, it was not until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that Mexican circus traditions “added layers of European and Anglo-American influence until after World War II the Mexican American circus ceased to exist.”27 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the circus and the theatre enjoyed a close relationship in Mexican culture. As early as 1875, acrobats and other circus acts were performing in theatres, along with “musical and dramatic pieces by regular actors of the theatre”; “this mixture of circus and theatrical spectacles was to characterize the

Mexican circus from then on.”28

Much like the later performances of El Teatro Campesino, the carpa performances that became popular in the early twentieth century US performed social and political commentary through bawdy humor and characters of low social standing. At the center of the carpa was the comic hobo known as the pelado, a “feisty underdog” and a “penniless roustabout living by his wits.”29 Through his crude humor based heavily on the body and its movement, the pelado performed biting political and social commentary, eventually coming to “assume the role of a symbolic Chicano Everyman.”30 In addition to poking fun at the US and Mexican governments, the pelado criticized “the process of agringamiento,” or the assimilation of the Mexican into US culture.31 These characters, as I will show later in this chapter, would become essential to

27 Ibid., 96.

28 Nicolás Kanellos, Mexican American Theater: Legacy and Reality (Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review

Press, 1987), 77.

29 Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause,” in Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre, 51.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 50. 60

Valdez’s work and would thus inform the actor training he would ultimately offer with and through El Teatro Campesino.

The presentation of carpas was as rough as their humor. Like many of the companies in early US Latinx theatre, most carpa “troupes were…small, extended family-based units” that performed largely “in remote rural areas and [ventured] into the outer boundaries of urban barrios.”32 Performed under simple canvas, the carpas maintained a rough-and-tumble process and appearance: “Rolling into town in rickety worn-out trucks, loaded down with baggage and show paraphernalia, the raggle-taggle troupes hired able-bodied men from the community to help set up their tent in whatever vacant lot was available.”33

The goal of carpa performances was to provide a variety of entertainments while addressing the issues faced by a public often ignored by higher-brow, more family-friendly theatre. Though revistas appeared regularly in carpas, they did not appear alone. Rather, the carpas presented spectacles combining dancing, singing, and acrobatics, as well as “clowning, pantomime, comedic turns, [and] dramatic monologues.34 Their structure was “fluid [and] open,” and they often featured “direct audience interaction and feedback.”35 As Tomás Ybarro-Frausto has argued, the carpa, with its wide variety of offerings, was “essentially a form of entertainment for the masses” that “helped define and sustain ethnic and class consciousness.”36 It was partly through these performances, Ybarro-Frausto suggests, that a new and hybridized Mexican

32 Ibid., 47.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 53. 61

American, or Chicanx, identity was forged and affirmed:

Carpas motivated and helped establish a new sense of self-identity for the Mexican

American in the Southwest by a) valorization and vitalization of Chicano vernacular,

especially incipient forms of code-switching; b) elaboration of a critical mode

exemplified in the anti-establishment stance of the pelado; c) maintenance of oral

tradition and humor in its various modalities as a cultural weapon applied symbolically to

annihilate and vanquish oppressors; d) elaboration of a down-to-earth, direct aesthetic

deeply imbedded in social tradition.37

From the carpa and the pelado, a new style of Chicanx performance had begun to develop: rasquachismo, which Ybarro-Frausto describes as “a way of confronting the world from the perspective of the downtrodden, the rebel, the outsider. To be rascuachi38 is to possess an ebullient spirit of irreverence and insurgency, a carnivalesque topsy-turvy vision where authority and decorum serve as targets for subversion.”39 The carpa, then, along with the rasquachi aesthetic it engendered among Chicanxs, were rooted in resistance and non-conformity. It became a method by which Chicanxs began to assert their identities as neither Mexican nor

American, but as both and neither at the same time. It was a refusal to be confined to existing categories, and an insistent and persistent critique of the categories themselves. All at once, it

37 Ibid.

38 Though Ybarra-Frausto uses the spellings “rascuachismo” and “rascuachi,” and I will use these spellings when quoting him directly, I will opt in my own writing for “rasquachismo” and “rasquachi.” I do so because these are the spellings preferred by Luis Valdez and those who write about him, and because I will most often be referencing the terms in relation to Valdez and his work.

39 Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause,” in Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre, 52-53. 62 lamented and celebrated the in-betweenness of the Chicanx identity, and it demanded recognition. Rasquachismo, in fact, would become a central part of the aesthetic with which

Valdez and El Teatro Campesino identified. It was through this aesthetic that the group would communicate their goals for the Chicanx population, and it was this aesthetic and its rootedness in Mexican folk traditions that would lead Valdez and others to base their approach to actor training on ancestral Mexican mythology.

I have lingered on the revista, the carpa, the pelado, and rasquachismo because they represent vital links between the earliest US Latinx theatre and the Chicanx Theatre Movement.

Indeed, much of Kanellos’s work is dedicated to proving that the Chicanx Theatre Movement is merely one step in the long evolution of Latinx theatre in the US. As he suggests, the work of

Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino were the result of “a deep-rooted tradition in the

Southwest.”40 The company “[fashioned] its performance style after Mexican tent theatres” and

“developed one-act plays modeled on the revistas…that were performed in these carpas and also incorporated into their works the beloved comic character of that tradition, the peladito.”41 As

Kanellos and others demonstrate, the Chicanx Theatre Movement did not emerge from nothing.

Rather, it is part of a long, rich history of US Latinx theatre. Understanding that history is vital to understanding how the Chicanx Theatre Movement sparked a practice of organized training for

Latinx actors.

The last several pages, then, have in some ways been an effort to provide context for how the Chicanx Theatre Movement began, which informs my study of El Teatro Campesino and its

40 Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre, xiv.

41Ibid; peladito is a diminutive form of pelado. 63 training practices. While it is true that I have said little about actor training in this brief historical overview, there are a few things to be gleaned from what is known. First, because many of the early troupes and companies came from Mexico, and because some of their members were

Spanish, it is clear that many of these early actors—again, not Chicanx, but primarily Mexican actors—received their training outside the US and long before the Chicanx Theatre Movement began. Second, because many of the troupes that eventually claimed a Mexican American identity were essentially family affairs, formal or organized training was not likely part of their experience. Rather, it is likely (and even probable) that knowledge and skills were passed down informally among family members and other troupe members. In this chapter and in the next two, I will demonstrate the ways in which Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino continued this tradition among themselves (to whom they often even referred as “la familia”), and how they ultimately came to formalize this training in the Theatre of the Sphere system and in the workshops they offered both in their own facilities in California and in festivals across the nation.

One might argue that any formal training undertaken by the Mexican and Spanish actors who toured the US before and after the turn of the twentieth century has significant bearing on the history of Latinx actor training in the US. With this, I do not disagree. In the future, I hope to delve more deeply into actor training practices in Mexico in and around the nineteenth century.

There is good reason, however, to set these training practices aside in this present study. First, as

I have demonstrated in the preceding pages, the shift from Mexican to Mexican American theatre in the US involved a shift in the types of performances for which actors needed to be prepared and trained. Second, after the Depression, which effectively ended the popularity of dramas, 64 melodramas, and the like in US Latinx theatre, it was primarily the carpas that survived,42 and I argue it was these carpas that would eventually inform the Chicanx theatre aesthetic. Since the carpa actors performed for the masses rather than in the more respected theatrical forms for elite audiences, and since they likely received informal rather than formal training, I suggest that organized actor training in Mexico will have had less bearing on training practices in and after the Chicanx Theatre Movement. Finally, because the carpa survived up to the birth of Chicanx theatre and these other forms did not, and since the carpa was most directly instrumental in forging a new Mexican American identity, I contend that there exists a significant temporal gap between the training that actors of dramas and melodramas might have received in Mexico before and after the turn of the twentieth century and the first training that might be considered

Chicanx under the leadership of Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino in the 1960s and 1970s.

Organized actor training for Chicanxs began with Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino.

Though the company’s first productions did not involve trained actors, in Chapters II and III I will show how Valdez and his company trained farm workers and others in a system that, while designed as a sort of life training, nevertheless taught a theatrical aesthetic that would come to characterize Chicanx theatre across the country for more than a decade. Before I can turn my attention to that system, however, it is important to say a few words about two social movements to which El Teatro Campesino is inextricably linked, and which influenced Luis Valdez in developing his Theatre of the Sphere training: the Farm Workers Movement and the Chicanx

Movement.

42 Ibid., 100; Ybarra-Frausto, “I Can Still Hear the Applause,” in Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre, 53. 65

La Causa: The Farm Worker’s Movement

Luis Valdez began El Teatro Campesino in the 1960s as a way to assist César Chávez’s efforts to unionize California’s farm workers, most of whom were Mexican or Mexican

American. Efforts to unionize the farm workers, of course, had by this time developed a long and sustained history, especially for Chávez. Chávez, whose “family had moved to California to become farmworkers in 1937,”43 was intimately familiar with the harsh existence such laborers endured. Often living in unsanitary conditions and in “[shacks] built of cardboard cartons and linoleum scraps or [tents] made of gunny sacks,”44 farm workers before the 1960s were unprotected by the labor laws passed for industrial and other workers in the 1930s.45 As Randy

Shaw has noted, “the combination of brutal working conditions, unsanitary living conditions, poor diet, and grinding poverty explained why farmworkers had short life expectancies, with many dying before age fifty.”46 Though many attempts had been made to organize farm workers before the 1960s, they had met with little success.47 Chávez himself had been involved in some of these attempts. It was through his work with the largely unsuccessful National Farm Labor

Union that he was first introduced to the term “la causa” (“the cause”), which would come to serve as an unofficial name for the labor movement he would eventually start.48

43 Randy Shaw, Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 13, 43.

46 Ibid., 1.

47 Ibid., 15.

48 Ibid, 14. 66

Though Chávez did not succeed in organizing California’s migrant farm workers until the

1960s, he was working on behalf of Mexican American interests as early as the 1950s. During this time, he worked with Fred Ross, “a civil rights worker in east Los Angeles for the American

Council on Race Relations” who in the 1930s had “[defended] Mexican Americans against the

‘zoot suit’ riots and illegal deportations,” and who, after World War II, helped create and oversee the Community Service Organization (CSO) “as a Mexican-American civil rights organization.”49 Together, “Chávez and Ross organized twenty-two new CSO chapters in San

Jose’s Mexican American neighborhoods during the 1950s, and Chávez became the CSO’s executive director in 1959.”50 As Shaw notes, “the group was making a name for itself by registering tens of thousands of voters, offering citizenship classes, and promoting Mexican

American interests in city affairs. But Chávez’s dream was to organize a union for farmworkers.”51 After the CSO board rejected multiple requests from Chávez to turn their efforts towards that end, he resigned to begin the work on his own.52

Chávez dedicated himself fully to organizing farm workers and pursuing better working conditions for them in 1962.53 According to J. Craig Jenkins, Chávez combined “the multi-issue community organizing model developed by Saul Alinsky and Fred Ross, who had founded the

CSO” with the model created by “the mutual benefit associations of the Catholic Church,” which

49 J. Craig Jenkins, The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1985), 132.

50 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 16; See also Jenkins, Politics of Insurgency, 132.

51 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 16.

52 Ibid., 16-17; See also Jenkins, Politics of Insurgency, 133.

53 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 1. 67 were designed to provide communal aid to Mexican Americans unable to cover the expenses of life events such as illness and death.54 Ross’s influence was key:

Ross contended that the Mexican immigrants were sufficiently disorganized and without

leaders that an open challenge would immediately collapse. First, they had to develop

solidarity ties, indigenous leaders, and a tradition of pooling resources. Organizing was a

question of developing solidarity, training indigenous leaders, and creating new

organizations. The organizer had to make a long-term commitment, investing years and

perhaps a decade before open challenges would be possible.55

Chávez was willing to make that commitment. He began by befriending farm workers through door-to-door house visits, ingratiating himself with not just the workers but also their families in the winter of 1962, under the cover of “conducting a social survey.”56 In the process, he recruited workers to join his fledgling National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which was not yet but would eventually form the basis of the United Farm Workers union; “the strategy was to prepare a basis for a union, not a union outright.”57 What Chávez initially set up was a list of farm workers organized into something more closely resembling a mutual aid society. By 1964,

Helen Chávez was administering “a well-established credit union…with $25,000 in assets.”58

Building slowly and through personal contact, César Chávez built a membership of roughly

54 Jenkins, Politics of Insurgency, 134.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid., 136

57 Ibid., 135.

58 Ibid., 137. 68

1,200 by the fall of 1965, 200 of which were paying regular membership dues.59

It was the NFWA’s actions against grape growers in Delano, California that first brought it national attention and, ultimately, great success. Though the strike is often most closely associated with Chávez, it was “Filipino workers who were affiliated with the AFL-CIO- chartered Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC)” that initially called the strike.60 According to Shaw, “their decision to strike on September 8, 1965 forced Chávez and the NFWA to either join the struggle or appear to be turning their backs on workers.”61 The strike began on September 16, 1965, Mexican Independence Day, and would go on in various forms—including successful boycotts not just of the grape growers, but of those who delivered and sold their product—for the next five years. During and after this period, the NFWA, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW) would engage in strikes and boycotts and legal actions against companies producing grapes, lettuce, wine, and various other products. At various points, UFW membership would pass 100,000,62 and the union’s efforts would result in legal protections for farm workers like those passed for other laborers in the forty years that preceded its existence.63

Although the UFW has a rich history that extends beyond the 1970s and into the present day, it is primarily its early years with which I am concerned. It was during this formative period that Luis Valdez’s involvement with the movement led him to found El Teatro Campesino as a

59 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 17.

60 Ibid., 18.

61 Ibid.

62 Jenkins, Politics of Insurgency, 202.

63 Ibid., 196-197; Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 2-4. 69 way of reaching farm workers on Chávez’s behalf. Before I begin to explore that relationship, however, I want to devote some attention to a related movement that was occurring at the same time, and which also played a key role in the development of El Teatro Campesino’s work and aesthetic: The Chicanx Movement.

El Movimiento: The Chicanx Movement

In some ways, the timeline and the very nature of the Chicanx Movement are contested.

George Mariscal defines it thusly: “A diffuse movement cross-cut by regional, gender, and class issues, the Movimiento (also known as La Causa or La Movida) was a mass mobilization dedicated to a wide range of social projects, from ethnic separatism to socialist internationalism, from electoral politics to institutional reform and even armed insurrection.”64 In referencing “la causa,” Mariscal draws a clear connection between the Chicanx Movement and Chávez’s Farm

Workers Movement. Though the title of Mariscal’s book limits his study to the years 1965-1975, he traces the beginning of the Chicanx Movement to the colonization of Mexico, and “an acceleration in a different register” to the creation of the Mexican American Political Association

(MAPA) in 1959.65 As Mariscal sees it, the Farm Workers Movement figures into the broader trajectory of the Chicanx Movement. Moreover, he suggests that the Chicanx Movement was part of “a ‘window of opportunity’ for liberation struggles around the world” that occurred in

“the thirty year period between the end of the Second World War and the end of the US war in

Southeast Asia.”66 However brief the period Mariscal’s study addresses, then, he suggests that

64 George Mariscal, Brown-eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965-1975

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 3.

65 Ibid., 7.

66 Ibid., 8. 70 the Chicanx Movement is a broad one that stretches backwards in time by degrees, and that the

Farm Workers Movement of the 1960s constitutes one aspect of it.

In contrast, Carlos Muñoz, Jr., a recognized leader in the Chicanx Movement, argues that the Farm Workers Movement preceded the Chicanx Movement by several years, that the latter began in 1968, and that the two movements featured drastically different aims and philosophies.

To Muñoz’s mind, the Chicanx Movement was largely a student-driven movement for social change that began with two events. “The first took place during the first week of March 1968, on the streets of East Los Angeles when over ten thousand students walked out of four high schools.”67 The students were protesting “racist teachers and school policies, the lack of freedom of speech, the lack of teachers of Mexican descent, the absence of classes on Mexican and

Mexican American culture and history, and the inferior education provided to Mexican

American students.”68 Muñoz identifies “the arrest three months later of thirteen civil rights activists who were identified as the organizers of the walkouts”69 as the second event that precipitated the movement; Muñoz himself was one of the thirteen arrested. The arrested organizers, including Muñoz, spent two years in prison before their convictions were overturned on appeal.70

According to Muñoz, “the Chicano Movement was a historic first attempt to shape a politics of unification on the basis of a nonwhite identity and culture and on the interests of the

67 Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement, Revised and Expanded Edition (New York:

Verso, 2007), 1.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 3. 71

Mexican American working class. The movement rejected all previous identities, and thus represented a counter-hegemonic political and cultural project.”71 One of the central tenets of the Chicanx movement was a strong sense of cultural nationalism often described by the term chicanismo. Marío T. Garcia notes the centrality in chicanismo of “the claim that Chicanos were an indigenous people because of their Mexican Indian and mestizo (Indian and Spanish) heritage.

They were not immigrants but natives of the Southwest and of the Americas.”72 At the root of this claim lies the idea of the Chicanx homeland, Aztlán:

As indigenous people, Chicanos possessed a historical homeland: Aztlán. In their

historical excavation Chicanos rediscovered this northern birthplace of the Aztecs before

the migration south and the establishment of the Aztec Empire in the Valley of Mexico

(later Mexico City). Chicanos asserted the controversial position that Aztlán had existed

in what became the southwestern region of the United States, the area taken by the United

States from Mexico in the 1840s. The exact location of Aztlán has always been disputed

by scholars, but all acknowledge that it was north of the Valley of Mexico. Chicanos

conveniently placed it where they lived.73

The placement of Aztlán in the Southwestern US led Chicanxs to theorize themselves as subjects of “internal colonialism,” whereby the Chicanx population exists as a colony within the colonizing nation of the US; the assertion of the Chicanx identity, then, constitutes a form of

71 Ibid., 22.

72 Mario T. García, The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement (Oakland: University of California

Press, 2015), 4.

73 Ibid. 72 struggle and resistance against this colonial oppression.74

Because of this emphasis on cultural nationalism, Muñoz argues against describing the

Farm Workers Movement as part of the Chicanx Movement. Citing any references to Chávez as a “Chicano Movement leader” as a “glaring example of misinterpretation,” Muñoz argues that:

In fact, Chávez was the leader of a labor movement and later a union struggle that was

never an integral part of the Chicano movement. He made it clear, especially during the

movement’s formative years, that the farmworkers’ union did not support Chicano

nationalism or neo-separatism and that he did not consider himself to be a Chicano leader

but the organizer of a union representing a multiracial constituency of rank-and-file

workers.75

The primary difference for Muñoz, and the primary reason he disqualifies Chávez and the Farm

Workers Movement as part of the Chicanx Movement, has to do with these differences in ideologically formed goals. The aims of the Chicanx Movement, he argues, first came forth in

March of 1969, when the “first National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference” in Denver,

Colorado “adopted El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán…a manifesto advocating civil rights, social and economic justice, and self-determination in the context of a Chicano cultural nationalist framework.”76 Additionally, an April 1969 conference in Santa Barbara was held “to produce a plan of action to institutionalize Chicano equal opportunity programs (EOP), Chicano Studies programs, and other programs to serve Chicano students on the state’s college campuses and

74 Ibid.

75 Muñoz, Youth, Identity, Power, 17.

76 Ibid., 3. 73 aimed at serving the educational needs of Mexican American youth.”77 At that conference, El

Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) was also formed; it, along with “the

Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and other student organizations played a major role in the building of the Chicano Movement.”78 The goals of the student-driven Chicanx

Movement as Muñoz describes it, were largely focused on forging a distinct Chicanx identity that was neither fully Mexican nor fully American, and on procuring educational and political power for the Chicanx population. Because Chávez was focused on workers’ rights rather than identity, and because he represented workers of other descents, Muñoz seeks to separate him from the Chicanx Movement.

Yet, Marguerite V. Marin has noted that “the structure of the Chicano movement … is best described … as a ‘decentralized, segmented and reticulate’ pattern of organization. As a decentralized movement, its component organizations functioned freely, no single leader dominated the movement.”79 In Marin’s analysis, the Chicanx Movement was not one movement, but many disparate movements “bound together by ‘intersecting sites of personal relationships and other inter-group linkages.’”80 Thus, while Marin acknowledges the important and central role of the student activism Muñoz describes, she also recognizes that “the component organizations of the Chicanx movement formed around local issues, attracting

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

79 Marguerite V. Marin, Social Protest in an Urban Barrio: A Study of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1974 (Lanham,

MD: University Press of America, 1991), 5.

80 Ibid. 74 different constituencies who developed distinctive goals and strategies.”81 By this measure,

Chávez’s Farm Workers Movement can be counted as a component of the Chicanx Movement.

Marin traces the history of the Mexican population in the US, and particularly in the Southwest, to show the ways in which Mexican and Mexican American citizens (some of whom shifted from the former category to the latter overnight at the end of the Mexican-American War in

1848) were historically discriminated against. Between that time and the full realization of the

Chicanx Movement in the 1960s, Marin details several movements and organizations that essentially served as its foundation. Though Chávez and the Farm Workers Movement are not central to her study because it is focused primarily on East Los Angeles, they are featured as part of the Chicanx Movement’s historical trajectory.

Randy J. Ontiveros also sees the Farm Workers Movement as part of the Chicanx

Movement. In fact, he names the “Plan of Delano,’ composed by Luis Valdez as part of the

UFW’s strategy to protest unfair practices by grape growers, “an essential document of the

Chicano movement.”82 As Ontiveros describes it, the Chicanx movement was comprised not only of student activism, but of a diverse collection of social, economic, political, and artistic movements. Along with an analysis of Chicanx music trends in the 1960s and 1970s, he offers film and theatre as vehicles through which the fight for Chicanx rights and pride was fought.

Among those he describes as engaging in these activities, he includes both Chávez and Valdez.

García offers similar analysis:

Every major political manifestation of the movement occurred in the City of Angels,

81 Ibid.

82 Randy J. Ontiveros, In the Spirit of a new People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement (New York:

New York University Press, 2014), 10. 75

including effort in support of César Chávez and the farmworkers’ struggle; the student

movement highlighted by the 1968 East Los Angeles school ‘blowouts,’ or walkouts; the

Chicano antiwar movement, including the historic National Chicano Antiwar Moratorium

of August 29, 1970; the organization of La Raza Unida Party, an independent Chicano

political party; the Chicana feminist movement; the organizing of undocumented

workers; and the Chicano Renaissance, the flourishing of movement-inspired literary and

artistic production.83

The Chicanx Movement as García describes it, then, certainly has room for—and indeed, owes much of its identity to—Chávez and the Farm Workers movement. “Although informed by chicanismo,” he argues, “the Chicano movement was not monolithic. It manifested itself in different ways and in different locations.”84

I have dwelled on the question of whether the Farm Workers Movement should be considered a part of or apart from the Chicanx Movement because it is at the intersection of the two that the Chicanx Theatre Movement was born. It is possible, of course, to consider the

Chicanx Theatre Movement and Luiz Valdez’s founding of El Teatro Campesino as having been influenced by each of these movements in turn—or, as Muñoz would have it, beginning as part of the Farm Workers Movement but ultimately abandoning it for the nationalistic ideals of the

Chicanx Movement.85 I contend, however, that, at least for the years in which it was training its company members to act, El Teatro Campesino always blended the concerns of both.

83 García, The Chicano Generation, 2-3.

84 Ibid., 5.

85 Muñoz, Youth, Identity, Power, 17. 76

El Teatro Campesino and the Birth of Chicanx Theatre

Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez has gone to great lengths to suggest that the birth of the

Teatro Campesino should not be credited to Luis Valdez alone. To her mind, the trend among historians writing about the company has tended to take a male-centered, “top-down view of creation.”86 Her 1994 study reveals how the company and its work developed, at least until 1980, not from the mind of one man, but from the collective work of an ensemble. She also details the previously undocumented work of women within the collective.87 In the pages that follow, I weave together various accounts—including those given by Broyles-Gonzalez, by Valdez, and by Teatro Campesino literature and publications—as much as possible. To these narratives, I add my own findings, which I owe to my time in the El Teatro Campesino archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara. What emerges is unlikely to be a complete story; in some ways, it may not even be a consistent story. I hope, however, that it will provide a detailed picture of the work the Teatro Campesino did from 1965 to 1980. An understanding of this work, its roots, its goals, and its impact are necessary before any consideration can be given to its Theater of the

Sphere actor training program discussed in Chapter II.

It is entirely possible that without the Farm Workers Movement, there would not have been El Teatro Campesino. Though Luis Valdez certainly might still have done noteworthy work, it was César Chávez’s movement that inspired him to create the company now considered to have begun what is widely known as the Chicanx Theatre Movement. Valdez, “the son of

Delano farmworkers … had studied drama at San Jose State University and performed with the

86 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 4.

87 See Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, Chap. 3. 77 socially conscious San Francisco Mime Troupe.”88 Having considered using theatre to help farm workers for some time, he found value in the Mime Troupe’s techniques. Valdez wrote of this in

1977, in a history of El Teatro Campesino that is now available in the company’s archives at the

University of California, Santa Barbara:

They solved a lot of problems for me in what I wanted to do with the Farmworker’s

Theater. I’d been working on these format problems for years and each time I

experienced something that would work well for the Farmworker theater, I filed it in my

memory, for instance, Garcia Lorca’s traveling teater [sic] truck, the outdoor, street

theatre of the SF Mime troupe, and the idea for actos which I developed after seeing a

children’s back-yard drama production in Cuba.89

When Valdez’s grandmother brought him an article about Chávez’s efforts in Delano, he says, he left the Mime Troupe: “I knew the strike would be the perfect situation for a trial of my theater.”90 According to Shaw, Valdez met Chávez “in the early weeks of the 1965 strike” and

“proposed opening a street theater group that would use satire to address social issues, such as the Mime Troupe did, and that would cast farmworkers as performers in the skits. Valdez had a

88 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 277.

89 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” p. 9, March 20, 1977, El Teatro Campesino Archives,

CEMA 5, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, Series 17,

Box 3, Folder 2; Since the El Teatro Campesino Archives are divided into twenty-seven series, each with its own set of numbered boxes beginning with Box 1, I will note the Series number with a capital “S”; for documents with numbered pages, the page number will follow the document title. Future first references to sources in this archive in this chapter will be abbreviated using this source as a model: “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis

Valdez,” p. 9, March 20, 1977, CEMA 5, UCSB, S17 B3 F2.

90 Ibid. 78 vision of using theater to build unity among the strikers.”91 Though Chávez warned Valdez that there were no resources to spare for the endeavor, he gave his approval, “and the legendary

Teatro Campesino, which has continued for more than [five] decades, was born.”92

Broyles-Gonzalez gives a slightly different account, arguing that Chávez exhibited a

“strong reliance on Mexican cultural practices” to unite farm workers even before the Teatro

Campesino was formed.93 Specifically, she cites Chávez’s early exposure to the carpa performance tradition, which he saw as a way to employ “humor as a vehicle for critique and mobilization” that offered “a specific cultural language shared by the overwhelming majority of farmworkers.”94 In any case, it was Valdez who led the workers in their early explorations of using theatre as a demonstration tool.

The first meeting between Valdez and farm workers took place in November of 1965 in what Valdez called in an archived pamphlet a “shack,”95 and what Jorge Huerta has referred to as

“a little pink house” that formed part of the headquarters for Chávez’s union efforts.96 Workers who attended that first meeting did so in response to a written announcement that circulated in both English and Spanish to announce “interest in establishing a bi-lingual community farm

91 Shaw, Beyond the Fields, 277.

92 Ibid.; I have changed Shaw’s original “four decades” to “five,” since over a decade has passed since he wrote this passage.

93 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 11.

94 Ibid.

95 Pamphlet, Radical Theatre Festival, p. 10, September 1968, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F28.

96 Jorge Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1982), 11. 79 workers’ theatre project in Delano.”97 Suggesting that the theatre would be “OF, BY, and FOR the men and women (and their families) involved in the strike,” the flyer on file in the El Teatro

Campesino’s archives notes that “the technique of the FARM WORKERS’ THEATRE would be simple and direct, such as that effectively used by the Federal Theatre Project’s LIVING

NEWSPAPER during the depression.”98 The farm workers’ theatre would potentially include role playing, narration, audience participation, music, plays, and drama, but overall was meant to

“provide another form which farm workers—the formerly silent of California—could use to express not just their present grievances but their future hopes, as well.”99 The flyer encouraged all to attend, concluding that: “IF YOU CAN SING, DANCE, WALK, MARCH, HOLD A

PICKET SIGN, PLAY A GUITAR OR HARMONICA OR ANY OTHER INSTRUMENT,

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE! NO ACTING EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.”100 The variety of activities the flyer promises, as well as its mention of features like narration and audience participation, bolster Kannellos and Broyles-Gonzalez’s claims that the Teatro Campesino’s work grew directly out of existing Mexican American performance traditions. These claims will also be supported by my examination of the Mesoamerican mythological roots of Valdez’s

Theatre of the Sphere training in Chapter II.

Though “about 25 people” showed up to the initial meeting, Valdez quickly learned that they had arrived not to make theatre, but to see it.101 At a second, more sparsely attended

97 “Farm Workers’ Theatre” Organizational Flyer, Undated, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F2.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 12. 80 meeting, Valdez hung signs on attendees identifying them as farm workers, growers, buyers, and union scabs; “Just do what you do in the fields,” he instructed them.102 The farm workers improvised dialogues and interactions common to their daily lives, attracting the attention of passersby who “[hung] in the windows, listening and laughing.”103 Within days, the farm workers were performing their improvisations on the picket lines:

There was no stage, and in order to be seen we used to get up on top of an old green panel

truck that the union had then, they called the dog-catcher, la perrera. And that was our

first stage—up on top of the panel truck, overlooking the vineyards. And our first

audience were the striking farmworkers in the field. And the object of our act was to try

to get them to leave their jobs in order to join the grape strike.104

It was from these improvisations that Valdez claims he and the farm workers developed the acto, the form for which they first became widely known. Valdez most succinctly defined actos in

1966 as “10 to 15 minute skits, sometimes with and sometimes without songs.”105 In a series of lectures many years later, the transcripts of which are archived in Santa Barbara, he also pointed out that the original actos were the result of collective creation:

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid.

104 “The Irvine Tapes,” Tape 1 Side 1, May 19, 1986, CEMA 5, UCSB, S17 B6 F3. This document contains a memo and typed transcripts of lectures Luis Valdez gave at the University of California, Irvine in October and November of 1984. Rather than cite the dates of the individual lectures, I have chosen to cite the date of the memo that delivered the transcripts to Valdez (May 19, 1986). I have, however, chosen to note the tape number and side number for each reference.

105 Irwin Silber, “La Huelga! Songs of the Delano Grape Strike,” Sing Out!, November 1966, 4. 81

Starting from scratch with a real life incident, character, or idea, everybody in the Teatro

contributes to the development of an acto. Each is intended to make at least one specific

point about the strike, but improvisations during each performance sharpen, alter or

embellish the original idea. We use no scenery, no scripts, no curtain. We use costumes

and props only casually—an old pair of paints, a wine bottle, a pair of dark glasses, a

mask, but mostly we like to show we are still strikers underneath, arm bands and all. This

effect is very important to our aims. To simplify things, we hang signs around our necks,

sometimes in black and white, sometimes in lively colors, indicating the characters

portrayed.106

In viewing the acto as a work that continued existing forms of Mexican oral performance,

Broyles-Gonzalez disputes suggestions that the Teatro Campesino created the acto under

Valdez’s creative guidance. Rather, she argues that Valdez shaped the acto as the Teatro

Campesino came to define it out of practices already in place. “An alternative construction or model might well invert relations and reveal to us,” she says, “that the farmworkers introduced the acto form to Luis Valdez, who subsequently made it his own.”107 In either case, both accounts agree that the work of creating individual actos was collective.

The style of the actos was largely satire and parody, which Broyles-Gonzalez (like

Kanellos) sees as an outgrowth of carpa performance. Noting that ensemble members have often cited the carpa tradition as the impetus for the rasquachi aesthetic,108 she describes the carpa’s

106 Ibid.

107 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 4.

108 Ibid., 10. 82 traditional function as that of a “counterhegemonic tool of the disenfranchised and oppressed.”109

Valdez’s account of the early actos clearly shows this influence: “There was a need to deflate the threat of the growers,” he argues, “so we improvised, we mimicked them…Our attack was through satire, we had to take the stuffings out the system.”110 Teatro members performed on the picket line, just outside the property owned by the grape growers, encouraging workers to leave the fields and join the strike; they also performed in union and strikers’ meetings to keep up morale.111

The early goal of El Teatro Campesino was not to provide entertainment, but to change minds using what Valdez referred to as agitprop techniques: “to show the lousy scab, and grower” the ills of the system in which they worked, the teatro “produced negative images of the opposition.”112 As Valdez described the company in 1966, it was “somewhere between Brecht and Cantinflas.113 It is a farm workers’ theater, a bi-lingual propaganda theater … Linked by a cultural umbilical cord to the National Farm Workers Association, the Teatro lives in Delano as a part of a social movement.”114 The social movement to which Valdez refers is partly Chavez’s labor movement, but partly the Chicanx movement writ large.

109 Ibid., 7.

110 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 10.

111 Ibid., 10-12.

112 Ibid., 12.

113 Cantinflas was a well-known Mexican comic actor who performed in carpas in the first half of the twentieth century. His work was admired by and often compared to that of Charlie Chaplin. See Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro

Campesino, 10-11 and Kanellos, A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States, 97.

114 Silber, “La Huelga!,” 4. 83

The value of delivering these movements’ messages through theater came in the fact that it required no literacy on the part of its recipients. According to Valdez, the teatro and its actos provided “a learning experience with no formal prerequisites,” which was “all-important because most farm workers [had] never had the chance to go to school and [were] alienated by classrooms, blackboards, and the formal teacher-student approach.”115 Instead, the style of the

Teatro’s performances “came from the fast talk and hustle of survival that is reality to farmworkers everywhere on the US-Mexican border.”116 In the process, the Teatro Campesino combined Mexican folk humor with a Brechtian desire to incite action. Valdez would later characterize actos as “little learning plays, what Brecht called Lehrstuck.”117 Their goal was to

“make a point. Inspire people to social action. Get them to move.”118 While the style of performance was rough around the edges and filled with low humor, the comedy was not there to entertain; it provided an entry point for the exploration of the serious social issues that faced both its performers and the members of its audience.

In December of 1965, Valdez was promoted to Picket Captain, “which put [him] in charge of propaganda, meetings and teatro.”119 The group continued performing on the picket line, but also began performing at strike meetings, eventually adding songs:

We used any method we could think of to make our point, and to attract attention. We

couldn’t be ignored, so we had to make it more interesting, to everyone. The picket line

115 Ibid., 6.

116 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 12.

117 “The Irvine Tapes,” Tape 1, Side 1.

118 Ibid.

119 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 13. 84

had to be alive rather than dead, we had to identify with the workers intensly [sic]. That’s

theater. We used movements, chants, banging on fenders, anything to start the process. At

this very basic place we got theatrical.120

In his 1977 history of the company, Valdez described these early performance tactics as “the concepts of AGITPROP, classic agitation propaganda.”121 The Teatro’s techniques succeeded in getting the farm workers’ attention. According to Valdez, one performance in Arvin, California drew a crowd of 200 people who “sat in the dark and saw [them] performed [sic] on a truck with spotlights on the players.”122

In March and April of 1966, El Teatro Campesino cemented its association with the

NFWA in the public imagination by accompanying the union on its nearly 300-mile, almost one month-long march from Delano to Sacramento, California.123 On this famed journey to the state capitol, which ended in major victories for the NWFA, El Teatro Campesino “[performed] at nightly rallies for marchers” and continued to develop and stabilize various of its actos.124

Though the teatro had previously performed at a variety of locations, the march to

Sacramento gave the company its first experience traveling long distance—a practice that would become a hallmark of its existence, and that it still embraces today. In May of 1966, El Teatro

Campesino gave its “first urban performances,” away from the fields and the union and the

120 Ibid., 11.

121 Ibid., 12.

122 Ibid., 13.

123 Pamphlet, “Radical Theatre Festival,” 10; Flyer, El Teatro Campesino and National Farm Workers Association,

1967, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F17.

124 Broyles-Gonzales, El Teatro Campesino, 242. 85 strike, at the Committee Theater in San Francisco.125 That summer, the group performed for a strike in Texas, and received what Valdez described as an enthusiastic reception; in November and December of that year, they embarked on a tour of the Northwest US.126 Early in the following year, they traveled to Washington, DC to perform for the Senate Subcommittee on

Agricultural Labor, where their audience included both “Congressmen and staff.”127

In the Spring of 1967, El Teatro Campesino parted ways with Chávez and the UFW. By that time, according to a 1971 article in the Los Angeles Free Press, “the Chicano movement was stirring. The labor movement of campesinos had given birth to a wider people’s movement, in urban as well as rural areas. A colonial people was awakening to a growing awareness of its condition in American society.”128 The Teatro was experiencing its own shifts in thinking, as were Chávez and his labor movement. According to Valdez’s account, Chávez was working at that time “to cut away some of the malcontents” in the organization and had asked several people to leave, including Valdez’s then-girlfriend.129 Disgruntled members of the UFW complained to

Valdez, who arranged a meeting at a bar to record a list of grievances to take to Chavez; no one showed up, according to Valdez, except a man he assumed was sent “to see who was doing the agitating.”130 Valdez’s archived recollection warrants quoting at length:

At this time, we [were] getting ready for our first National Tour, we had commitments

125 Pamphlet, “Radical Theatre Festival,” 11.

126 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 13.

127 Ibid.

128 Leslie Aisenman, “El Teatro Campesino,” Los Angeles Free Press (Los Angeles, CA), March 31, 1972, 7.

129 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 14.

130 Ibid. 86

and contacts set and were practically on the road. The next day after our showing at the

People’s Bar, I was called to an Executive Board Meeting of the Union. I was called on

the carpet, Cesar accused me of politicing [sic] and being undisciplined. All my

communistic affiliations were brought up. He said he was going to cancel our national

tour, split up the Teatro, and send us on boycott duties. I told Cesar he couldn’t do that,

we’d leave the union if necessary to fulfill our commitments. There was an underlying

feeling that the Teatro wanted to do more, a feeling of frustration. But how, in what

form? There was a feeling that the Teatro wasn’t important to the Union. At other times

we were told that we were too important to the farmworker’s struggle to go away on tour,

that we were needed here. The Executive Council voted to cancel our tour 4 to 3. I was

hurt at this misunderstanding. Cesar said I didn’t know how to negotiate, which was true.

You were either with me or against me. Nobody wanted to believe that we’d leave the

union. They tried to take the van away that afternoon, but I wouldn’t let them, we were

separate from the Farmworker’s [sic], it was in our name. I was dealing in confrontation

politics.131

After two years with the Union, El Teatro Campesino embarked on a life of its own. The national tour that followed led to an offer to record a television special about the group.132 Valdez used this offer in one last attempt to stay connected to the Union; when the Executive Board refused, he cut ties completely.133 Though El Teatro Campesino would continue to work on behalf of farm workers, and even occasionally with the UFW in the coming years, it would from this point

131 Ibid., 15.

132 Ibid., 16.

133 Ibid. 87 on exist as an independent entity with complete autonomy. In many ways, it was this newfound autonomy that made it possible for El Teatro Campesino to further codify its aesthetic. It also made room for the group to develop the complex Theater of the Sphere training system that I will address in Chapter II.

El Teatro Campesino established its first post-Delano home in Del Rey, California.

There, Chavez established El Centro Campesino Cultural (The Farm Workers’ Cultural Center), where, company members “lived in a farm house and established communal living.”134 They continued performing actos, but “started developing other things”135 in an attempt to focus their message on “broader themes related to Chicano culture, including: education, Vietnam, indigenous roots, and racism.”136 Valdez noted a few years later that “at this point the emphasis of the Teatro changed from the Huelga to La Raza, which included the farm workers, but also the urban chicanos [sic]. We began to perform actos on chicano themes using new barrio characters; the pachuco, the family, the gringo-ized Mexican, etc.”137 They worked on an early version of

Los Vendidos, a satire on white perceptions of Chicanx stereotypes, and performed a version of

The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa.138 In addition to production work, the new cultural center was designed to “offer classes in music, drama, Mexican-American history, Spanish/English, and

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid., 17.

136 Salvador Güereña and CEMA Staff, “Guide to the El Teatro Campesino Archives,” Online Archive of California, p. 3, Accessed June 29, 2019, http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/ucsb/spcoll/cusb-cema5.pdf.

137 “El Teatro Campesino,” El Teatro, Summer 1970, n.p.

138 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 17. 88 practical politics.”139 Though Valdez did write scripts for some of the productions, “there was no need, nor was their time, for written plays. There were no scripts to be rehearsed from, no elaborate sets, nor was there ‘character development’ in the usual sense. Archetypes, placarded for quick identity, served the need.”140 Though Valdez’s goals had broadened to include

Chicanxs outside the labor movement, his activist theatrical philosophy and the techniques he used to enact it did not change at this time. “We wanted to concern ourselves,” he said, “with the cultural as well as the economic oppression of our people, whose consciousness as well as our land had been invaded by the Anglo.”141 Inspired by the “Blow-Outs” in Los Angeles, Valdez led El Teatro Campesino in creating actos on the theme of the Chicanx in “secondary and university education.”142 As the Chicanx Movement gained momentum, so did Valdez’s thinking about the need to establish and affirm Chicanx identity.

1968 proved an especially active year for El Teatro Campesino, especially in terms of its goals to move its focus beyond the labor strike. That spring, Valdez taught a course entitled “La

Raza: A Search for Contemporary Mexican-American Culture” at the Experimental College of

Fresno State College.143 In March, the Teatro received an Obie Award144 for “creating a workers’

139 “El Teatro Campesino – 2nd Anniversary,” 1967, CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B3 F4.

140 Ibid.

141 “El Teatro Campesino,” La Raza Yearbook, September 1968, 55.

142 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 242.

143 “Bulletin of the Experimental College of Fresno State College,” Spring 1968, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F20.

144 The Obie Awards “salute excellence in off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theatre.” See “About the Obie

Awards,” Village Voice and American Theatre Wing, http://www.obieawards.com/about/, Accessed June 30, 2019. 89 theater to demonstrate the politics of survival.”145 In May, members participated in a Community

Day presented by the United Mexican-American Students of California State College at Los

Angeles.146 A flyer for the event promised that attendees, “High School students and Parents,

Community residents and groups interested in education,” would “be able to listen to Mr. Luis

Valdez and see his ‘TEATRO CAMPESINO’ perform its Mexican-American plays,” in addition to other activities designed to encourage higher education among Chicanxs.147

In September of 1968, El Teatro Campesino joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe and

New York’s Bread and Puppet Theater for the Radical Theatre Festival. According to the archived program, the festival brought together these “three groups who have struggled to create particular theatrical works relevant to their individual communities.”148 A pamphlet published after the event notes that “their purpose was to identify what radical theater means.”149 All three of the companies had at that point “begun to share ideas, even personnel, but [were working] in different styles.”150 The pamphlet also noted that the companies “[were] not ‘professional’ in that

[they did] not wish to end up on Broadway or commercial TV or on film”; rather, the work of all three “[sprang] from community and from ideological commitment.”151 A program from the

145 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 17.

146 Flyer, “Community Day on Campus,” 1968, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F23; Program, “Community Day on

Campus,” 1968, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F23.

147 Ibid.

148 Pamphlet, “Radical Theatre Festival,” 7.

149 Ibid.

150 Ibid.

151 Ibid. 90 festival shows that the Teatro participated in multiple ways. Aside from performances of actos, the group led a music workshop and gave a performance of The Shrunken Head of Pancho

Villa.152 Valdez gave a talk entitled “Workers’ Theater and the Socialist Movement” and participated in a panel discussion with the leaders of the other two participating companies, and each of the groups presented its own version of a piece entitled A Man Says Goodbye to his

Mother.153

The type of work El Teatro Campesino did in Del Rey also began to show some variety.

The group began to perform “‘History Happenings’: successive chapters of Mexican and

American history in actos and puppet shows, with music, free to the community.”154 True to its new aims, it also offered music and art classes, and took its “shows to other small towns up and down the San Joaquin Valley of California.”155 Additionally, June of that year saw “more than two dozen Mexican-Americans” from “San Jose, Los Angeles, New Mexico and Colorado,” visit the cultural center for 10 days of workshops designed to “[lay] groundwork for a ‘National

Chicano Theater.”156 Valdez’s hope, according to an archived item in The Fresno Bee was that those in attendance might “go back and start their own teatros,” leading to “a ‘loose coalition’ of such companies.”157 The same article reveals that in 1968 “El Centro…divided its time between regular workshop sessions in Del Rey with performances for farmworkers in the area, and road

152 Ibid., 6.

153 Ibid.

154 “El Teatro Campesino,” La Raza Yearbook, 55.

155 Ibid.

156 “Del Rey’s Campesino Troupe Sets Workshop,” The Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA), June 22, 1968.

157 Ibid. 91 trips to California college campuses.”158 These workshops are the first signs in El Teatro

Campesino’s archives of its desire to train Chicanx artists in any kind of organized fashion. The coalition of which Valdez spoke would eventually come to pass in El Teatro Nacional de Aztlán

(TENAZ). The importance of this organization will be addressed subsequently, in this chapter and the next; its efforts to provide training to Chicanx artists will be the subject of Chapter III. It all began, however, in Del Rey, where Valdez claimed his company was “trying to generate a cultural revolution—to get people to speak out and begin to participate in America.”159 It was also in 1968 that he first uttered an oft repeated sentiment: “We will consider our job done when every one of our people has regained his sense of personal dignity and pride in his history, his culture, and his race.”160 Part of the way in which Valdez sought to do this work, as the workshops described above indicate and as the training systems I describe in Chapters II and III will corroborate, was through training Chicanx actors.

For all its productivity, the time in Del Rey was also one of conflict. In 1977, Valdez recalled that:

There was a Crisis within the Teatro coming up. The personalities were clashing, we

weren’t getting into our work. Finally, the house broke up, people were partying and

neglecting their duties and work. The main problem was that the group was made up of

mostly immature people at that time, very basic understandings broke down between

members.161

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid.

160 “El Teatro Campesino,” La Raza Yearbook, 55.

161 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 17. 92

Valdez “confronted people,” and “some of them started to leave.”162 By some time in 1969, the company consisted of only a handful of people: Valdez, “Donna Haber ([the] business manager), a girlfriend of [Valdez’s], Lupe [Valdez], and Danny [Valdez].”163 Valdez moved the company to Fresno, where he had been offered use of a 150-seat theatre.164 Still, during this time of rebuilding, El Teatro Campesino performed at the World Theatre Festival in Nancy, France,165 produced an award-winning film titled I Am Joaquin, and helped create TENAZ, which it described as “a national network of Chicano theatre groups,”166 and which also held its first meeting that year. Also in 1969, the group received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award

“for demonstrating the continuing vitality of theatre as an instrument of social change.”167 At the same time, Fresno State College instituted a program in “Raza studies,” which Valdez co- chaired; there, he taught his first major Chicanx Theatre workshop, which brought the “first influx of student performers into” the company.168

At this point, Valdez’s ideas for El Teatro Campesino began to change. Noting that the trip to France had shifted the perspectives of some company members and driven some away,

Valdez recalled at the time his feeling that his vision for the group “still [hadn’t] been completed.

A Public Teater [sic] is essential to this country. We are also looking for a real, professional

162 Ibid.

163 Ibid.

164 Ibid.

165 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 241.

166 Güereña and CEMA Staff, “Guide to the El Teatro Campesino Archives,” 3.

167 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 242.

168 Ibid. 93

Chicano Theater. I’ve been disappointed with the makeshift way we’ve always had to create…we’re looking for a different way to tell the whole Farmworker story.”169 Valdez also wanted to continue expanding the Teatro’s focus on Chicanx issues, noting that the company’s

“primary aim [was] to combat poverty and oppression in the heart of the richest agricultural valley in the world. So the prevailing message [was] still a direct one: Organizenze Raza!

Politically and Economically.”170 The company’s work began to reflect this desired shift. While much of its creative output still emphasized the plight of the farm worker, many productions in this period focused explicitly on US involvement in Vietnam, particularly as it affected the nation’s Chicanx youth. While “one group from ETC [toured] the midwestern and eastern United

States … the rest [performed] at rallies accompanying the thousand-mile UFW caravan protest from Calexico to Sacramento.”171

At the same time, Valdez’s focus began to shift from the overtly political to the spiritual.

It was in 1970 that “Andrés Segura, ritual Conchero dancer and Aztec elder [visited] ETC and

[strengthened] the indigenous philosophical teachings within the collective.”172 The influence of this interest manifested itself most immediately in Valdez’s publication Actos, a collection of the pieces El Teatro Campesino had developed collectively in its five years of existence. The volume included Valdez’s oft-reprinted essay, “Notes on Chicano Theatre.” Early in this essay, he claims

169 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as told by Luis Valdez,” 18.

170 “El Teatro Campesino,” El Teatro, Summer 1970, n.p.

171 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 242-243.

172 Ibid., 243. 94 that “at its high point Chicano theatre is religion.”173 The essay is steeped in an exploration of early Mexico, both “before the coming of the white man” and “since the conquest.”174 In the latter period, he claims, “Mexico’s theatre, like its society, has had to imitate Europe and, in recent times, the United States…Nothing is wrong with this, but it does obscure the indio fountains of Chicano culture.”175 He continues:

The nature of Chicanismo calls for a revolutionary turn in the arts as well as in society.

Chicano theatre must be revolutionary in technique as well as content. It must be popular,

subject to no other critics except the pueblo itself; but it must also educate the pueblo

toward an appreciation of social change, on and off the stage. (Emphasis in original)176

At this point, Valdez launches into what appears to be a criticism of Chávez and the labor movement, describing actions such as “demonstrating, picketing and shouting before school boards and police departments” as “basically a lot of emotion with very little political power.”177

He describes “guerilla” and “agit-prop” theatre as essentially useless if it is only for show, and calls for a deeper revolution: “Not a teatro composed of actos or agit-prop,” he writes, “but a teatro of ritual, of music, of beauty and spiritual sensitivity.”178 Valdez displays perhaps his most passionate inclinations towards cultural nationalism here, arguing that:

173 Luis Valdez, Early Works: Actos, Bernabe, Pensamiento Serpentino (Arte Público Press: Houston, TX, 1994), p.

174 Ibid., 7.

175 Ibid.

176 Ibid., 7-8.

177 Ibid., 8.

178 Ibid., 9. 95

…if Aztlán is to become a reality, then we as Chicanos must not be reluctant to act

nationally. To think in national terms: politically, economically, and spiritually. We must

destroy the deadly regionalism that keeps us apart. The concept of a national theatre for

La Raza is intimately related to our evolving nationalism in Aztlán.

Consider a Teatro Nacional de Aztlán that performs with the same skill and

prestige as the Ballet Folklórico de México (not for gabachos, however, but for the Raza).

Such a teatro could carry the message of La Raza into Latin America, Europe, Japan,

Africa—in short, all over the world. It would draw strength from all the small teatros in

the barrios, in terms of people and their plays, songs, designs; and it would give back

funds, training and augmented strength of national unity. One season the teatro members

would be on tour with the Teatro Nacional; the next season they would be back in the

barrio sharing their skills and experience.179

Further distancing himself from the UFW in order to focus on this new teatro movement he sought to create, Valdez claims later in the essay that “El Teatro Campesino was born in the huelga, but the very huelga would have killed it, if we had not moved sixty miles to the north of

Delano … we felt it was time for us to move and to begin speaking about things beyond the huelga: Vietnam, the barrio, racial discrimination, etc.”180 Cementing his commitment to a spiritual exploration through teatro, he ends the essay with a call to action: “We challenge

Chicanos to become involved in the art, the life style, the political and religious act of doing teatro.”181 This call to action encourages Chicanxs to join his theatrical and cultural movement.

179 Ibid.

180 Ibid., 10.

181 Ibid. 96

Doing so, of course, would require them to learn the skills necessary for doing both theatrical and spiritual work, much of which would be taken care of by the Theatre of the Sphere training detailed in the next chapter. The call to action also set the stage for a shift from El Teatro

Campesino’s traditional form, the acto, to a new form: the mito.

Valdez first introduced the idea of the mito in the fall of 1970, a year that Robert Francis

Jenkins has described as “characterized by an investigation of the religious basis of both the

Chicano movement and the artistic work of Campesino.”182 Valdez described the mito at that time as “a new, more mystical dramatic form” than the acto:

The two forms are, in fact, cuates183 that complement and balance each other as the day

goes into night, el sol la sombra, la vida la muerta, al pájaro la serpiento.184 Our rejection

of white western European (gabacho) proscenium theatre makes the birth of new Chicano

forms necessary, thus, los actos y los mitos: one through the eyes of man, the other

through the eyes of God.185

Where the acto was created out of the daily experiences of Chicanxs living in the United States, the mito was borne of their ancient spiritual heritage. The mito was based on Aztec, Mayan, and

Toltec mythology, though it often featured elements of the Christian mythology that had taken over much of the Mexican consciousness since shortly after colonization. Though the company continued to perform existing actos, the development of mitos became the center of their new

182 Robert Francis Jenkins, “A Description of Working Principles and Procedures Employed by Selected Peoples’

Theatre Groups in the United States” (PhD Diss, Florida State University, 1980), 173.

183 “companions.”

184 “the sun and the shadow, life and death, the bird and the serpent.”

185 Valdez, Early Works, 11. 97 creative work. An archived El Teatro Campesino brochure reveals that by this time, the company’s repertory had expanded beyond actos, to include “full-length plays, puppet shows, films, [and] a Calavera (skeleton) band”186 rooted in Mexican culture and perhaps inspired by the

San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Gorilla Band. This represented a significant shift for Valdez and the Teatro not just in terms of the work they created, however, but in terms of politics and ideology. Some of this may have been due to the influence of Segura and Domingo Martínez, whose writings on Mesoamerican culture and mythology were also introduced to the company.187 As Jenkins notes, “the mitos form was designed to deal with spiritual/mystical/religious concepts—all of which were incompatible with the extreme Marxist elements of the Chicano movement.”188 Even as Valdez moved away from Marxism, however, he moved perhaps further into the ideals of cultural nationalism.

Much of the work of this period was tied to the concept of Aztlán. Valdez and others began using this name more frequently in reference to the Southwestern US, which he also called

“Occupied Mexico.”189 The name was also at the center of TENAZ, and was often attached to the end of the Teatro’s name during this period; at times, they presented work not as El Teatro

Campesino, but as El Teatro Campesino de Aztlán. The name appeared both in a 1970 brochure advertising the company’s work, 190 and on a flyer for “the first Annual National Chicano

186 Brochure, “El Teatro Campesino de Aztlán,” 1970, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2 F13.

187 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 116.

188 Jenkins, “A Description of Working Principles and Procedures,” 173.

189 “El Teatro Campesino,” El Teatro, n.p.

190 Brochure, “El Teatro Campesino de Aztlán.” 98

Theater Festival,” which the Teatro presented the same year.191 An additional flyer in the company’s archives notes that the festival featured “Performances & Workshops by 12 Teatros de Aztlán.”192 The TENAZ festivals and some of their workshops, the latter of which included sessions “in music, playwrighting, improvisation and movement, staffing and direction, film making, voice control, and costumes and props,”193 will receive more attention in Chapter III.

In 1971, El Teatro Campesino relocated to what would become its permanent home in

San Juan Bautista, CA, less than an hour south of San Jose.194 There, the company was

“composed primarily of university students recruited at Berkeley and other colleges … and members [lived] in a Gilroy storefront.”195 At that time, Valdez reflected on the changes the

Teatro had undergone in Del Rey and what they meant for the company moving forward:

Our cultural pride had been plastered and hidden by a superficial white culture. Many of

our people felt shame and loss of pride in their own Mestizo culture, though we derive

from prehispanic times, from our Tolteca, Mayas, and Azteca ancestors. Then the

Españoles came and implanted Christianity and mercilessly robbed and exploited our

people.

Now this white society has even tried to deprive us of our Mestizo language. So

the responsibility of El Teatro’s Cultural Center is to reach the history and culture of our

191 Flyer, “El Teatro Campesino de Aztlan presents the first Annual National Chicano Theater Festival,” 1970,

CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2 F19.

192 Flyer, “National Chicano Teatro Festival,” 1970, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2 F20.

193 Flyer, “El Teatro Campesino de Aztlan presents the first Annual National Chicano Theater Festival.”

194 Güereña and CEMA Staff, “Guide to the El Teatro Campesino Archives,” 3.

195 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, p. 243. 99

past ancestors, to bring forth that sense of pride in being a Chicano.196

This epiphany on Valdez’s part would influence much of his work and the Teatro’s work for the next decade. In 1971, the company would continue to stage “traditional religious plays” at

Christmas celebrations, would travel to Mexico, and would spend time with Martínez Paredez,

“whose teachings [intensified] the exploration Mayan philosophy and [helped] shape the Theater of the Sphere.”197 In addition, Valdez joined the advisory boards of New York’s International

Theater Institute and the PBS Visions Project in Los Angeles, and began teaching drama at the

University of California in Berkeley and Santa Cruz.198 The Teatro hosted its first standalone workshop for TENAZ member teatros, participated in the second TENAZ festival in Los

Angeles, and received a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award “for embarking in new directions which [included] exploring Chicano cultural roots and substantially refining their craft and technique in the process.”199

1972 brought some of the Teatro’s most important productions to that point. The company added a third form of performance to its repertoire. Corridos, which were essentially acted out versions of old Mexican ballads, were meant to explore the heart of the campesino:

“Corridos were his loves and hates, sins and innocence, fears and courage, oppression and revolution, life and death.”200 Where the actos “dealt with overt political oppression” and the

196 Valdez, Luis. “History of the Teatro Campesino,” La Raza, Summer 1971, 19.

197 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, p. 243.

198 Güereña and CEMA Staff, “Guide to the El Teatro Campesino Archives,” 3.

199 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, p. 243.

200 “Chicano Theatre in USA: El Teatro Campesino,” in International Federation of the Independent Theatre

Bulletin, 2nd Edition, 1978, 7. 100 corridos dealt with the heart, continued work on the mitos attempted to deal with the campesino’s soul: “In their mitos they searched out in their Maya and Aztec roots and found his identity had not changed much over a few thousand years—neither had his relationship to earth, sky, sun, moon, life, death, and rebirth.”201 In many ways, this work all came together in a new piece begun that year, which the collective would continue developing and redeveloping over many years. La Carpa de los Rasquachis was “a collective work that [explored] the political reality of the colonization of the Chicano people and the search for indigenous spiritual roots as the source of Chicano liberation.”202 According to the International Federation of Independent

Theatre:

It was a summation of all that had gone before in both form and content. It was a physical

work of the campesino in the field and the fact of his political oppression. It is his love

wife and children, compadres and La Virgen Guadelupe [sic]. It is the union struggling

for the rights of the farmworkers. It is the spirit of the campesino that holds on to the

earth as his mother and reaches to the sky for rebirth.203

In addition to La Carpa, the Teatro created El Fin del Mundo, which explored the life of the contemporary Chicanx,204 collaborated with the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s R.G. Davis on a commedia dell’arte adaptation of a play by sixteenth-century Spanish playwright Lope de

Rueda,205 and produced an “Emmy Award-winning TV-special, KNBC Special: El Teatro

201 Ibid.

202 “What is El Teatro Campesino?” Wyvernwood Chronicle (Los Angeles, CA), November 22, 1973, 10.

203 “Chicano Theatre in USA,”. 7.

204 Ibid.

205 Program, Los Olivos Pits, August 12, 1972, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2 F30. 101

Campesino.”206 In addition to other productions performed in San Juan Bautista and across the

US, members of the ensemble performed again at the World Theatre Festival in Nancy, France and participated in the third annual TENAZ festival.207

1973 was a landmark year for El Teatro Campesino. It was in this year that the company worked with Peter Brook and the Center for International Theater Research. Brook brought his company to San Juan Bautista for “an eight-week summer workshop,” which was followed by a joint touring production of Conference of the Birds.208 In addition to touring with La Carpa de los Rasquachis, members of the ensemble attended the fourth TENAZ festival in San Jose,

CA.209 Perhaps most importantly, it was in 1973 that Valdez published his philosophical poem,

Pensamiento Serpentino: A Chicano Approach to the Theatre of Reality, and that the ensemble began to codify the actor and life training program known as the Theater of the Sphere, which

“evolved from Aztec and Mayan knowledge.”210 With the publication of Pensamiento Serpentino and the development of the Theater of the Sphere training system, Valdez and the Teatro

Campesino cemented their commitment to a practice that was becoming, in the eyes of many, more spiritual than political. In Chapter II I will further explore this shift, which was built largely on Pensamiento Serpentino as the company’s new philosophy and the Theater of the Sphere as that philosophy’s embodied practice.

Throughout the 1970s, the Teatro Campesino’s shift in emphasis was apparent in a

206 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 243.

207 Ibid.

208 Ibid.

209 Ibid.

210 Ibid. 102 variety of ways. Aside from offering workshops in the Theater of the Sphere, the ensemble would perform both La Carpa and El Baile de los Gigantes (Dance of the Giants) “at the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan” as part of the fifth TENAZ festival in Mexico City in 1974.211 That same year, the group began the purchase of forty acres of land in San Juan Bautista, with plans to form a land cooperative to be shared by ensemble members.212 According to a 1974 article,

Valdez sought at this time to develop not just a way of doing theatre, but “a lifestyle.”213

Ensemble members, referred to as ‘la familia,” were compensated monthly. “Single members…[received] $60 a month. Each married person [received] $100—or $200 per couple— and $50 a month for each child. Valdez, who [was] married and [had] two children, [lived] on

$300 a month. The money [came] from performances and workshop receipts.”214 The goal, according to ensemble member Jesus Trevino, was “to find an alternative lifestyle for Chicanos

‘where we can free ourselves of the pressures of colonization.’”215 The key to relieving colonial pressure, however, was to be found through spiritual means. This position cost the Teatro

Campesino some of its relationships, and increasingly affected the types of projects it would produce. In 1975, the group severed ties with TENAZ after the organization’s sixth annual festival because of what Broyles-Gonzalez describes as “a conflict between Marxist and spiritualist tendencies.”216 In 1977, the group staged its first Dia de los Muertos (Day of the

211 Ibid., 243-244.

212 Ibid.

213 Linda B. Major, “Dramatic Search for Root of Chicanismo,” Agenda, Summer 1974, 8.

214 Ibid., 10.

215 Ibid., 11.

216 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 244. 103

Dead) celebration for the San Juan Bautista community.217

1977 was also the year that marked the beginning of the end of the Teatro Campesino as an ensemble company. That year, Valdez was “commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum to write and direct a new piece entitled Zoot Suit.”218 Though Zoot Suit would eventually become El

Teatro Campesino’s best-known performance piece, it would also drive a wedge between Valdez and many of the ensemble members. Although Broyles-Gonzalez notes that the piece was originally developed “through months of improvisational workshops with the ETC collective,” by 1978, Valdez’s focus on the Mark Taper Forum production left the Teatro Campesino under the direction of his sister, Socorro.219 1978 included tours of the Southwest US and of Europe.220

It also marked two difficult firsts for the company: it was the first time in Teatro Campesino history that the company auditioned actors, and the first time it laid off previously permanent ensemble members.221

Zoot Suit opened as a smash hit in 1978, “winning numerous awards, including the Los

Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Production, eight Drama League awards for outstanding achievement in theater, a Nosotros Award, and a Nuestro Magazine award.”222

While ensemble members continued to work in San Juan Bautista, Valdez took Zoot Suit to

217 Ibid.

218 Ibid.

219 Ibid.

220 Ibid.

221 Ibid.

222 Ibid. 104

Broadway in 1979.223 Although the New York production was both a critical and commercial failure,224 Valdez used profits from the Los Angeles production to purchase a produce warehouse, which became the home of Luis Valdez, Inc.225

In 1980, the nature of El Teatro Campesino changed entirely. After a tour of California and Europe that “[combined] for the first time an equal number of ensemble core-group members with auditioned actors,” “El Teatro Campesino [ceased] to exist as a collective ensemble.”226

From this point on, the company would function as many other theatres did and do, auditioning actors for each production. As Broyles-Gonzalez notes, the company continued to produce work but became at that time a wholly different kind of theatre company than it had been for the preceding fifteen years.

Although El Teatro Campesino continues to produce theatre today—and, indeed, produces many of the same titles it has produced for decades—my history of the company ends here. Like Broyles-Gonzalez, my primary interest in El Teatro Campesino does not extend very far beyond the dissolution of the ensemble in 1980. Broyles-Gonzalez chose this period for her study because her goal was to demonstrate that the company’s formative years owed a great deal

223 Ibid., 245

224 Huerta notes that “The audience loved the production; the New York critics did not”; the audiences may have been enthusiastic, but they were also small – the production closed after only a few weeks. See Huerta, Chicano

Theater, 181-182.

225 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 245. Though neither Broyles-Gonzalez nor my own research offers much on the details of Valdez’s incorporation, it seems to have coincided with 1) El Teatro Campesino’s shift away from collective creation as a primary mode of production and 2) Valdez’s burgeoning career as an in-demand professional director. For more details on both, see Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, Chapter IV.

226 Ibid. 105 to its ensemble nature. I choose this outer limit because the end of the ensemble meant, in many respects, the end of organized Theater of the Sphere training. In Chapter II I will explore how that training came to be, what its goals were, and how it came to end. 105

CHAPTER II: EL TEATRO CAMPESINO AND THE THEATRE OF THE SPHERE

In 1994, Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez observed that “published materials on the Teatro

[Campesino] share three characteristics: they are chronological, text-centered, and male- centered.”1 Broyles-Gonzalez’s groundbreaking intervention in the historiography of the nation’s best known Chicanx theatre company privileged the Teatro’s ensemble and the women who peopled it over Valdez himself, the social significance of the company’s work over its chronology, and its sense of process over its output of scripts and recorded performances.

Though my own history of the Teatro Campesino has thus far been chronological, and though I have not emphasized the role of women in the company (Broyles-Gonzalez has done that work admirably), I am equally interested in process over product.

Broyles-Gonzalez argues that El Teatro Campesino’s Theater of the Sphere actor and life training played a key role in the company’s contribution to identity formation and affirmation for

Chicanx individuals.2 As much of this chapter will demonstrate, I agree. I want to extend her analysis, however, by reexamining both the goals of Theater of the Sphere training and its impact on the Teatro Campesino. As both Valdez and Broyles-Gonzalez have noted, El Teatro

Campesino’s shift from overt political to more spiritual aims met with significant criticism that led to a decline in the company’s cultural clout, broadly considered. While both generally argue that critics failed to see that the Teatro’s spiritual aims were inherently political, and while both see this misinterpretation as a failure of critics to understand the training’s social and pedagogical value, I will argue that the reasons were more culturally and politically complex. In

1 Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1994), xii.

2 Ibid., 82-84. 106 this chapter, I explore the Theatre of the Sphere training system in both theory and practice, as well as the criticism leveled at El Teatro Campesino for its shift in emphasis in the 1970s and

1980s. I argue that much of that criticism, along with the decline the Teatro experienced in acknowledged social significance because of it, were a result not only of Valdez’s increased focus on spiritual matters, but also of his marked desire to broaden his focus beyond aiding the

Chicanx population to aiding all of humanity. First, however, I examine the broader theatrical context in which Theatre of the Sphere training was conceived and enacted. Ultimately, I argue that the work Valdez and the Teatro Campesino ensemble did through Theatre of the Sphere was more closely connected to the work of Eurocentric figures like Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski than is often acknowledged. Through my analysis of the Theatre of the Sphere system, I ultimately demonstrate that it served as a means through which Valdez and the Ensemble were able to theorize about acting, about theatre, about Latinidad, and about humanity. I argue that the significance of this work within broader theatre histories has not been acknowledged, and that

Valdez and the El Teatro Campesino ensemble merit deeper consideration alongside other, more widely acknowledged theatre artists and theorists of the 1960s and 1970s. In order to make this argument, I must give a brief summary of the theatrical context in which Theatre of the Sphere was created.

Arthur Sainer characterizes the 1960s and 1970s as “a time of hope in which the premises of both theatre and Western society were held up to radical scrutiny and both found wanting.”3

Artists at the time—and particularly theatre artists—took up the challenge of changing the world through their work. For many groups, this work was approached in the same spirit of collective creation that characterized the work of El Teatro Campesino. Groups such as the Bread and

3 Arthur Sainer, The New Radical Theatre Notebook (New York: Applause Books, 1997), xi. 107

Puppet Theatre (whose ties with El Teatro Campesino were noted in Chapter I), turned to ensemble work in response to a “disenchantment with commercial theatre [that] paralleled a broader disenchantment with the culture at large, with America as a world power, with material- well-being, with the ethic of the isolated figure laboring to merit the approval of society.”4 Other groups, many of whom sought “to use theatre as a forum for their political beliefs,”5 included the

Pageant Players and The Living Theatre. Among those individuals who led their own ensembles were Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, and Grotowski’s protégé, Eugenio Barba. These groups and individuals, along with many others, formed the core of what has often been termed both

“experimental” and “avant-garde” theatre.

Much of experimental theatre artists’ interest in the ensemble and collective creation is tied to an interest in Jungian philosophy and a search for spiritual meaning. Unlike the Freud- based interest in individual character psychology that drove a mainstream, commercial theatre rooted in realism, companies belonging to what Eugenio Barba identified as “The Third Theatre” focused on ensemble work as a way of exploring Jung’s notion of a collective unconscious.6

Through exploring symbols and archetypes, many hoped that actors and audiences would be able to rediscover something at the root of the human experience and that this new/old knowledge might help change the world. Much of this collective work was rooted in the idea that exploring group ritual might create a sense of community and connectedness that would allow individuals to overcome their differences and work productively together. James Roose-Evans has noted that

4 Ibid., 13.

5 Ibid., 17.

6 James Roose-Evans, Experimental Theatre, from Stanislavsky to Peter Brook, Fourth Edition (London, Routledge,

1989), 166. 108

Peter Brook, for instance, was “concerned…not only with theatre as a means of representation but also with its performative powers, its ability to establish a sense of communality and so heal the ‘sick social body’ of the West.”7

Collin Counsell has suggested that the interest in ritual and in the collective unconscious among experimental theatre practitioners arose out of the same kind of “nostalgia for a lost

Arcadia” that characterized “so much of the writing of the early twentieth century.”8 This, he suggests, came in part as a “result of a disenchantment with the modern world” and led to “the use of myth as a means of obliquely suggesting the new age’s continuity with the old, a rediscovery of ‘spirituality’ in an epoch whose key discourses rejected it.”9 Citing especially the collective work carried out by the companies of Brook and Grotowski, Counsell emphasizes what he sees as “the neo-romanticism of the 1960s youth movement,” out of which developed “a militantly ‘alternative’ culture … one critical of western materialism and calling for a return to nature and spiritual values.”10 Significantly for this study, Counsell includes Luis Valdez and El

Teatro Campesino among these “neo-romanticist” companies; since he provides no extended analysis of their role in this movement, it is one of my goals to do so in this chapter.

For some, collective work offered a way of theorizing—not just about art, but about society and about humanity. Brook, for example, did not see his work solely as performance.

Rather, in 1970, he founded the International Center for Theatre Research in Paris (CITR), the

7 Colin Counsell, Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre (London: Routledge, 1996),

145.

8 Ibid., 175.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid. 109 purpose of which was to explore a variety of global theatrical traditions.11 Brook, Counsell notes, was focused on interculturalism; his intention, however, “[was] not to reproduce these other theatres … but to take from them what he [believed] transcends their source culture, to find the universal in the particular.”12 Likewise, the work Grotowski did with his ensemble of actors at

The Laboratory Theatre may be considered research. It was through this “practical experimentation,” he observed, that he sought to answer questions about what theatre is and does; out of this work, “two conceptions crystallized: the poor theatre, and performance as an act of transgression.”13 In his years at the University of California, Irvine, Grotowski turned his research to “those ancient rituals of the various world cultures which have a precise and therefore objective impact upon their participants quite apart from their theological or symbolical significance.”14 Like others, then, both Brook and Grotowski turned to ritual, myth, spirituality, and theatre as a means of researching both performance and the human experience. As I will show in this chapter, Luis Valdez—their contemporary—engaged in similar pursuits.

1973 marks an important year for this study. Although Valdez and the Teatro ensemble had been offering workshops in their collective creation techniques for some time, it was in this year that Valdez began to develop his own system of actor training and to codify these new ideas in writing. Amidst another national tour, a fourth TENAZ festival, and an eight-week experimental workshop with Brook and the CITR that led to a touring “joint production of

11 Ibid., 148

12 Ibid.

13 Jerzy Grotowski, “Towards a Poor Theatre” in Towards a Poor Theatre, Edited by Eugenio Barba (New York:

Routledge, 2002), 18-19.

14 Roose-Evans, Experimental Theatre, 187. 110

Conference of the Birds,” Valdez took two significant steps in formalizing the theories that were central to his and the Teatro Campesino ensemble’s work. First, he published a bilingual poetic essay entitled Pensamiento Serpentino:15 A Chicano Approach to the Theatre of Reality; second, he developed and enacted the Theater of the Sphere training system, based on Aztec and Mayan religion and philosophy.16 In the next two sections of this chapter I will explore the roles that

Pensamiento Serpentino and the Theatre of the Sphere played in the life of El Teatro Campesino throughout the 1970s. Then, in the remainder of the chapter I will focus on an analysis of their effects on the company.

Pensamiento Serpentino

Pensamiento Serpentino was the first written articulation of the philosophical ideas that informed the training system Luis Valdez came to call the Theater of the Sphere. Influenced by visits with and the writings of Andrés Segura and Domingo Martínez Paredez, Pensamiento

Serpentino is a long, bilingual poem that, on the surface, is steeped more in spiritual and sometimes political philosophy than in performance theory. To date, Broyles-Gonzalez has performed the only written analysis of Pensamiento Serpentino. I will draw on many of her thoughts for my own analysis, but will also point to elements in the poem that signal Valdez’s theorizations about the ways in which Chicanx thinking could be used to understand a broader human experience and to heal the world. Before I begin my analysis of this poetic essay, however, a brief summary of the Mayan and Aztec mythology from which it draws some of its figures and imagery is in order.

According to Chicanx theatre scholar Jorge Huerta, “Valdez was basing his philosophy

15 “Serpentine thought.”

16 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 243. 111 on the Maya-Quiche origin myth, El Popol Vuh,” along with what he learned from Segura and

Paredez.17 Central to this text, which Valdez called “the Mayan bible,”18 is the creation god

Quetzalcóatl, symbolized by the feathered serpent. As Huerta points out:

Quetzalcóatl is a manifestation of Life, credited with having gone to the underworld to

seek the bones of man and create the present human race. Quetzalcóatl discovered the

maize, showed man how to weave cotton, and taught man how to do mosaic work with

feathers. But above all, the feathered serpent taught man science, showing him how to

study the stars and how to arrange the calendars. Thus, Quetzalcóatl became the epitome

of Good, as opposed to his brother Tezcatlipoca, who personified Evil.19

Together, Quetzalcóatl and Tezcatlipoca represent the inherent duality that exists within the human.20 Though many stories of the two brothers exist, one tells of a battle between them over the practice of human sacrifice; Tezcatlipoca demanded it of his worshippers, while Quetzalcóatl was against it.21 Quetzalcóatl lost the battle and departed the world. It is a tale “of ignominious defeat,” Huerta says, “but it resounds with the hope that Quetzalcóatl will some day return to reclaim what is his and bring peace back to the land.”22 It is from Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent, that Valdez takes much of the imagery and the title for Pensamiento Serpentino.

Pensamiento Serpentino begins with a metaphor that establishes one of the primary

17 Jorge Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theater.” PhD Diss., (University of California, Santa Barbara, 1974), 9.

18 “The Irvine Tapes,” Tape 5, Side 1, CEMA 5, UCSB, S17 B6 F3.

19 Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theater,” 9.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 9-10.

22 Ibid., 10. 112 points Valdez seeks to make in the piece—that theatre and life are inextricably linked:

Teatro

eres el mundo

y las paredes de los

buildings más grandes

son

nothing but scenery.23

[Theatre

you are the world

and the walls of the

tallest buildings

are

nothing but scenery.]24

The world, Valdez argues in the first few stanzas, is mere illusion. Reality is neither permanent nor stable. Rather, it is

23 Luis Valdez, “Pensamiento Serpentino: A Chicano Approach to the Theatre of Reality,” in Luis Valdez, Early

Works (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1994), p. 170.

24 All English translations of Spanish portions of Pensamiento Serpentino, which appear in brackets, are my own.

Any English text that is not bracketed appears in English in the poem. 113

…una Gran Serpiente

a great serpent

that moves and changes

and keeps crawling

out of its

dead skin25

Reality, then, is about transformation and metamorphosis. This is the central theme of

Pensamiento Serpentino—that the Chicanx must undergo a transformation from one state to another, much like the molting serpent. Having been conquered and colonized, the Mexican and the Chicanx have forgotten their ancient Mesoamerican roots and have taken on the culture of the colonizers. Only by reconnecting with that heritage, by relearning pre-Hispanic Mexican history, philosophy, and spirituality, can the Chicanx be liberated. The Chicanx, Valdez says,

“must Mexicanize himself,” leaving behind the “cultural traps”26 of a world dominated by

European influence.27 The path to this liberation is to be found through ancient texts like the

Popol Vuh and figures like Quetzalcóatl. Then, Valdez argues, the Chicanx will be like the grand serpent,

despojando su pellejo Viejo

to emerge clean and fresh

la nueva realidad nace

25 Ibid., 171-172.

26 My translation from Valdez’s “cultural trampas.”

27 Valdez, “Pensamiento Serpentino,” 172. 114

de la realidad vieja28

[shedding its old skin

to emerge clean and fresh

the new reality born

of the old reality]

In the first few pages of his treatise on Chicanx theatre as a new view on reality, Valdez emphasizes a theme of duality that is in many ways rooted in the same neo-romantic, spiritual nostalgia that characterized the work of figures like Brook and Grotowski. In order to become new, Pensamiento Serpentino theorizes, the Chicanx must embrace the old.

Early in the poetic essay, Valdez also introduces a concept and a term that would become central to his teachings and his training programs throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. For the

Mayans, he argues, religion and science were the same thing.29 The example he offers is one to which he will return again and again:

just look at their moral concept

IN LAK’ECH: Tú Eres Mi Otro Yo

[“You Are My Other Self”]

which they derived from

studying the sun spots.30

The phrase “in lak’ech,” which Valdez translates to “tú eres mi otro yo,” served as a golden rule for both his philosophy and the training system he devised. In 1984, he likened it to “Newton’s

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 173

30 Ibid. 115

Third law of motion: for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. So that if I do something to you, it’s going to come back to me. It’s going to hit me. I am not separated or apart from you.”31 Although Valdez cites this concept as evidence that doing harm to others is an act of self-violence,32 he also insists that self-love is the key to loving others:

To be CHICANO is to love yourself,

your culture, your skin, your language

And once you become CHICANO

that way

you begin to love other people

otras razas del mundo33 [other races of the world]

The central theme that emerges from Pensamiento Serpentino is one not just of duality, but of unity—or, as other experimental theatre theorists might have put it, one of community.34

Valdez’s poetic essay argues that self-knowledge leads to self-love, which enables the Chicanx to love others.

Pensamiento Serpentino is not, however, without overt spiritual and religious references.

“Above all,” Valdez writes, “to be CHICANO is to LOVE GOD.”35 Though he addresses the intermingling of Mesoamerican and Christian religions in the Mexican and Chicanx

31 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 5, Side 1.

32 Valdez, “Pensamiento Serpentino,” 174.

33 Ibid., 175.

34 Sainer, The New Radical Theatre Notebook, 16.

35 Ibid., 175. 116 consciousness, Valdez claims that, in one form or another, “todos los indios creen en Dios”36

[“all Indians believe in God”]. In order to find success, he argues, the Chicanx must embrace that belief fully, and all that comes with it:

In order to fully

EVOLVE

(evolucionar con la

serpiente)

the Chicano Movement

must

MOVE

con el MOVEMENT

of the Cosmos

[…]

It must move with the

EARTH, LA TIERRA

It must move with the

MORNING STAR, VENUS

Quetzalcóatl, Jesucristo

it must move with GOD.37

It is only by re-centering attention on ancestral spiritual beliefs, Valdez argues, that the Chicanx

36 Ibid., 176

37 Ibid. 117 and the Chicanx Movement can move forward. It is difficult to miss the parallel between

Valdez’s suggestion here and the interest in ancient myths and ritual shared by Brook and

Grotowski.

Although Valdez calls for unity in Pensamiento Serpentino, he calls for a unity that does not force the Chicanx to assimilate to European thinking and culture. From the beginning, he makes it clear that the key to the Chicanx’s self-knowledge lies in a return to ancestral beliefs. It is only through embracing that knowledge of Chicanx spiritual history, he suggests, that the

Chicanx can meet the European with any sense of stability. Valdez also argues that this ancestral knowledge is in some ways different from European knowledge, suggesting epistemological differences between the two cultures:

European concepts of reality

ya no soplan. [no longer do it]

Reason alone no es todo el cuento [Reason alone is not the whole story]

El indio baila [The Indian dances]

He DANCES his way to the truth

in a way INTELLECTUALS will never understand38

In this passage, likely influenced by his time with Segura, Valdez introduces an argument that indigenous knowledge is gained through dance; it is an embodied knowledge, learned not through text but through movement. He extends this idea later in the poem, when he instructs the reader to think less and do more—to live not in the mind, but in the body:

Pero mientras que estás [But while you are here]

en este mundo [on this Earth]

38 Ibid., 177. 118

ACT

Don’t pretend

ACT (ACTUA) in reality

and that means in the greater reality beyond

the limited world or

reality of the gabacho39 or

European intellectual.

ACT on the stage of the universe

con DIOS en el corazón [with GOD in your heart]40

In order to act effectively, however, the Chicanx must have a sense of self. Here, Valdez echoes

Grotowski’s call for the actor to “dissect himself” in the process of playing a role.41 For

Grotowski, the aim of acting was to create a “holy actor” through a process of self-analysis, self- sacrifice, and self-development. In a similar way, Valdez insists in Pensamiento Serpentino that the Chicanx must embrace the self by embracing Chicanx identity, rather than attempting to assimilate into a European one. Echoing once more Shakespeare’s sentiment that the world is a stage, Valdez admonishes the reader:

The point is to participate

in the play

39 Literally, “foreigner”; colloquially, the term is somewhat derogatory.

40 Valdez, “Pensamiento Serpentino,” 184.

41 Roose-Evans, Experimental Theatre, 147. 119

not to reject the parts we are given to play.

Es todo improvisación anyway [It’s all improvisation anyway]

[…]

If a Chicano rejects his part

and starts playing Gabacho

he’s going to mess up42

What Valdez suggests here echoes the cultural nationalism that often defined the broader

Chicanx movement. He encourages a rejection of complete assimilation and advocates a rediscovery and an assertion of pre-colonization beliefs and identity. As Broyles-Gonzalez has argued about the Theatre of the Sphere training that accompanied and succeeded it, Pensamiento

Serpentino suggests a way of thinking “that seeks to decolonize and fortify Chicanas/os at the emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical levels of existence.”43 Broyles-Gonzalez further argues that Pensamiento Serpentino, which she calls “the Teatro’s philosophical treatise,”

“repeatedly affirms the need for a Chicana/o cultural reconstitution and reclamation, as it affirms the need to struggle for justice.”44 Valdez’s poetic essay, then, is not merely an artistic manifesto; it also represents a prescription for building and asserting cultural and political power. It is a way of theorizing how that power might be attained.

42 Ibid., 187-188. Interestingly, Valdez argues on p. 189 that once Chicanx actors find this sense of self, they will be able to play a variety of races.

43 Broyles-Gonzalez, 123.

44 Ibid. 120

In fairness to Broyles-Gonzalez, she does highlight a few of Pensamiento Serpentino’s references to the unity of all humanity. She especially draws attention to the ways in which the poem parallels the experiences of the Chicanx farm worker with Vietnamese farm workers during the Vietnam conflict. My goal in this chapter is not to argue against any of Broyles-

Gonzalez’s superb analysis. Rather, I want to pick up where I feel she left off, in a sense. Even considering the attention she gives to some of the moments in which Pensamiento Serpentino suggests the utility of Chicanx thought for the broader human population, her project focuses much more specifically on how Valdez’s theorizations can advance and liberate the Chicanx population, specifically. My goal has been to offer a second extended analysis that explores how the theorizing performed by Pensamiento Serpentino marks it and Valdez as part of a larger conversation happening in experimental theatre of the time, writ large.

On the surface, Pensamiento Serpentino would seem to have little to do with actor training. It is political, to be sure. It is also undeniably spiritual. Although “Teatro” is its first word, there is otherwise little direct mention of playmaking and performance. Indeed, the first few lines quoted at the beginning of this analysis point to theatre as mere illusion. It begins a process of theorizing, however, in which Valdez and the Teatro Campesino ensemble would continue to engage through the practical Theater of the Sphere training system.

The Theatre of the Sphere: An Introduction

When Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez’s El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano

Movement appeared in 1994, it offered a more nuanced history of the company than had previously been available. Broyles-Gonzalez dispelled the long-held myth that the early work of

El Teatro Campesino was primarily the work of Valdez alone and revealed the collective spirit that defined the company from 1965 to 1980. In the process, she “[positioned] El Teatro 121

Campesino within the Mexican working-class tradition of orality and oral culture”45 and shed new light on the role of women in the company.46 As Jorge Huerta has pointed out, the book also offered “the first and only analysis and explication of the ‘Theatre of the Sphere’ in published form.”47 Early in her chapter on the subject, Broyles-Gonzalez gives a concise and informative description of the Theater of the Sphere:

Very broadly speaking, the Theater of the Sphere is a method of performance and life

training developed by the Teatro Campesino Ensemble between 1970 and 1980. It seeks

to maximize and effectively deploy a person’s performance energies both on- and

offstage. On one level Theater of the Sphere can be described as a theory and practice of

communicative action based on Native American (Mayan and Aztec) wisdom and

teachings. A deeply humanistic undertaking, the Theater of the Sphere constituted a

sustained effort to explore, understand, and develop not an abstract human potentiality

but a decolonized Chicana/o human potentiality or performance energy, one rooted in the

Americas.48

At the center of Theatre of the Sphere training was the notion that the individual is made up of a variety of spheres—a mental sphere, an emotional sphere, a physical sphere, and (in some documents) a spiritual sphere. The goal of Theatre of the Sphere training was to develop each of these spheres fully to create a completely Spherical Actor—or, synonymously, a complete

45 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, xiii.

46 Ibid., Chapter Three.

47 Huerta, Chicano Drama, 36. Here, Huerta is referencing the second chapter of Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro

Campesino.

48 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 80. 122 human being. The work of Theatre of the Sphere was designed, then, to create actors who had complete access to and control over their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual potentials; this would enable them to fulfill their potential both on stage and in the world. As Broyles-

Gonzalez’s chapter introduction suggests, the Theatre of the Sphere is inextricably connected to the ideas Valdez put forth in Pensamiento Serpentino. It is fair to say, in fact, that the Theatre of the Sphere training devised by Valdez and the Teatro Campesino collective over the course of a decade or more constituted a deeper, physicalized exploration of the Pensamiento Serpentino philosophy.

Broyles-Gonzalez points out—and in this chapter I will both corroborate and extend this claim using my own research in the El Teatro Campesino archives—that the Theater of the

Sphere served multiple purposes. Aside from offering practical training for performance (and, as it turns out, for the creation of original theatrical works), Broyles-Gonzalez posits, “the Theatre of the Sphere must be conceptualized in part as an oppositional or alternative social practice and long-term educational process intertwined with a larger system of social practices and power relations.”49 Broyles-Gonzalez also confirms my assertion that the Theatre of the Sphere enacts the ideas articulated in Pensamiento Serpentino, when she describes what she sees as its “dual thrust”:

… on the one hand, as a reactive cultural activity contesting hegemonic and dominant

white social, cultural, and political practices (particularly those originating within the

white culture industries); on the other hand, as an ethnic cultural activity that primarily

seeks to come to terms with its own discrete self-identity, that seeks to perceive its own

49 Ibid., 82. 123

axis instead of cultivating only oppositional qualities in direct relationship to the Other.50

Broyles-Gonzalez highlights an important point here. While the Theatre of the Sphere certainly existed as a reaction to the dominance of Eurocentric thinking and culture, it was not purely reactionary. It also represented an effort to establish a Chicanx identity deeply rooted in a culture and in beliefs that existed long before colonization. Put another way, the ideas espoused by

Pensamiento Serpentino and enacted by the Theatre of the Sphere did not suddenly arise for the purpose of countering hegemonic white culture. Rather, they represent ways of thinking and ways of being that predate European hegemony in the Americas. They are part of a culture that exists in its own right, with its own ontological and epistemological theories and practices.

Broyles-Gonzalez accurately highlights the challenges of representing a system like the

Theatre of the Sphere in writing; these are challenges I face in constructing my own study. First and foremost, since the Theatre of the Sphere deals in the transmission of embodied knowledge, there are aspects of it that cannot accurately be put on the page. Secondly, the Theatre of the

Sphere has no authoritative written record. The most complete account today is Broyles-

Gonzalez’s. She prefaces her account by noting that, at that time she wrote it, “not one essay, article, or interview concerning the Theater of the Sphere [had] ever been published. Nor [was]

Theater of the Sphere even mentioned in the secondary literature.”51 As noted previously, Huerta has now written very briefly on the subject, but his primary source for doing so was Broyles-

Gonzalez.52 Broyles-Gonzalez based her work partly on time spent in a “research residency at El

Teatro Campesino,” though she was denied permission to quote many of the materials she

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., 80.

52 Huerta, Chicano Drama, 36-37. 124 discovered there or her interactions with Valdez, when she “refused to submit the final study to him for approval.”53 Still, her work is based on some archival evidence, as well as oral histories and “work diaries that various ensemble members shared with [her].”54 She relies heavily on interviews and conversations with former Teatro Campesino ensemble member Olivia

Chumacero, “whose life [she considers] the best living example of the Theatre of the Sphere.”55

My own analysis of the Theatre of the Sphere will rely heavily on Broyles-Gonzalez’s. Even more so, however, I will make use of materials I studied in the El Teatro Campesino Archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2019. Chief among these are the transcripts of a series of lectures given by Valdez at the University of California, Irvine in October and

November of 1984. While these transcripts do not include a record of the physical exercises through which Valdez guided workshop participants, they provide invaluable insight into the

Theatre of the Sphere.

In seeking out the connection between the philosophical and spiritual ideas expressed in

Pensamiento Serpentino and performance and actor training, it is important to note some nuances of the terms in play. For this, I turn again to Broyles-Gonzalez:

A clarification of the terms ‘performance’ and acting’ is in order. In the case of El Teatro

Campesino those terms—as well as the term ‘aesthetic’—do not refer to an artistic

practice in any way separate from life practices within society at large. The Teatro

Campesino ensemble had always been keenly conscious of the continuity between life on

and off the stage. The stage work was but one dimension of an overall cultivation of a

53 Broylez-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, xv.

54 Ibid., xvii.

55 Ibid., vii. 125

performer’s human potential. ‘Performance’ for the Teatro Campesino was in no way

aestheticized into an independent or separate artistic realm. Performance was viewed as

part of the material social process of life … The Teatro Campesino’s concept of actor and

performer was wholly antithetical to the mainstream division of labor and specialization

wherein actors work at pretending to be who they are not in reality, or enact a situation

essentially foreign to them. Over the years, Theater of the Sphere evolved as a life

philosophy and life practice extending into the stage work. The insistence on (or striving

for) an essential unity of a person onstage and offstage motivated ensemble members

collectively to formulate a self-education and training program aimed at sharpening

individual and collective life performance skills. With this holistic approach, the Teatro’s

ultimate goal was defined as the formation of the Spherical Actor or complete human

being.56

I have included this rather lengthy piece of exposition as a way of prefacing the analysis ahead.

Much of what both Broyles-Gonzalez and Valdez himself have to say about the Theatre of the

Sphere may seem at times to stray from the topic of actor training. It is important to remember, however, that within the Theatre of the Sphere philosophy, actor training and life training were inextricably linked. Though the direct connections between the two and the ways in which many of these ideas might have been manifest in acting workshops is often obtuse when reading either

Broyles-Gonzalez’s account or the transcripts of Valdez’s lectures, I hope to make those connections clearer in the pages ahead.

It is also worth noting the multivalence of the words “myth” and “mythology.” Valdez explored the topic with workshop participants in his 1984 Irvine lectures, noting that a myth is

56 Ibid., 87. 126

“an untrue story according to most people. It’s an unreal story.”57 At El Teatro Campesino, however, myth was seen differently. Valdez explained that, while much theatre in the US at the time was Freudian in nature, “in the sense that you explore the libido and the psychological inconsistencies of human beings, especially in their attitude towards their father and mother,” the

Teatro Campesino’s theatre is more aligned with Jungian thought.58 The work of the Teatro

Campesino, he suggested, deals with the collective and with archetypes. 59 These concepts are tied to the idea of mythology, but Valdez insisted that the Teatro Campesino dealt with “myth in reality.”60 He explained further:

… if reality is the surface of human existence that we all perceive—with buildings, and

human institutions, and customs, and what have you—myth is a deeper reality. It is the

subterranean corridors of human existence. These are the caverns of human nature, and

from there—from the level of myth—come our conceptions of god, come our

conceptions of heroes, come our conceptions of the structure of life.61

For Valdez, the myth arose from the unconscious, from collective memory, giving shape to and providing explanations for very real experiences. Thus, the mythology of Mesoamerican religion is not patently false, but a way of expressing an inner truth experienced not only by the Aztecs and the Mayans, but also by the contemporary Chicanx. Each of us, Valdez argues, has our own personal myth—“a blueprint inside” that tells us how to grow and who to be, in relation to each

57 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 2 Side 2.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid. 127 other and in relation to the world.62

Valdez was not alone in his use of mythology in actor and life training. Grotowski, too believed that working with and “confronting” myth (for he believed identification with myth was not possible) and archetypes could lead to self-understanding.63 For Brook, as well, mythology was tied to ritual, which was tied to the notion of communion, which he viewed as the exchange of ideas between performer and spectator.64 Though Grotowski and Brook differ in their views of myth’s potential for universality, they both mirror Valdez’s idea that there is use in reaching into the past in search of some collective memory that might throw the modern individual’s experience into relief. Grotowski believed these archetypal figures and ideas should be challenged and broken apart, while both Valdez and Brook believed they were something to which humanity should in some way return. None of them, however, denied the presence of some level of truth to be found and explored in myth.

Broyles-Gonzalez extends this idea, noting that “each people has its own mythology with which it seeks to illustrate a life wisdom or construct.”65 The idea that myth and mythology are somehow false, she suggests, is “essentially a construct of Western colonial discourse.”66 In the

Mesoamerican tradition, the stories that the Western discourse deems “myths” are seen differently:

… the stories they tell dramatize or even personify culture-bound relationships reflecting

62 Ibid.

63 Grotowski, “Towards a Poor Theatre,” 23.

64 Counsell, Signs of Performance, 160.

65 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 88.

66 Ibid., 89. 128

fundamental concepts of humankind, god and the universe. They constitute—to quote

Teatro Campesino members—‘blueprints of reality’ or ‘patterns.’ Within this

understanding, a myth is symbolic, a metaphor for the matrix of forces and dynamics at

work within visible reality.67

Mythology as Valdez sees it, then, refers not simply to a set of stories long considered false.

Instead, they are symbolic and expressive of a deeper wisdom. The mythology engaged by the

Theater of the Sphere “‘narrates’ physical laws and forces symbolically as a system of relationships symbolized as divine powers. In other words, physical law is metaphorized into stories of deities, that is, myths.”68 Accessed properly, these myths are instructive. “When El

Teatro Campesino sought to ground the Theater of the Sphere in Mayan and Aztec mythology,”

Broyles-Gonzalez concludes, “it did so with the conviction that those myths constituted an active force within Chicano reality. Ensemble members regarded those myths … as the submerged

‘wisdom of life’—conscious or unconscious’—for Chicanos.”69 For Valdez and for the Teatro ensemble, that wisdom was applicable to performing both on and off stage. It was a wisdom that could effectively increase openness and flexibility in ways that were equally valuable in personal and creative relationships.

Like Huerta, Broyles-Gonzalez identifies the myth of Quetzalcóatl as central to the

Theater of the Sphere. She notes that Quetzalcóatl symbolizes “the unity of the spiritual (Quetzal

= feathers) and the material (Coatl = serpent) inherent in the entire creation, in life.”70

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid., 90.

69 Ibid., 90.

70 Ibid., 90-91. 129

Quetzalcóatl is a creative force and “connotes the presence of an energy … in all matter and of energy and spirt as the mover of all things.”71 Creator of humankind, he is also responsible for both the arts and science, as well as knowledge and wisdom.72 In Broyles-Gonzalez’s depiction, we see the same kind of duality—between spirt and matter, between art and science—that

Valdez emphasized in Pensamiento Serpentino. It was the duality within the self that the Theater of the Sphere was designed to help actors balance. “Among the goals of the Theater of the

Sphere,” Broyles-Gonzalez writes, “is to foster what is called the ‘Living Quetzalcoatl,’ or

‘Feathered Serpent Blueprint,’ within the self.”73

The idea that the Theater of the Sphere sought to present was that the individual human being is a microcosm for the universe at large. As Broyles-Gonzalez makes clear, Quetzalcóatl is presented as ‘plan,’ as ‘creator,’ and as a ‘blueprint’ for the individual:

What is at work in the universe is considered at work in each of us as well. In this view,

the Feathered Serpent constitutes a model of life and of behavior present as potentiality

within each individual. The goal is to cultivate that potentiality. The story or myth of

Quetzalcoatl serves as paradigm, model, or blueprint for a dimension of life wisdom. The

idea is to see the myths within us and learn to move like myths. These are—above all—

blueprints for motion and not for thought. Being ‘“taken over” by the CREATOR’ or

Feathered Serpent signifies arriving at an advanced stage or realization of that human

potentiality.74

71 Ibid., 91.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid. 130

Here, Broyles-Gonzalez reiterates two important points; first, that the duality and balance represented by Quetzalcóatl are the goal of the Theater of the Sphere training; and second, that the knowledge and wisdom offered by following this model are gained through the body, not through the intellect.

The centrality of Quetzalcóatl and the emphasis on embodied knowledge in Theater of the Sphere training informs the unique structures on which the latter is built. The purpose of the training, according to the Teatro Campesino in a 1978 publication of the International Federation of the Independent Theatre (IFIT), was to focus “on human changes, interpreting or presenting them as physical, emotional, and intellectual experiences.”75 The work was completed through a series of improvisational exercises:

Group and individual improvisations serve to explore our most basic human actions in

terms of body movement, gesture, speech, facial expression, emotions, logic, and

paradox. Eventually the exercises work the body, mind and heart simultaneously,

thrusting a person forward to create the spherical actor, which is in essence a complete

human being.76

Though this document is labeled Pensamiento Serpentino rather than Theatre of the Sphere,

Broyles-Gonzalez notes that the two were often used interchangeably by ensemble members, though the former was seen as “the intellectual (i.e. nonphysical) dimension of”77 the latter.

According to the IFIT document, the system was “divided into four parts: (a) body, (b) heart, (c)

75 “Chicano Theatre in USA: El Teatro Campesino,” in International Federation of the Independent Theatre

Bulletin, 2nd Edition, 1978, 8.

76 Ibid.

77 Broyles-Gonzalez, 94. 131 mind, and (d) the spherical actor.”78 Broyles-Gonzalez would later label these parts body, heart, mind, and soul; but it is with the primary source that I will concern myself first.

The Theatre of the Sphere: A Three (or Four) Part Process

The IFIT document notes that Theatre of the Sphere work begins with the body, which is seen to have its own sphere. “As actors,” it reads, “our body must have the total freedom to move around in all directions with balance and grace. It must be well-tuned, flexible, and ready to be used on or off the stage. We stress the importance of using music, dance, and their aid in developing rhythm and movement.”79 This portion of the work included exercises that dealt with the concepts of “the birth,” “the earth, death, and rebirth,” “the face and eyes,” “the hands,” “the body,” “the voice,” and “mimetic action.”80 The primacy of the body in this structure echoes the interest in movement and embodied knowledge and learning that Valdez expresses in

Pensamiento Serpentino. Of particular interest is the IFIT document’s emphasis on the ability of the body “to move around in all directions.” If one imagines the moveable parts of the human body, along with their full ranges of motion, one can visualize that each part—the arm, the leg, the foot, the waist, the neck—moves not in straight lines, but in arcs. Though not all moveable parts can form a complete circle with their respective movements, they move to form parts of circles. Given the myriad directions in which these parts move, these circles ultimately and collectively develop such dimension as to constitute spheres. Thus, in some ways, the sphere of the body is a literal one; it is a physical (if invisible) shape—or series of shapes—formed by the various parts of the human body in motion.

78 “Chicano Theatre in USA,” 8.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid. 132

The section of the workshop dedicated to the heart carries the concept of the sphere beyond the material reality of the physical body into more figurative terms. As described in the

IFIT document, this portion of the workshop addresses “the emotional side.”81 Much like the movement of a body part to and fro, the heart sphere deals in the kind of duality described in

Pensamiento Serpentino:

Within every human being, there are opposing forces constantly at work. These opposing

forces (love-hate, fear-courage) are what make our life dynamic. There is nothing wrong

with being emotional so long as we are in control and can return to the centre where all

emotions are neutralized.82

This portion of the workshop emphasizes the actor’s need to embrace “the whole spectrum of

[their] emotional makeup,” so long as they are also able to exercise control over it.83 The exercises pertaining to the heart sphere deal with “Nahui Ollin circle-emotional opposites,”84

“music and emotions,” “trust exercises,” and “self-projection of opposites.”85 Though the meaning and the specific use of these ideas is not immediately clear (and though written accounts of most of them do not exist), it is worth noting that two of the four categories of exercise deal with the concept of “opposites.” This suggests a continued focus on the idea of duality, and on the practice of moving back and forth between two opposing extremes. As the

IFIT description of the Heart exercises indicates, they were likely designed to help actors reach

81 Ibid., 9.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.

84 Nahui Ollin is an Aztec concept that will be explored more fully later in this chapter.

85 “Chicano Theatre in USA,” 9. 133 opposing emotions, and to develop enough control to move deftly between them. Here again, the image of the sphere returns. If one imagines one pair of opposing emotions—perhaps love-hate, as supplied by the IFIT description—at a distance of 180 degrees from one another on an imaginary circle, and if one imagines a number of these imaginary circles for different emotions, and if one further imagines that these circles all share a center—perhaps the heart—then one can easily visualize an imaginary sphere created by the movements between infinite pairs of emotional extremes. This work also recalls key characteristics symbolized by Quetzalcóatl: duality, balance, and harmony.

The third part of the workshop focuses on the mind: “Working within its own sphere, the mind is logical and illogical, and it deeply influences the emotional and physical aspect of an actor. The mind reasons, imagines, and conceives, but it must learn to work along with the heart and body as one unit.”86 From this preliminary description, it is clear that the mind also deals in duality. It is both logical and illogical; it both imagines and conceives; it serves its own functions, yet it must also work with the body and the heart. From these pairings, it is possible to again imagine a series of circles that together from a sphere of the mind. Exercises dealing with the mind fell into the following categories: “logical-illogical acts,” “talk-automatic talking,”

“words with unrelated actions,” “story making, “space and time,” and “imaginary language.”87

The final part of the workshop brings together the first three. According to the IFIT document:

… it is the unity (unidad) of the elements that we have covered before—the body, heart,

and mind all working together. This leads us to improvisations with creative focus, where

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid. 134

people are communicating and interacting as different characters on a more spherical

level, as true human beings. We do actos, corridos, or mitos. We do scenes. We play. We

work. We act.88

The IFIT document provides no further information about the final stage of the workshop. The overriding theme, echoed in the mythology of Quetzalcóatl and in the philosophy of

Pensamiento Serpentino, is unity. Having developed the spheres of the body, the heart, and the mind, the actor has explored the furthest reaches of their physical, emotional, and mental abilities. The actor has found their outer limits; this, according to Pensamiento, is where creativity truly begins:

Once you learn your limitations

you encounter your infinite potential

Encuentras a DIOS IN TU CORAZON. [You meet GOD IN YOUR HEART.]89

In testing and finding one’s limits, as Theater of the Sphere would have it, one discovers not only what one can do, but an entire realm of possibilities one might still explore. Having reached both extremes of one’s own duality, one discovers what one is, but also what one might still become.

Opposites are brought into balance to reveal possibility. One has, as Pensamiento Serpentino suggests one should, found one’s inner Quetzalcóatl. And like Quetzalcóatl, one can then create.

The Theater of the Sphere process is neither short nor finite. In the UC Irvine lectures,

Valdez insists that it is the work of a lifetime.90 Broyles-Gonzalez also notes that, though it was a

“progression,” actors did not always pass through the parts of the workshop in successive order;

88 Ibid.

89 Valdez, Pensamiento Serpentino, 190.

90 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 2 Side 1, Tape 3 Side 2, Tape 4 Side 1. 135 rather, an actor might be working on any or all of the spheres at once.91 In fact, the cycle detailed by the four steps in the IFIT document mirrors another ongoing process that Broyles-Gonzalez has described, and that Valdez explained in the Irvine lectures. According to Valdez, movement is always at the beginning of this process, which then leads to feeling, and then to thought:

First there is motion. You are motion. You are energy in motion, in flux, moving through

space. Once you have motion of some kind, then you have emotion. The word is Latin,

but it tells us its own meaning. E-motion: from motion. Emotion comes from motion.

And then, after you have emotion, you have the possibility for notion. You have the

possibility for intellectual discourse, intellectual communication.92

In Valdez’s estimation, there is no communication without personal feeling, which can only arise from movement. The cycle of motion to emotion to notion, however, leads one back to motion, starting the process again (or continuing it). Broyles-Gonzalez adds some detail to this process, nothing that “the Teatro believed that only those ideas communicated on an emotional beam (and of course physically and spiritually) would motivate an audience to action.”93 Thus, the arrival at notion could spur the actor to act again; alternatively, it could spur the audience to action. The latter, as earlier analysis indicates, was one of the Teatro Campesino’s goals from the beginning.

Valdez offers another way to think about the motion-emotion-notion cycle in the Irvine lectures. “Another way to describe it is effect” he says; “Out of effect comes affect. Out of affect comes reflect.”94 In this vocabulary, effect corresponds to motion, affect to emotion, and reflect

91 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 95.

92 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 3 Side 2.

93 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 114.

94 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 3 Side 2. 136 to notion. Valdez repeats the idea that notion leads back to motion—or reflect back to effect:

“Reflecting; that’s bouncing back. What am I bouncing back? You’re bouncing back an idea into pure action.”95 Here again, it is evident that movement leads to feeling, which leads to thought, which leads to further movement. “Now, where it begins and ends is anybody’s guess,” Valdez continues, “because you’re talking about a circle; you’re talking about something that’s been going on for a long time, you know? We were all ideas in our parent’s [sic] minds and hearts before we were real. They brought us into being.”96 Valdez’s last comment brings the philosophy behind Theatre of the Sphere back to Quetzalcóatl and the idea of creation. Movement leads to feeling, which leads to thought, which leads to an act of creation. This was a key principle in the

Theater of the Sphere training for actors. The work began with movement, which allowed the actor to access and work with emotion. From that cycle, the actor could generate an idea for what to do next. This was the creative process.

Broyles-Gonzalez adds a step to the effect-affect-reflect cycle that encompasses the creative act. Whereas the Irvine lectures offer the three-part “motion-emotion-notion” and

“effect-affect-reflect” cycles, Broyles-Gonzalez borrows the fourth step from the IFIT process to offer a cycle she labels “effect-affect-reflect-inspirit.”97 In her understanding, the word “inspirit” is directly connected to the word “inspire,” and this step represents that moment of creation described by the IFIT document’s fourth step. The IFIT document refers to this as a moment when the body, the heart, and the mind come together to create.98 Broyles-Gonzalez, on the other

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 110-114.

98 “Chicano Theatre in USA,” 9. 137 hand, refers not just to body, heart, and mind, but to body, heart, mind and spirit. “When and if the infinite potential (power) of [the first] three merge,” she writes, “then the cumulative force of

‘spirit’ (soul) or ‘inspiriting’ is said to take place.”99 This moment, this act of “inspiriting,” is the creative act. The fourth category of “spirit” also appears in a workshop description included on the schedule for the Teatro’s 1976 “Cultural Day” event.100 It is through the addition of this final step in the process—when the spheres of the body, the mind, the heart, and the soul are brought into harmony, that total sphericality is achieved.

The Veinte Pasos: The Theatre of the Sphere in Action

What Broyles-Gonzalez describes that the Irvine lectures only partially address is a part of the Theater of the Sphere theory known as the Veinte Pasos, or the Twenty Steps. This process, less frequently referred to as “the ‘Twenty Footprints of God,’ or the symbolic representation of ‘Man’s Spiritual Pilgrimage,” breaks each of the four phases described above— body, heart, mind, soul—into five constituent parts, each of which represents one of the twenty total steps. Each of these steps is named for one of “the twenty Mayan days of the month used in the sacred year, or Tzolkin, consisting of a succession of 260 days.”101 The Teatro ensemble learned these names and their meanings from Martínez Paredez, who “pointed out that they symbolize a process of human evolution.” 102 Recalling the work of figures like Grotowski,

Copeau, and even Stanislavsky in his later days, Broyles-Gonzalez identifies the Veinte Pasos as

“a program of reflection and exercise leading through various psychophysiological stages of

99 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 111.

100 Schedule, “‘El Teatro Campesino’ Cultural Day,” 1976, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B7 F11.

101 Broyles-Gonzalez., El Teatro Campesino, 95.

102 Ibid., 95-96. 138 transformation.”103 Each of the Twenty Steps, or days, has a number and a meaning linked to a corresponding human state achieved through a specific exercise program.” Table 1 recreates

Broyles Gonzalez’s representation of each of the four phases, its constituent five steps, the name of the Mayan day each step represents, and the meaning of that day.

Valdez gives a brief explanation of the first seven steps in the Irvine lectures. The lack of context in the transcripts, which document only the remarks Valdez made prefatory to each workshop session, makes his explanations difficult to parse. Still, he offers that each step comes with an accompanying visual image. Valdez describes the first step, imix, as “one. A point.”104

The second step, ik, represents “two forces”; Valdez compares it to the Chinese yin and yang.105

Valdez describes akbal, the third step, as “a dynamic flow” and “like a triangle”; and kan, the fourth step, as associated with the serpent and balance, symbolized by a square.106 The fifth step, chicchan, is symbolized by a pyramid: it is “where you gather all your experience into one point out of a four-square base.”107 As a figure provided by Broyles-Gonzalez demonstrates, the point added to the square by chicchan is added to the square’s center.108 If one imagines pulling that point up from the center of the two-dimensional square base, one can visualize the shape developing a third dimension and transforming into a pyramid. Both Valdez and Broyles-

Gonzalez describe the sixth step, simi, as a diamond created when one pyramid emerges from

103 Ibid., 96.

104 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 2 Side 1

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid.

108 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 102. 139

Table 1. Veinte Pasos

/ 1. IMIX: womb

| 2. IK: breath of life

BODY | 3. AKBAL: born of water

| 4. KAN: knows evil

\ 5. CHICCHAN: life experience

/ 6. CIMI (IL): death

| 7. MAN-IK: overcomes death

HEART | 8. LAMAT: lower regions (materiality)

| 9. MULUC: overcomes matter

\ 10. OC: enters into depths of matter

/ 11. CHUEN: burns without flame

| 12. EB: begins to climb ladder

MIND | 13. BEN: growing maize (man)

| 14. IX: (Jaguar God) he is washed clean

\ 15. MEN: to become perfect

/ 16. CIB: full of light consciousness

| 17. C’HABAN: shakes of ashes

SOUL | 18. EDZNAB: he is made perfect

| 19. CAUAC: divine nature manifest

\ 20. AHAU: becomes one with God109

109 Broyles-Gonzelez, El Theatre Campesino, 96. 140 another.110 Valdez concludes with the seventh step, man-ik, which he describes as “rebirth.”111

Between the Irvine transcripts and Broyles-Gonzalez’s research, it is possible to piece together the philosophical meanings of some of these steps and their attendant images (which, presumably, continue advancing in complexity and dimension until they form the image of a sphere), as well as some of the types of exercises they might have inspired. Valdez spends some time discussing the concept of “zero,” translating the Mayan word for it (hel) as “egg” and describing it as a symbol of “emptiness.”112 Broyles-Gonzalez details how this concept works in training practice:

The journey through Theater of the Sphere begins with a prebeginning ‘gel’ or

‘nothingness.’ Prior to and at the conclusion of the day’s action or thought, performers

meditate on their infinite potential while in an absolutely motionless state. On one level

this meditation serves to create focus for what follows. On another level, it prefigures the

desire and capacity to tie back to the cosmic center represented by Step Twenty (ahau:

becomes one with God).113

In its beginning stages, Theater of the Sphere is not unlike those methods that have dominated mainstream actor training in the United States. This use of the meditative state as a preparatory step to further work recalls the emphasis that Stanislavsky, Boleslavsky, and others placed on relaxation.

Broyles-Gonzalez notes that imix is represented not just by a point, but by “a dot within

110 Ibid., 103-104. “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 2 Side 1.

111 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 2 Side 1.

112 Ibid.

113 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 98. 141 the sphere” represented by the nothingness of zero.114 It is, in fact, “a zero with a point in it” and

“refers to the pregnant womb in Mayan, a womb with a fertilized egg from which birth will follow, ideally the birth of a complete human being.”115 Valdez uses the same analogy, arguing that if hel is the womb or the egg, imix is the sperm that fertilizes it (though he also characterizes the entire fertilized egg as imix).116 In this sense, just as the triangle becomes a square, the square becomes a pyramid, and one pyramid becomes two in the description above, the movement from zero to one, from nothingness to the first of the Twenty Steps, represents an evolution. It is this kind of evolution—or growth, or transformation—that the Theater or the Sphere takes as its goal.

The movement from nothing to the first step represents the beginning of this transformation.

According to Broyles-Gonzalez, the Teatro Campesino saw the heart as a

“‘FERTILIZED EGG inside the WOMB of [a person’s] BEING,’”117 and crafted its exercises for imix around this image. This was the first step towards becoming a spherical actor, or a more complete human being. “In the Teatro’s understanding, every individual is conceived of as a luminous being composed of a spherical field of energy that can be controlled and directed if the individual is in tune with her or his center or heart and body.”118 Individual physical warm-ups were followed by group warm-ups designed to establish a “group focus.”119 After this, the group completed a variety of exercises designed “to sharpen each individual’s sense of heart and

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid.

116 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 5 Side 2.

117 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 98.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid. 142 circulation in every part of the body”; in these exercises, participants worked “to feel the presence of the heartbeat in every individual body unit … and then throughout the entire body at once.”120 Mirroring some of the yogic practices employed by Stanislavsky in his later work, participants also engaged in movements that began with the body in a fetal position on the floor and saw it grow “to form a ‘tree of life.’”121 Additional exercises focused on creating and leading with a physical center, and anticipating the actions and movements of others.122 Such group exercises as the latter were meant to help actors learn to move in tandem with or in opposition to other ensemble members. The goal of this work was to increase not only awareness of the self, but awareness of and responsiveness to others.

Broyles-Gonzalez’s table of the Twenty Steps defines the second step, ik, as “breath of life.” She later adds that this step “refers to the breath of life bestowed in the womb.”123 Much as

Valdez describes this step as “two forces,” Broyles-Gonzalez ties it to duality. Work in this step focuses partially on “the dual nature of respiration, involving inhalation and exhalation.”124 Two concepts become important in step two. The first, which Valdez mentions repeatedly in the

Irvine lectures, is cellular mitosis. For Valdez, the process of mitosis is what connects human beings to nature. As it is an early step in the formation of life and growth, it serves as a model for the evolution and transformation that the Theater of the Sphere seeks to incite. “It is programmed into human beings,” he argues, “as much as it is programmed into trees and insects. There is a

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid., 99.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid. 143 plan that evolves. There is a blueprint that evolves.”125 In citing mitosis, Valdez continues his insistence that the process provided by the Veinte Pasos is a natural one, one that is inherently part of the human journey. Broyles-Gonzalez elaborates: “Ik is also conceptualized as the splitting of imix (the point/number 1/fertilized egg) into two cells through contrary forces. The two cells, although separate, are at the same time unified.”126 Valdez comes back to this idea after his discussion of imix as a fertilized egg. The next step in the process, he says, is the splitting of the zygote; but “when things are splitting apart, they’re nevertheless trying to come together. Things are always falling apart at the same time they’re coming together in life, always.

So, thesis, antithesis … it’s a balance of two forces that eventually goes forward.”127 Broyles-

Gonzalez corroborates the significance of these comments to the Theater of the Sphere, noting that ‘members of El Teatro Campesino likened ik to the ‘law of dialectical materialism.”128 The dialectical nature of step two begins to resemble earlier characterizations of the Theater of the

Sphere cycle. One might view motion as synthesis, emotion as antithesis, and notion as the synthesis produced by their encounter. In true dialectical fashion, the cycle then begins again.

The second concept that plays an important role in step two is identified in the IFIT document as “Nahui Ollin.”129 As Broyles-Gonzalez explains it, Nahui Ollin is “a key Aztec concept” that describes “movement through union of opposites” and is “symbolized graphically

125 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 4 Side 1.

126 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 99.

127 Lectures, Tap 4 Side 1.

128 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 99.

129 “Chicano Theatre in USA,” 9. 144 by two lines that interlock and go in opposite direction within a circle.”130 For this image, one might imagine a circle containing a square, which itself contains two perpendicular lines, each uniting opposite corners.131 Step two exercises involving Nahui Ollin asked participants to explore movement between opposites, much as I described in relation to the IFIT document.

Participants experimented with opposite extremes in range of movement, ultimately, Broyles-

Gonzalez says, working to move from one to the other using only circular motions.132 Along with a heavy emphasis on breathing, step two exercises focused on “contradictions of the body” and “opposing forces in the body.”133

Valdez described Step Two as a simultaneous splitting apart and coming together. He also mentioned that this leads to what I will call a “coming forward.” This act of coming forward describes the third step, akbal. Step Two can be imagined as shifting weight back and forth in two opposing directions, say leaning forward and backward; in Step Three, these leaning movements then propel a movement forward. Out of the movement through opposites, a third and different kind of movement is created. Valdez calls this “very simple dynamics … these two forces create a contrary thing, and these two forces then create a movement in a certain direction.”134 In this moment, the movement in one direction becomes the thesis, the movement in the opposing direction the antithesis, and the resulting movement forward is the synthesis.135

130 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 100.

131 Ibid., 101.

132 Ibid., 100.

133 Ibid.

134 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 4, Side 1.

135 Ibid. 145

Broyles-Gonzalez compares this synthetic step to “the thrust of blood from the heart, or the movement of vision formed through a synthesis of left eye and right eye.”136The movement forward is also the “dynamic flow” of which Valdez spoke in describing the first step. This movement, the flow, is tied to the meaning of akbal, “born of water.”137

The fourth step, kan, refers directly to the serpent.138 As Table 2 indicates, its meaning is linked to a knowledge of evil, which Broyles-Gonzalez argues “presupposes knowing the positive” and is therefore “suggestive of a balanced or stable state.”139 The number four, which will appear again later in Valdez’s explanation of the Theater of the Sphere, “represents numerous things, such as, the four seasons, the four human races, the four quadrants of the planet, the four winds, the four elements (earth, air, fire, and weather), the four cardinal points

[and] the cross.”140 The figurative nature of many of these symbols reflects the fact that kan

“[represents] the illusion of the material world, where things seem to be stable but are actually in motion and in evolution.”141 Stability is present, but it is fleeting; motion never actually stops. It is perhaps this constant movement that makes balance especially necessary. Thus, “cultivation of kan requires various exercises that focus on balance; for example, the entire body is balanced on the head, hands, buttocks, but most of all on the feet.”142 At this point, the exercises have moved from the stillness of meditation, to the sharpened awareness of the self and of others, to an

136 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 100.

137 “Irvine Tapes” Tape 2, Side 1.

138 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 100.

139 Ibid.

140 Ibid., 101.

141 Ibid.

142 Ibid. 146 exploration of contrasts, to the dialectical production of movement, and finally to an exploration of balance.

The fifth step is the final step that emphasizes the body, bringing the preceding four steps together. As noted previously, chicchan focuses on a gathering and focusing of experiences.

According to Broyles-Gonzalez, “in performance terms, this signifies presence or stage presence.”143 Exercises focus on “awareness of total bodily being (presence).”144 The stillness of the preparatory meditation, the physical awareness cultivated by the imix exercises, the Nahui

Ollin work of ik, the forward movement of akbal, and the balance techniques accrued in kan coalesce in this total awareness of the physical self and its potentials. The actor puts these four components together. Having learned to be present in this way, the actor cultivates presence.

Though Broyles-Gonzalez’s research gives similar explanations of Steps Six through

Ten, it is not worthwhile to continue repeating her work for those steps. I have explored the first five steps primarily because I believed the Irvine lectures shed additional light on her descriptions. What Broyles-Gonzalez points out that the Irvine lectures do not reveal, however, is the way in which the Twenty Steps are divided into four sets of five, with each set following the same pattern. She also notes that the symbols for the first five steps repeat themselves every time a new set of five begins. She describes the five-step sequence most concisely in the following list:

1. Infinite potential; preparation for birth (bodily, emotional, mental, spiritual)

2. Unity of opposites (bodily, emotional, mental, spiritual)

3. Materialization (into movement, emotion, thought, spirit)

143 Ibid.

144 Ibid. 147

4. Balance (of body, emotions, intellect, spirit)

5. Gathering of experience; realization of total self (bodily, emotional, mental,

spiritual)145

Thus, the actor repeats the same five-step process for the body, for the heart, for the mind, and for the spirit. In the end—if the end can ever truly be reached, for Valdez reminds us that this is the work of a lifetime—the actor becomes a spherical actor, a complete human being. As the

IFIT document indicates, this work culminates not only in the creation of work, but in

“improvisations with creative focus, where people are communicating and interacting as different characters on a more spherical level, as true human beings.”146

Although the Theater of the Sphere focuses heavily on the actor’s creative process, it does not end there. The training, as Broyles Gonzalez points out, “should not be understood in any way as sheer inwardliness or an exclusively internal or personal process”; rather, “the

Performer’s Sphere is construed not as self-contained, but in permanent exchange with three other spheres: audience, society, nature and cosmos.”147 It is at this level that the Theater of the

Sphere most clearly becomes not only actor training, but life training. Here, the training becomes focused not merely on the individual actor’s body, mind, heart, and spirit, but on that individual’s interactions and relationships—with fellow actors, with audience members, with the material world, and with the spiritual world. In preparing the actor to be present to observe and respond to the self and to other participants in workshop improvisations, the Theater of the

Sphere also prepares the actor to be present and responsive in a stage performance. In turn, the

145 Ibid., 106.

146 “Chicano Theatre in USA,” 9.

147 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 108. 148 actor is prepared to respond to people in daily life, to social, political, and economic circumstances and events, and to the natural and spiritual worlds.

As Broyles-Gonzalez notes, the actor’s interaction with fellow ensemble members, with audience members, and with the world at large are seen in the Theater of the Sphere as exchanges of energy. “El Teatro Campesino’s view of human energy as the sustaining force of life corresponds to that within Mayan philosophy that views energy not only as the first cause and basis of human life, but as the basis of all movement or transformation.”148 Noting that “the terms ‘spirit’ or ‘power,’ ‘creative force’ or ‘energy,’ are virtually interchangeable within Native

American thinking,” Broyles-Gonzalez observes that, for El Teatro Campesino, “all human interaction is viewed as an exchange of spirit, which equals energy transmitted through human vibration.”149 These interactions include those that occur in and outside of the theatre. Thus, the training offered by the Theater of the Sphere was meant to be useful to the individual as stage actor, as social actor, as political actor, and as spiritual actor.

Criticisms, Responses, and New Analysis

El Teatro Campesino’s emphasis of ancient Mesoamerican spirituality in the 1970s did not go unnoticed. A 1973 article in Los Angeles’s Wyvernwood Chronicle described La Carpa de los Rasquachis as “a collective work [that] explores both the political reality of the colonization of the Chicano people and the search of indigenous spiritual roots as the source of

Chicano liberation.”150 The Santa Barbara News & Review also took note in 1974, observing:

“What was once a theatrical complement to the farmworkers’ union has undergone a complex

148 Ibid., 110.

149 Ibid.

150 “What is El Teatro Campesino?” Wyvernwood Chronicle (Los Angeles, CA), November 22, 1973, 10. 149 metamorphosis, emerging as a vehicle for spirituality and the doctrine of individualized revolution.”151 The latter article, which notes Valdez’s belief that ancient Mesoamerican philosophy could be a catalyst for significant change, reveals that “for this radical shift in his political perspective he faces cynicism, skepticism, and outright rejection from members of

Chicano and political communities.”152 Broyles-Gonzalez characterizes these criticisms as being based on 1) what many saw as a movement to religious themes at the expense of politically activist messages and 2) a failure on the part of critics to understand the ways in which Valdez and the Teatro’s emphasis of the spiritual served to promote a political agenda.153

In the face of criticism over his evolving methods, Valdez maintained that the work of El

Teatro Campesino remained political. The Santa Barbara News & Review characterized the spiritual shift as one “which Valdez sees enlarging, rather than diminishing his political concepts.”154 For Valdez, the purpose of emphasizing Mesoamerican spiritual philosophy and practice was to effect social, cultural, and political change. “The culture is very clear all over the world,” he told the Santa Barbara paper, “what’s going to help is a change of heart. What the culture says to the suffering man is, ‘go to your creator first. Ask you and you shall receive; ask your own heart. If you are hungry ask your heart for food.”155 It was this approach that led to differences with his more Marxist acquaintances and colleagues in TENAZ and in the Chicanx

151 Karen Stabiner, Eric Mankin, and David Ewing, “Teatro Campesino: Spiritualism Replaces Practical Politics,”

Santa Barbara News & Review (Santa Barbara, CA), May 17, 1974, 14.

152 Ibid.

153 Broyles-Gonzales, El Teatro Campesino, 120-126.

154 Stabiner, Mankin, and Ewing, “Teatro Campesino: Spiritualism Replaces Practical Politics,” 14.

155 Ibid. 150

Movement in general. Many found this approach too passive and too uncritical of institutions of power.156 Valdez argued that such complaints mattered to materialists, but not to those Indians rooted in ancestral understandings. Needed political change, he claimed, would arise out of the spiritual growth offered through practices like Theatre of the Sphere:

We are very much still the political theatre. But our politics are the politics of the spirit:

not of the flesh, but of the heart. Ours is a politics of good, not bad; ours is a politics of

love, not hatred; of unity, not disunity … a politics of time, not a politics of tragedy and

failure. That’s the thing about colonization, you see. People think, well I’m colonized,

that’s it, there’s no more power. But we try to say to the Chicano, no, no one can take that

power away from you, man. No one. No one can reach it.157

That power, Valdez claimed, was “internalized and therefore indestructible.”158 It was also the end goal of Theatre of the Sphere training. Becoming a spherical actor, or a whole human being, meant doing this internal work so that one’s interactions, not just on stage but in the world, could be rooted in presence. That presence would increase awareness and responsiveness, not just to people but to the world and its many pressures. The goal was to harness energies so that they might be exchanged in ways that were productive rather than harmful. This, Valdez believed, was the path to true change.

Broyles-Gonzalez argues that critics focused merely on the texts produced by El Teatro

Campesino during this period, and paid too little attention to “the intensive collective exploration

156 Ibid.

157 Ibid.

158 Ibid. 151 process and training dimension of the Theater of the Sphere.”159 The latter, she suggests, offers proof that the company was still working towards the political liberation of the Chicanx. She cites participants in “the 1974 Quinto Festival” who complained that “‘theatre should deal more directly with social-political problems’” and that the Teatro’s work at that time was “‘divorced from reality.’” 160 Marxists, she suggests, took issue with the work because they wished to see

“indígena culture as a static thing of the ‘remote’ or ‘mythical’ past,” whereas the Teatro

Campesino believed in the efficacy of these beliefs to effect change in part because of their

“contact with flesh-and-blood contemporary indígenas who lived in extreme conditions of oppression.”161 She argues that the Theater of the Sphere sought to move beyond the Marxist fixation on economics and class as the center of all struggle and to provide “a model of human liberation indispensable to the larger social struggle” of the Chicanx.162 It was, she suggests, an effort to find “a new model of cultural politics, a model outside of the dominant institutions that

Chicanas/os cannot control.”163 In essence, Broyles-Gonzalez sees the Theater of the Sphere as one that roots itself deeply in Chicanx ancestry as a way of defining and confirming a sense of

Chicanx identity that would serve as a path from oppression to liberation.

While I agree with Broyles-Gonzalez’s assessment, and while it is supported by Valdez’s own words in various sources, I want to suggest that it is incomplete. Although Broyles-

Gonzalez acknowledges lines in Pensamiento Serpentino that suggest an interest in all of

159 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 119.

160 Ibid., 120.

161 Ibid., 121-122.

162 Ibid., 123.

163 Ibid., 123-124. 152 humanity, her analysis of the poem and of the Theatre of the Sphere focuses primarily on issues of Chicanx identity and advancement. Based on Valdez’s descriptions of the Theater of the

Sphere work in both the 1970s and the 1980s, I argue that his goals evolved not only beyond those of the Chicanx Movement, but beyond the Chicanx. I contend that, ultimately, Valdez saw the work he was doing as a curative not just for the oppression of the Chicanx people, but for all of humanity. It was this broader approach, I believe, that led to much of the criticism against the

Teatro during this period. I also believe it was, in part, this expanded view that led to the disintegration of the Teatro Campesino ensemble in favor of a more mainstream model of theatrical production.

The first hints of Valdez’s interest in broadening his focus beyond the Chicanx population come as early as Pensamiento Serpentino. The poetic treatise is clearly rooted in

Mayan and Aztec mythology. It also clearly addresses the problems facing the Chicanx population, as well as a need for Chicanx individuals to embrace their ancestry as a way to liberate themselves from the material and spiritual oppression they have suffered under the hegemonic rule of the US and Western civilization. An underlying message of a much broader kind of unity, however, is clear in the first two pages. The poem begins with the word “teatro,” and continues with references to “el mundo,” and a variety of languages spoken around the globe.164 Valdez speaks of “men and women,” “the races of the world, “master and slave,” “rich and poor,” and “black and white” all on the first page, and all before any mention of Chicanx or

Mesoamerican culture; “pero underneath it all,” he writes, “is the truth / the Spiritual Truth that determines all materia // la energía that creates the // universe.”165 Valdez communicates here, as

164 Valdez, Pensamiento Serpentino, 170.

165 Ibid., 170-171. 153 he will elsewhere in Pensamiento Serpentino and in other places, a belief similar to that of

Brooks, that there exists somewhere a universal spiritual truth. Although Valdez would seek this truth out through a uniquely Chicanx/Mesoamerican mythology, what he sought was not merely a Chicanx/Mesoamerican truth. It was a universal truth he sought through

Chicanx/Mesoamerican means.

What Valdez claims is not that there exists a truth that is uniquely true for the Chicanx people, or for people of Mesoamerican heritage. Rather, he suggests that ancient Mesoamerican beliefs are the key to accessing a universal truth. “Los indios knew of this / long ago,” he claims, but lost track of it when they adopted European ways of thinking following colonization.166

While his mandate that “el CHICANO must Mexicanize / himself” and rid himself of European thinking167 does indict the latter, there is no indication in Pensamiento Serpentino that the truth and liberation this action promises to reveal is available or beneficial only to the Chicanx thinker.

To the contrary, the poem’s central philosophy, “in lak’ech,” “tu eres mi otro yo,” “you are my other self,”168 suggests a goal of unity across human identities. This is further evinced by the connection Valdez makes between this philosophy and the Christian directive to “love thy neighbor.”169 He reiterates these claims later in the poem, when he remarks that Christian figures were made to take the place of, and took on characteristics of, Mesoamerican objects of worship:

Quetzalcóatl, for instance, was replaced by Jesus, while Tonantzin essentially became La Virgen

166 Ibid., 171.

167 Ibid., 172.

168 Ibid., 173.

169 Ibid., 174. 154 de Guadalupe.170 A few pages later, he denounces material limitations, “racial distinctions,”

“nation, wealth, fashions, / hatreds, envidias, greed, the lust for power” and “ … even the lust for

/ CHICANO POWER.”171 Race, nation, and ethnic domination, he suggests, did not exist in the beginning of time, and need have no power over humanity now.

This kind of thinking—that Chicanx liberation would not necessarily result from a quest for Chicanx power—is perhaps what drew criticism from Valdez’s cultural nationalist compatriots in the Chicanx Movement writ large. For all of Valdez’s focus on Aztec and Mayan mythology, after all, he was also cognizant of the influence of Christianity on the Chicanx since colonization. As Huerta notes, Valdez believed that “the Chicano [would] find her/his balance through a respect for both indigenous and Christian beliefs.”172 In combining these two ideologies, and in focusing on them rather than on the immediate political and economic problems facing the Chicanx population at the time, Valdez was, in some sense, changing course.

Huerta notes that “for [leftist critics], Valdez had lost touch with the working-class struggle of his original theatre troupe.”173 Huerta goes on to argue that Valdez wrote Pensamiento

Serpentino as a “response to those who criticized him for turning to what they perceived as spiritual rather than concrete, material solutions.”174 It is important to note, however, that the working class struggle El Teatro Campesino initially sought to address, and the problems for which critics preferred “concrete, material solutions,” were not just the problems and struggles of

170 Ibid., 177.

171 Ibid., 180.

172 Huerta, Chicano Drama, 36.

173 Ibid., 36-37.

174 Ibid., 37. 155 the working class writ large, but specifically of the Chicanx working class. It was from this level of ethnic specificity and from the original Teatro Campesino tactics that Valdez moved away, more so than from an ideological belief that change was necessary. His work and his words at this time indicate that his interests had merely grown to include all races and ethnicities and all classes, and that his ideas for how to incite change had altered. Broyles-Gonzalez suggests as much when she notes that “among the other fundamental concepts expressed in the poem/philosophy Pensamiento serpentino are, for example, that of the fundamental unity or fusion of all human action and performance, theatrical and other; of the fundamental unity of all living beings and of all races.”175 Aside from moving from Marxist material to more spiritual concerns, Valdez moved in the 1970s from a narrow focus on Chicanx liberation to a broader effort towards the liberation and unification of all humanity. In some ways, this resembles

Brook’s quest to find elements of individual cultures and mythologies and rituals that might

“[transcend] their source culture, to find the universal in the particular.”176

Analysis of Valdez’s comments from the 1970s and the 1980s support the idea that his theatrical and spiritual goals ultimately became focused on humanity rather than solely on its

Chicanx members. He indicated as much in 1974 to Linda B. Major of Agenda magazine, who wrote: “Eclectically, drawing from the meaning of indigenous words of the Aztec, Maya, and

Nahuatl, Valdez adds expressions of Eastern and Western religions to fashion his concept of brotherhood … It is a total concept of existence, a progression backward to the natural order of things.”177 This eclecticism, a term that Counsell has also used in relation to Brook’s drawing on

175 Broyles Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 94. Huerta quotes part of this passage in Chicano Drama, 37.

176 Counsell, Signs of Performance, 148.

177 Linda B. Major, “Dramatic Search for Root of Chicanismo,” Agenda, Summer 1974, 10. 156 a variety of cultures, is also evident elsewhere. In the Irvine lectures, Valdez also compares aspects of the Theater of the Sphere to the Noh Theatre.178 Later in the lectures, he invokes ideas regarding “the Moslem Mosque.”179 It is clear that Valdez was influenced by more than just

Mesoamerican and Christian mythologies; this is echoed by Broyles-Gonzalez, who likens his application of “the philosophical precept of in lak ‘ech … to Hindu concepts of karmic law.”180

In referring to Valdez’s philosophy as “a total concept of existence,” Major also confirms that

Valdez was focused not just on Chicanx reality, but on that of humanity.

Looking to Valdez’s own comments in this period also sheds light on his broader goals, some of which can be described as integrationist, to an extent. In 1974, he told the Santa

Barbara News that “‘Theatre performance must go beyond the limits of the theatre; it must mean more in terms of what’s going on the world at the time’”; “‘Now, our theatrical acts are the acts of human beings,’ he added.”181 While these remarks described the ability of the Chicanx individual to finally act as a human being once freed of colonization, they offer the seed of a thought that would grow over time. Eventually, Valdez would come to see value in this work not just for the Chicanx, but for everyone. In 1978, he spoke more directly of this idea to New World, introducing a vision of integration that maintained a respect for varying cultures: “ … as we reach the eighties, I think we’re going to see the resurgence of the whole concept of integration again, but a qualified integration. Everyone won’t have to sacrifice their sense of cultural

178 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 4 Side 1.

179 Ibid., Tape 5 Side 1.

180 Broyles-Gonzalez, 94.

181 Stabiner, Mankin, and Ewing, “Teatro Campesino: Spiritualism Replaces Practical Politics,” 14. 157 identity, and their sense of cultural being in order to belong to the mass.”182 Valdez envisioned a version of the US in which cultures would come together with all their unique characteristics, but still united as one. “You can’t melt down all the Mexicans,” he said, “you can’t melt down all the

Latinos; you cannot melt down all the blacks; you cannot melt down all the Asians; beyond a certain point.”183 He advocated for an idea of Americanness that respected these cultural differences, rather than one that erased them; he favored an “idea of the multiplicity of cultural expressions; the ability of the country as a whole to express itself.”184 This concept of integration without erasure mirrors the ideas of unity and duality Valdez presented in Pensamiento

Serpentino and those he taught in Theater of the Sphere workshops. He sought ways in which the actor, the human, could explore opposites but return to a center—ways in which a spherical actor or a complete human could maintain self-awareness and responsiveness in the process of creating unity with others.

The most revealing indications that Valdez’s goals ultimately moved beyond the Chicanx and to all of humanity come in the transcripts of the 1984 lectures at UC Irvine. Early in these lectures, Valdez speaks of “the central contradiction which [he thinks] defines all human beings and all human consciousness, which is our sensation of being alive—combined, contrasted, countered, contradicted by the knowledge that we all must die.”185 By this point, his central focus was not placed strictly on the Chicanx experience, but on a human experience—the experience

182 Tomas Benitel, “Facing the Issues Beyond ‘Zoot Suit’: An Interview with Playwright Luis Valdez,” New World:

The Multi-cultural Magazine of the Arts, 1978, 36.

183 Ibid.

184 Ibid.

185 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 1, Side 1 158 of mortality. The work that the lectures and workshop sessions would explore, he said, would be rooted in the rasquachi aesthetic; as the lectures progressed, however, he increasingly referred to a broader sense of humanity and of unity. He suggested that these ideas were present even in his company’s name: “El Teatro Campesino literally means ‘the farmworkers’ theater,’ but it also means ‘the theatre of the earth.’ It means the theatre of all of us, the humanity which cannot in any way shape or form sever its relationship to the earth beneath our feet.”186 Later, he invokes his oft-repeated claim (which, as noted earlier, appears in Pensamimento Serpentino), that “the human being is a metaphor for the universe.”187 This recalls his fondness of invoking Jungian thought and collective memory; as noted earlier in this chapter, he refers also to “the memory of

[the] human race.”188 After alluding to racial problems in the Teatro Campesino’s past (a participant asked about “reverse racism,” which Valdez claimed had “passed”), Valdez proclaimed a new direction: “ … our intent and the direction that we are going in now is that we’re going to be multi-racial and multi-cultural. I suppose it’s multi-Latin—you know, we’re not all Mexicans, either. We work with a lot of Cubans, a lot of Puerto Ricans. We’ve gotten over that. And the work is beginning to evolve … ”189 From this comment, it is clear that the

Teatro Campesino was already engaging non-Chicanx artists who were Latinx nonetheless.

Valdez had broadened participation in El Teatro Campesino’s work beyond the Chicanx community and voiced an intention to go even further.

186 Ibid.

187 Ibid., Tape 1, Side 2.

188 Ibid., Tape 2 Side 2.

189 Ibid., Tape 3, Side 1. 159

Other comments from the Irvine lectures indicate Valdez’s plans to share Theater of the

Sphere training with all races and ethnicities. This comes principally in his discussion of how humans cross between an upper world and an underworld in the Popol Vuh: “ … you have to come to a crossroads. You come to a crossroads, and there are four roads. And these four roads have different colors. One of the roads is white. Another road is black. Another road is yellow.

Another road is red.”190 First, he describes these roads as akin to “four quadrants in reality,” noting the frequency of the number four in nature (seasons, directions, etc.); “But it’s also humanity,” he says.191 Offering more detail about these roads, he begins with the white road:

… roughly, generally speaking, it comes from Europe. And yes, there is a black road—

roughly speaking, it comes from Africa. And yes, there is a yellow road—roughly

speaking, it comes from Asia. And yes, there is a red road—and roughly speaking, it

comes from the Americas. And what the creator meant a long time ago was that these

roads would balance each other out, and what we would have ultimately is a wholeness

and understanding of each other. Each of us has a role to play, or there will be no role to

play at all. We’re at a crossroads now in the world—that we’ll either learn how to

respect, ‘tu eres mi otro yo,’ or there will be no world. It’s as simple as that.192

This is perhaps the strongest indication of Valdez’s shift from working solely for the betterment of the Chicanx community to working for the betterment of humanity.

The union of the four roads Valdez describes—however misguided we may find his description of them today—is essential to what he sees as the plan of the Creator. It is also what

190 Ibid., Tape 5 Side 1.

191 Ibid.

192 Ibid. 160 the Theater of the Sphere training was meant to prepare its participants to bring to fruition. They were meant to do so both on and off stage. For Valdez, the two cannot be separated: “I think it’s our belief that creates the future,” he said, “But first of all, we have to look at the world and bring it into being. And theatre, for me, is one way to do it, you know. It’s the most direct way.

Make contact with people directly.”193 Valdez believed that plays, which brought the actors’ spheres in contact with the audiences’ spheres for an exchange of energy, offered a viable vehicle to bring the four roads together in harmony. By engaging in Theater of the Sphere training, actors were preparing themselves to engage in that energy exchange in thoughtful, sensitive, and productive ways.

Valdez’s desire to unite the races of humanity through theatre may have motivated a desire he expressed in the Irvine lectures to continue Theater of the Sphere training with a more diverse group of participants. By the time he gave these lectures, the Teatro Campesino ensemble had dissolved. As noted in Chapter I, actors were at this point being auditioned for individual productions. Few, if any of them, would have gone through rigorous Theater of the Sphere training. When he spoke to the students at Irvine in 1984, Valdez wanted to change that. In response to a question, he revealed that the Teatro was planning “a twelve-week session in San

Juan Bautista,” which was to consist of “four weeks of workshop, four weeks of rehearsal, and four weeks of presentation in the theatre.”194 He also expressed an interest “in establishing ensembles that last for a year in San Juan Bautista.”195 Those ensembles, he hoped, would be racially diverse: “And it will not be limited to Chicanos, I can tell you that. You know, it hasn’t

193 Ibid.

194 Ibid., Tape 6 Side 1.

195 Ibid. 161 been for a while, actually. It just works out that way sometimes. I’m interested in the four roads.

You know, I want to go multi-cultural, multi-racial, and see what develops out of that.”196 This was a far cry from the Teatro Campesino’s beginnings, when their first flyer proclaimed a desire for the group to be “OF, BY, and FOR the men and women (and their families) involved in the strike.”197 It also moved beyond the Teatro’s later promises to incorporate the urban Chicanx, the

Chicanx student, and the Chicanx soldier. It was a step in a continuing process of expansion.

Theater of the Sphere training was born primarily of Mesoamerican mythology. It was created primarily for the Chicanx actor. What has often been overlooked, however, is the way in which it grew and evolved into a training that Luis Valdez intended to benefit all of humanity. It offered a specifically and historically Chicanx way of thinking, but he did not, in the end, intend it to be used only by Chicanxs. Rather, it was meant to provide a “Chicano way to human liberation.”198 What began as a technique for decolonizing the Chicanx eventually evolved into an ontological practice that Valdez believed could decolonize the world. In many ways, it may have been this expansion of the system’s goals that brought it to its end. Chicanx Movement

Marxists found it too rooted in the spiritual over the material. Likewise, some Chicanxs complained that that shift didn’t address current Chicanx issues. As Valdez lamented, many non-

Chicanxs found it too ethnic.199 After the dissolution of the Teatro Campesino ensemble, few seemed to accept his claims of its universal application. By 1984, he was trying to revive the

196 Ibid.

197 “Farm Workers’ Theatre” Organizational Flyer, Undated, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F2.

198 Schedule, “‘El Teatro Campesino Cultural Day.”

199 “Irvine Tapes,” Tape 5 Side 2. 162 ensemble work, though on a smaller scale, in order to continue what he called the “research and development” work of the Theater of the Sphere.200

Whether or not the year-long ensembles Valdez envisioned ever materialized, the Theater of the Sphere system did not play a significant role in the Teatro’s future. Nor has it played much of a role in actor training in the US, writ large. It is important to note, however, the similarities between this exploration and other experimental theatre projects of the 1960s and 1970s.

Accounts of experimental and avant-garde theatre from this period often mention Valdez and El

Teatro Campesino in passing, but scholars do not give them the same extended consideration given to figures like Brook and Grotoswki. Moreover, until this point, only Broyles-Gonzalez has examined Theatre of the Sphere training in any depth. Historically, studies of El Teatro

Campesino have been restricted to studies of Chicanx and Latinx theatre, with few scholars making strong connections between Valdez and his contemporaries. I hope the argument I have made in this chapter will encourage more attention to Valdez and El Teatro Campesino not just as Chicanx theatre makers, but also as theatre theorists whose significant work deserves a place in our understandings of theatre history writ large. While Theatre of the Sphere training may not have extended past El Teatro Campesino or beyond the early 1980s, it is significant for the ways in which it theorizes both Chicanx and human identity and for the ways in which the theories it explored are linked to the Eurocentric experiments that have received the bulk of scholarly attention.

It may be that, like the work of his contemporaries, Valdez’s theoretical explorations could find use in training programs that must serve increasingly diverse populations of actors. In

1978, Valdez talked of El Teatro Campesino’s hopes to open a theatre school, “a new kind of

200 Ibid., Tape 6 Side 1. 163 acting school, that distinguishes itself from the kinds of things that come from New York.”201

That school never opened. On the other hand, the company’s influence on actor training did not stop with its own ensemble. For many years in the 1970s, the company offered summer and winter workshops to members of other teatros who traveled from all over California and the US.

Those workshops inspired many others, particularly under the auspices of TENAZ and its annual festivals. The training offered there is the focus of the next chapter.

201 Benitel, “Facing the Issues Beyond ‘Zoot Suit’, 37. 164

CHAPTER III: TENAZ: TRAINING THE ACTORS OF AZTLÁN

Chicanx theatre is most often associated with Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. For many, the Chicanx theatre movement begins with the first actos staged as part of César Chávez’s farm worker’s labor movement in 1965 and ends with Valdez’s Hollywood film adaptation of

Zoot Suit in 1981. The latter is often considered the zenith of Chicanx theatre, a defining moment in which a grass roots movement found its purest and most sophisticated expression. Since neither the Broadway production nor the film adaptation found widespread success, however, little consideration is given to the Chicanx theatre that followed Zoot Suit. Moreover, very little attention has been paid to key figures and companies in the Chicanx theatre movement whose names are not Luis Valdez or El Teatro Campesino. Still, El Teatro Campesino sparked a proliferation of teatro groups that began in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, and continues even today. In 1970, Valdez and the Teatro Campesino brought some of these early groups together.

In 1971, they formed a national coalition of Chicanx theatre groups known as TENAZ, an abbreviation of Teatro Nacional de Aztlán (The National Theatre of Aztlán). The name was given to the organization by Mariano Leyva, who served at the time as director for Los

Mascarones, a teatro in Mexico City.1 TENAZ (tenacious), was chosen to represent the tenacity of teatro and Native peoples and their determination to survive.2 The initial purpose of TENAZ was to facilitate communication and exchange between teatros across California and the rest of

1 Jorge A. Huerta, “The Evolution of TENAZ,” 1975, p. 1, Jorge Huerta Papers, MSS 142, Special Collections and

Archives, UC San Diego Library, B42 F28, 1. Subsequent first citations from this archive will follow this format:

Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 1975, p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B42 F28.

2 Jorge A. Huerta, Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2000), 2. 165 the United States.3

TENAZ has generally received less attention from scholars than have Valdez and El

Teatro Campesino. Jorge Huerta, who earned a PhD in theatre from the University of California,

Santa Barbara in 1974 and taught for over twenty years at the University of California, San

Diego,4 has served as the primary recorder of TENAZ’s history. While Huerta writes a great deal about the teatros that made up TENAZ’s membership over the years, he has focused primarily on the works those companies produced and the organization’s evolving infrastructure. Having served as the editor of the group’s newsletter, TENAZ Talks Teatro, for several years, he has also emphasized TENAZ’s role as a communication hub for its members. Although he and others have regularly mentioned training opportunities offered by and through TENAZ, I argue that the significance of this training has been seriously overlooked and underestimated. Whereas this training has often been treated as a secondary or even tertiary contribution to Chicanx theatre, I posit that it played a much larger role in the development of Chicanx theatre artists than has previously been recognized.

In this chapter, I rely on original archival research performed in the El Teatro Campesino archives and in the archived papers of Dr. Jorge Huerta (located at the University of California,

San Diego), to chart the history of actor training offered by and through TENAZ in the 1970s and into the 1980s. First, I explore the history and development of TENAZ, beginning with Luis

Valdez and El Teatro Campesino in 1970 and continuing beyond their departure from the organization in 1975. Then, I investigate the training that TENAZ offered its members by three

3 Ibid.

4 “Jorge Huerta Papers,” Online Archive of California, Accessed July 16, 2019, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9t1nf92w/entire_text/. 166 distinct means: first, through publications distributed to member teatros; second, through performance critiques offered at a variety of teatro festivals; and finally, and perhaps most significantly, through the proliferation of workshops organized by member teatros at its festivals and, in turn, around the country. In examining these efforts, I argue that TENAZ and its members built an infrastructure of actor training in the 1970s that has not been sufficiently recognized, and that deserves a place in the broader history of actor training in the US. Finally, I argue that this infrastructure played a significant role in introducing Chicanx and Latinx artists and ideas into both professional and academic theatre contexts in the United States.

TENAZ: A Brief History

As I revealed in Chapter I, El Teatro Campesino engaged in several tours throughout the

United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. In the US, the ensemble left in their wake

Chicanx and Latinx audiences who saw in their work a potential vehicle for addressing their own cultural issues.5 As Huerta, Nicolás Kanellos, and Oscar Muñoz have noted, students and community members alike formed their own groups, basing their work on what they had seen El

Teatro Campesino present.6 Among the earliest of these groups were San Jose’s El Teatro

Urbano and a group in East Los Angeles run by Guadalupe Saavedra.7 In 1970,8 Valdez invited

5 Jorge A. Huerta, “Labor Theatre, Street Theatre, and Community Theatre in the Barrios, 1965-1983,”in Kanellos,

Hispanic Theatre in the United States (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984), 62-70.

6 Ibid., 64; Nicolás Kanellos, “An Overview of Hispanic Theatre in the United States” in Kanellos, Hispanic Theatre in the United States (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984), 12; Carlos Muñoz, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano

Movement, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2007), 87-88.

7 Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 1.

8 There is some discrepancy among sources as to the year. Both the Online Archive of California and Yolanda

Broyles-Gonzalez suggest that the first gathering and the establishment of TENAZ occurred in 1969 (See “Salvador 167 teatros from around the country “to participate in the first annual Festival Nacional de Teatro

Chicano,” which would take place in Fresno that May.9 According to Valdez’s published invitation, the festival was to include a variety of performances and workshops “demonstrating all of the practical techniques of creating life images of [Chicanx] people on stage.”10 The festival was to have multiple purposes, including “to develop as many teatros as possible,” “to eradicate some of the deadly regionalism that have [sic] plagued [Chicanx] people for too long,” and to foster the creation of “a national Chicano theater company, capable of expressing the humor and anguish, as well as the anger and revolutionary spirit of La Raza.”11 In keeping with

El Teatro Campesino’s preference for communal living, the invitation welcomed participants to bring friends and family and promised to provide “sleeping and eating accommodations.”12 A flyer for the festival boasted groups from Northern and Southern California, Texas, and even

New York; participants paid a $25 fee for three days’ food and lodging, while performances

Güereña and CEMA Staff, “Guide to the El Teatro Campesino Archives,” Online Archive of California, p. 3,

Accessed June 29, 2019, http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/ucsb/spcoll/cusb-cema5.pdf and Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, El

Teatro Campesino: Theatre in the Chicano Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 242.) Huerta, who was involved in these early days of TENAZ, corroborates primary archival sources (see Notes 109 and 110), which show that the first gathering occurred in 1970 and TENAZ was established in 1971.

9 Luis Valdez, “El Teatro,” Voz de Aztlán 75 no. 113 (April 13, 1970), n.p., CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B4 F15; and

Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 1975, p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B42 F28.

10 Luis Valdez, “El Teatro.”

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid. 168 were free to the public.13

1971 brought a second festival, this time over five days in April, in a variety of locations in and near the South San Francisco Bay Area.14 Performances, workshops and other events were meant to be divided between San Jose, Santa Cruz, San Juan Bautista, Watsonville, and Salinas, among other locations—all, an advertisement boasted, “within ½ hour of each other.”15 Festival schedules in the archived papers of both El Teatro Campesino and Jorge Huerta indicate that all events may have ultimately taken place at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California.16 According to a post-festival write-up that appeared in the publication El TENAZ that summer, “the mayor acheivment [sic] of the festival was the forming of TENAZ.”17 Huerta confirms that “TENAZ was officially formed in April 1971 at the first Directors Conference,” which followed the festival and met in Fresno.18 Teatro directors began meeting regularly, and in June of 1971 “the

Campesino announced the first TENAZ Summer Workshop, to be held in San Juan Bautista in

13 Flyer, “El Teatro Campesino Nacional de AZTLAN, presents the first Annual National Chicano Theater Festival,”

1970, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2, F19.

14 Richard Nieto, “El Festival,” El Teatro1 no. 3 (February 1971), n.p. Here again, there is some confusion. Broyles-

Gonzalez describes the second festival as a ten-day affair in Los Angeles; her timeline lists the first festival as having taken place in San Jose in 1970 (see Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 243). Again, I have chosen to construct my own timeline according to information provided by primary sources.

15 Ibid.

16 “The Second Festival of the Teatros de Aztlán,” El TENAZ 1 No. 4 (Summer 1971), n.p. CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B5,

F12; and Program, “El Festival de los Teatros,” MSS 142, UCSD B43 F4.

17 “The Second Festival of the Teatros de Aztlán,” n.p.

18 Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 1. 169

July and August.”19 As I will reveal in this chapter, El Teatro Campesino would continue to hold similar workshops in summer and winter months for the next few years. Theatrical training would also become the purpose of most TENAZ workshops, and one of the primary purposes of the festivals that would follow.

The Third Festival de los Teatros Chicanos brought more than twenty-five groups together for performances and workshops in Orange County, California in 1972.20 A fourth festival followed in San Jose in 1973, hosted by Teatro de la Gente.21 At this festival,

“participating groups unanimously adopted the ‘TENAZ Manifesto,’22 which blended teatro’s early principles of social and political struggle with Valdez’s interest in reclaiming

Mesoamerican mythology and philosophy. The manifesto emphasizes the workers and the oppression of the Chicanx people, but also claims that the “hope of the People” comes through

“the Spirit of Quetzalcóatl.”23 The manifesto also suggests Valdez’s shift towards universality, which I addressed in Chapters I and II:

… Let our teatro be the human rainbow: let it create Teatro for all people—for children,

young people, old people, women, students, workers campesinos and even for the sellouts

…

The organization of TENAZ, which will work with all oppressed peoples, must

develop a humane revolutionary alternative to commercial theater and mass media. It is

19 Ibid., 3.

20 Ibid., 4.

21 Ibid., 5-6.

22 Ibid., 6.

23 “The Manifesto of the National Theatre of Aztlan,” June 24, 1973, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F15. 170

also necessary that we work and unite with all theaters struggling for liberation wherever,

particularly in Latin-America. It should serve as a tool in the Life/Struggle of The People

by developing Teatros as community organizations.24

Though the TENAZ manifesto does not fully express the universal aims that Valdez would eventually articulate, it does begin to suggest an expanded focus that shifts beyond the Chicanx.

This is likely due to the number of international teatros that participated in the first four festivals.

It also points to TENAZ’s decision to make its fifth festival fully international—not just in terms of who took part, but also in terms of location.

The fifth TENAZ Festival was titled “El Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos, Primer

Encuentro Latino Americano” (The Fifth Chicano Theatre Festival, First Latin American

Encounter).25 From June 24 to July 7, 1974, more than forty theater companies met in Mexico

City for “workshops, discussions, and relevant tours of the area.”26 The theme of the festival,

“One Continent, One Culture,” expressed TENAZ’s desire that the festival’s workshops focus on

“the cultural, historical, political background of the Mexicano-Chicano, rather than on the technical basis as was done at [the previous] festival.”27 Sponsored in partnership with the

Centro Libre de Experimentación Teatral y Artistica (CLETA), described as “the national association of Mexican theater groups,” the festival celebrated the Chicanx’s roots in

24 Ibid.

25 Memo, “Recorded Minutes of TENAZ Coordinating Committee Meeting November 24 & 25, 1973,” January 1,

1974, p. 4, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F21.

26 Press Release, “Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos Primer Encuentro Latinoamericano,” May 18, 1974, p. 1,

MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F9.

27 Memo, ““Recorded Minutes of TENAZ Coordinating Committee Meeting November 24 & 25, 1973), 2. 171

Teotihuacan.28 By Huerta’s count, “over three hundred Chicanos and two hundred plus

Mexicanos y Latino Americanos” participated in the festival, which “marked an important growing step for TENAZ: the recognition of Latino America as an important part of [the

Chicanx] struggle.”29

In many ways, the fifth festival in Mexico City provided the perfect occasion for Valdez to assert his interest in Mesoamerican spirituality and philosophy. A document from the El

Teatro Campesino archives titled “El Quinto Festival de los Teatros,” which claims to have been

“authored collectively” by unnamed parties, states:

We are Aztlan in its mythical journey to the south to Anahuac, el lugar rodeado por agua

[the place surrounded by water]. Like our indio ancestors, we are struggling to find the

island in the middle of the lake, the point in the middle of the circle, the place of the

Eagle devouring the Serpent. The central point where Spirituality devours Materiality.

Where Unity devours the disunity of Duality. El lugar de la UNIDAD DE LA

DUALIDAD [the place of UNIFIED DUALITY].30

Valdez’s influence is also apparent in the document’s repeated references to Mexico as the feathered serpent, to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and to the rasquachi aesthetic.31 This document provides the most direct link between any TENAZ festival or event and Valdez’s burgeoning interests and theories. Significantly, Valdez and El Teatro Campesino would leave

TENAZ a year later.

28 Press Release, “Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos Primer Encuentro Latinoamericano,” 1-2.

29 Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 8.

30 “El Quinto Festival de los Teatros,” Undated, p. 1, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B4 F27.

31 Ibid., 1-5. 172

Although the fifth festival lasted two weeks, Huerta described the schedule as “rigorous,” noting that performances “often lasted into the early hours of the morning.”32 The schedule created such chaos, in fact, that not everyone who attended actually participated. “Some hailed the festival as the major theatrical event of the decade,” Huerta wrote, “and others went home discouraged with the lack of organization or simply disappeared into the smog of the city never to be seen again until they wanted their train fare home.”33 Still, the festival was successful enough that, before it ended, plans had begun for San Antonio’s Teatro de los Barrios to host the sixth festival in 1975.34

A program for the sixth festival, titled “Encuentro con el Barrio,” shows performances by at least seventeen teatros from July 14 to July 19; all but one of the named performing companies were from the United States.35 Teatro de los Barrios’s initial proposal for the festival suggests an aim to work “towards the development of a community awareness and community education via the presentation of various plays by the participating groups”; moreover, the proposal promises that “through participation in the workshops during the festival, the groups will ultimately increase their artistic and acting skills by exchanging ideas in the field of Chicanx theater.

Professional development in this particular area” was also named as one of the festival’s primary goals.36 This particular festival also featured an increased focus on children’s activities, including

32 Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 9.

33 Ibid., 8.

34 Ibid., 10.

35 Program, “Sexto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” July 1975, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B6 F10.

36 Proposal, “Sexto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” Undated, p. 2, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F11. 173 childcare and children’s workshops.37 Though there is little mention of Valdez and El Teatro

Campesino in relation to the sixth festival beyond their presence, Broyles-Gonzalez’s timeline shows that it was after the festival concluded that the two organizations parted ways.38

Although records of the sixth festival in San Antonio indicate none of the chaos that characterized the preceding year in Mexico City, the confusion and inconsistency of the seventh festival may have exceeded it. For reasons that are unclear, TENAZ decided to split the 1976 festival into several locations. While a 1975 essay by Chicanx playwright Carlos Morton indicates that the Septimo Festival had at one point been planned for “Seattle, Washington under the sponsorship of Teatro del Piojo,”39 Seattle was ultimately only one of four festival sites that year. Over the course of roughly two months, portions of the festival were held in Seattle (June

24–July 4), Denver (July 10-17), San Jose (August 6-8), and Los Angeles (August 22-29).40 The events in San Jose seem to have gone well; while Denver was considered a success, both that portion of the festival and the portions held in Seattle and Los Angeles were beset by problems.

In a letter to TENAZ, fledgling New Jersey company Teatro Alma Latina cited poor attendance and organization in its assessment that the festival “in Washington State was not a success in terms of meeting with other Teatros, and share and learn together.”41 Teatro Alma Latina complained that the week in Washington was marred by minimal TENAZ presence and the lack

37 Vibiana Chamberlin, “Children’s Activities Report,” 1975, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F4.

38 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 244.

39 Carlos Morton, “Notas de un Festival: El Sexto,” Caracol (October 1975), p. 4, CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B9 F10.

40 “National Festival Sites,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F17.

41 Letter, Teatro Alma Latina to Jorge Huerta, July 30, 1976, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F17. 174 of any clear schedule.42 Additionally, their company members were given a classroom for accommodations, with no way to meet members of other teatros.43 In a post-festival summary,

TENAZ member Nicolás Kanellos wrote that Teatro del Piojo (Theatre of the Louse) “proved true to its name,” providing “horrid accommodations, no publicity and an unbelievably inadequate performance site.”44 By Kanellos’s account, the Seattle leg of the festival was only attended by three companies beyond the host teatro; “the whole affair,” he wrote, “was a blemish on TENAZ’s record for serious and professionalized labor, for discipline in theatre and politics.”45

Los Angeles was also a site of confusion for the seventh festival. Kanellos’s summary claimed that it “recalled the madness that characterized the 1974 Quinto Festival in Mexico

City.”46 Aside from being besieged by CLETA members who “proceeded to add to the disorganization already existent,” events in Los Angeles were also disrupted by “CASA-

Hermandad General de Trabajadores, a Marxist-Leninist organization … and its attempts to take advantage of the festival for furthering its own political line.”47 Festival goers disturbed local residents with loud parties that continued into the early morning, certain groups refused to perform, and others offered such “abstract and pretentious, but nevertheless poorly constructed and acted, plays that the workers/people [were] bored stiff and turned off.”48 What’s more,

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Nicolás Kanellos, “Séptimo Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” Undated, p.1, MSS 142, UCSD B45 F17.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., 4.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid. 175 because CASA did not believe in the validity of a Chicanx identity group, posters advertised the

Los Angeles festival as one of Mexican theatre.49 Still, the festival was not without its high points; Kanellos praised its technical aspects, its workshops, some of its performances, and its lectures and discussions.50

Although Kanellos describes the Denver festival as “reminiscent of earlier TENAZ successes” and notes that “the ten groups that participated lived together in a halfway house and performed each night in community parks before audiences of over two hundred people,”51 the

Colorado week was not without its problems. A July 12, 1976 letter from TENAZ officers to

Denver’s Crusade for Justice complained that the latter organization had barred TENAZ teatros from performing “at Mestizo and La Raza parks which are supposed to be liberated community parks.”52 The letter also noted that Crusade for Justice called for “a general boycott of the festival” because one of the participating teatros, Su Teatro, had accepted “Bi-centennial funding to tour Colorado” from a government agency.53 The letter claimed that no bi-centennial funds were used for the festival, and ultimately accused Crusade for Justice of using “the festival as a scapegoat for [its] political difference with Su Teatro.”54 A heated reply from Crusade for Justice called the letter “disrespectful, irresponsible and offensive,” and criticized TENAZ for meddling in local affairs and seeking to reap the benefits of activism in which it did not participate.55

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., 4-5.

51 Ibid., 2.

52 Letter, TENAZ Coordinating Council to Crusade for Justice, July 12, 1976, p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F18.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Letter, Crusade for Justice to TENAZ Coordinating Council, July 14, 1976, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F18. 176

Ultimately, however, the performances seem to have gone forward in the parks in question. The archives make no further mention of the Crusade for Justice boycott, and the festival appears to have been well-attended.

The next few years were marked by consistent and significant transition for TENAZ. In

1976, Huerta noted that TENAZ’s goals—”to help teatros: (1) survive; (2) grow aesthetically and politically; (3) develop new obras [works]; (4) maintain a line of communication”—had not changed. 56 But the organization was regularly in search of better ways to achieve those goals. In

1974, the teatros had been divided into regions—Northern California; Southern California;

“Northwest; Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado; Texas; Midwest; Frontero; and Latino

America”—each with its own representative.57 By this time, various regions had already begun staging mini-festivals of their own.58 In 1976, officers held the “First Annual TENAZ National

Conferencia” from December 17-19 in Julian, California.59 At this meeting, a body of regional representatives with voting rights was replaced with a central board of directors.60 The Eighth

Annual Chicano Theatre Festival, held from July 2 through 10, 1977 in San Diego, was made

“an invitational event, open only to those groups that the Artistic Coordinator and selected critics

[felt were] representative of the best that Teatro Chicano [had] to offer.”61 It was also decided at this time that the TENAZ festival would become a biannual rather than an annual event.62 A Mill

56 Jorge A. Huerta, “Algunos Observations Sobre TENAZ Over the Last Five Years,” MSS 142, UCSD, B46 F1.

57 Huerta, “Evolution of TENAZ,” 7.

58 Ibid., 10.

59 “First Annual TENAZ National Conferencia,” 1976, MSS 142, B46 F1.

60 “TENAZ Evaluation,” p. 5, MSS 142, B47 F15.

61 Letter, Jorge A. Huerta to TENAZ member teatros, January 18, 1977, MSS 142, UCSD, B46 F5.

62 “Idea Statement,” August 1981, p. 1, CEMA 5, S15 B28, F20. 177

Valley meeting in 1978 considered whether it was really TENAZ’s responsibility to “develope

[sic] the artistic quality” of member teatros, but an answer was apparently never reached.63 The

“10th Anniversary Festival in 1979 was hosted by El Teatro de La Esperanza in Santa Barbara.”64

That year, “membership requested that a form of regional representation be brought back,” and in 1980, a new board of directors was nominated.65 The mistitled “11th International Chicano

Latino Teatro Festival”66 took place in San Francisco from September 11-20, 1981.67 By this time, the invitation-only model seems to have been abandoned, and TENAZ boasted a membership of “over 50 theatre companies throughout the US and Mexico.”68 The last record in any archived papers I studied of any festival hosted by TENAZ was the twelfth, which was to be held at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1983.69

The TENAZ trail grows cold with the last issue of TENAZ Talks Teatro in 1984.

Although a 2019 anthology of works presented at the Latino Theater Company, the Los Angeles

Theater Center, and Latinx Theatre Commons’s Encuentro 2014 festival references “the last

63 “TENAZ Evaluation,” 3.

64 “Idea Statement,” 1.

65 “TENAZ Evaluation,” 5.

66 The 1977 festival was labeled the Eighth. The 1979 festival was technically TENAZ’s ninth but was labeled the

“10th Anniversary festival” (itself a misnomer, since the tenth anniversary of TENAZ fell in 1980; on the newly adopted biannual schedule, however, there was no 1980 festival, so the anniversary was celebrated a year early). For some reason, the “10th Anniversary” title given to the 1979 festival seems to have led organizers to label the 1981 festival as the eleventh; by count, it was actually the tenth.

67 “Idea Statement,” 2.

68 Ibid., 1

69 Minutes, “TENAZ Board of Directors Meeting,” p. 3, September 12, 1982, CEMA 5, UCSB, S15, B28, F10. 178

TENAZ … festival in 1992,”70 my own research turned up no archival documents for the organization beyond 1984. Huerta confirms that the organization still existed “as the 1990s approached,” but he also claims that at this point “the annual TENAZ festivals became semiannual events.”71 Since there is no record of TENAZ switching to two festivals per year, it is possible that Huerta meant “biannual” rather than “semiannual,” but records show that this change came long before the 1990s approached; rather, as previously noted, that decision was made in 1977 and implemented following that year’s festival. Huerta also notes that by the end of the 1980s, playwrights were “at the core of the new Chicana/o drama.”72 Additionally, he notes that this period saw “a growing number of individuals studying in both undergraduate and graduate programs in theatre across the country,” and that “as the need for trained [Chicanx] actors grew, the pool of actors seemed to expand as well.”73

While Huerta and others often consider actor training as a secondary goal of TENAZ, behind communication, I contend that the training infrastructure TENAZ created was in fact quite central to its existence. As I will demonstrate in the following pages, what members often found most helpful about TENAZ was the opportunity it provided for learning, especially through workshops. These opportunities were not limited to the learning of acting technique; there was also a great deal of technical theatre training offered. Primarily, though, TENAZ created ways for teatros around the country to create and perform work. Though previous

70 Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero and Chantal Rodriguez, eds., Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New

American Theater (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2019), xv.

71 Huerta, Chicano Drama, 8.

72 Ibid., 9.

73 Ibid., 8-9. 179 scholars have not fully recognized it—and while those who participated in the organization may not themselves have realized it at the time—TENAZ created an infrastructure for actor training that was otherwise unavailable to Chicanx actors. It delivered this training through three primary means: publications, critiques, and workshops. In the balance of this chapter, I will address each in turn and demonstrate the ways in which TENAZ workshops, especially, served as a vehicle by which Chicanx actors studied their craft in more formalized ways than have previously been acknowledged.

Training Through Publication

Altogether, TENAZ was associated with four separate publications during its existence:

El Teatro, El TENAZ, Chicano Theatre, and TENAZ Talks Teatro. While copies of these publications are scarce and scattered, and I was unable to gain access to every issue, there is evidence in those I have been able to locate that TENAZ used print as a medium for delivering training tools to member teatros and other subscribers. Huerta gives a succinct description of the chronology of these publications:

TENAZ … kept in touch with its membership through various publications over the

years, beginning with an informal publication entitled El Teatro/El Tenaz in 1970. This

publication was originally produced by the Teatro Campesino, and when TENAZ was

formed in 1971, it became the organization’s communique, edited by members of

Valdez’ troupe. In the spring of 1973, the organization published the first of three

magazine-style volumes entitled Chicano Theatre One. The following summer, Chicano

Theatre Two appeared, and the third issue came out in the spring of 1974. These

publications contained articles about various groups, exercises, editorials, and actos. This

short lived but very valuable publication was followed by an informal newsletter, 180

“TENAZ Talks Teatro,” published quarterly by the present author beginning in 1978.74

TENAZ Talks Teatro, which was still in publication when Huerta wrote the above description in

1982, continued as a standalone newsletter until it was “transferred to El Tecolote Literary

Magazine of El Tecolote in San Francisco” in 1981.75 Archived samples of the El Tecolote issues only go through the summer of 1984. Although I have been unable to locate a copy of Chicano

Theatre One, Huerta’s description indicates that the magazine included “exercises”; no such exercises appear in Chicano Theatre Two and Chicano Theatre Three, but it is entirely possible that they were published in the magazine’s first issue. If the other publications serve as any example, Huerta is likely referring to acting exercises.

El Teatro Campesino’s El Teatro is the earliest of these publications, and the first to offer acting exercises for its readers. A February 1971 edition, which published advertisements for the second Chicano Theatre Festival as well as Luis Valdez’s oft-reprinted “Notes on Chicano

Theater,” also included nine improvisation exercises.76 The first of these, titled “La Casa de los

Locos,” is a silent exercise that “aims toward establishing group consciousness.”77 Participants were to “relate to one another without saying a word, pretending that they are

CHARACTERS.”78 The exercise’s emphasis on collective consciousness and awareness of others is just one of several ways in which the exercises bear the early markings of Theatre of the

Sphere training. The same exercise asks actors to explore the duality of emotion and action:

74 Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Yipsilanti: Bilingual Press, 1982), 2-3.

75 Minutes, “TENAZ Board of Directors Meeting,” September 12, 1982, 2.

76 Luis Valdez, “Notes on Chicano Theatre,” El Teatro 1 no. 3 (February 1971), n.p., CEMA5, UCSB, S3, B5, F9.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid. 181

“LOVE & HATE, KINDNESS & CRUELTY, VIOLENCE & TENDERNESS—in short, all of the human emotions contained in the people doing the improvisation will begin to emerge.”79

Recalling the first lines of Pensamiento Serpentino, which insist that the world is an illusion, the exercise promises to “reveal greatest [sic] improvisational exercise of all: life itself.”80 The exercise offers an extension, through which “an additional level of IMAGINATIVE FREEDOM can be achieved through FULIDITY OF CHARACTERIZATION: i.e., a person may CHANGE

CHARACTER (which means changing his RELATION TO OTHERS) as he chooses.”81 Like

Pensamiento Serpentino and the Theater of the Sphere, the exercise description emphasizes liberation through spontaneity. “The creative spirit of CHAOS must be felt,” it proclaims, echoing one of the Veinte Pasos to evoke a sensation of “putting things together at the same time it is tearing them apart. YIN YANG, QUETZALCOATL. Viva la Revolucion.”82 What is unclear about this exercise is how it begins. The description indicates that one person starts the exercise by improvising alone, and that others join one by one;83 there is no indication, however, of any parameters for the first improviser.

A second exercise, called “Gritos y Pujos” (screams and grunts) repeats the first, with the addition of grunts and sounds, but no language.84 Words, phrases, or slogans are added in a third exercise labeled, “Chicano! Power!!—Palabras” (Words). In this exercise, “Two or three people

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid. 182 move as a UNIT, executing precisely the same body movement while saying” words or a phrase they have agreed upon, along with their movement, in a one-minute preparation period.85

Language is introduced more fully in the next two exercises. The fourth improvisation is named

“La Serpiente,” and is meant to evoke “the snake leaving its dead skin” through a “spontaneous situation with spontaneous dialogue.”86 This exercise puts two or more people in relationship to one another. “The first participant establishes a situation and others either accept his SELF-

CREATED ROLE, and follow his lead, or else they CHALLENGE his role and change it BY

RELATING TO A NEW SITUATION BORN OF THE OLD, which they introduce in their turn.”87 The fifth improvisation is similar, but disallows any movement. Participants remain seated in chairs to encourage “the FREE ASSOCIATION OF WORDS, STATEMENTS, IDEAS

AND EVEN CHARACTERS emerging from these associations.”88 After an exercise that pairs participants in lines to emphasize “WIT and QUICK THINKING, as well as MOVEMENT,

CHARACTERIZATION and STAGE PRESENCE,”89 participants are introduced to exercises focused on collective creation. Improvisations seven through nine are described as “semi- spontaneous,” as they allow groups of participants’ successively longer preparation periods— first one minute, then five, then a full half-hour.90 Across these exercises, actors are asked to focus on creating characters, forming relationships, and establishing and solving dramatic

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid. 183 problems, all while focusing on characters and scenarios related to life in the barrio.91 Like the first exercise, many that follow show Valdez’s influence. “La Serpiente,” for example, directly references the serpentine transformation at the center of Pensamiento Serpentino. Like the

Theatre of the Sphere training, the sixth exercise is meant to cultivate stage presence. Together, the nine improvisations demonstrate the training that El Teatro Campesino was developing throughout the 1970s.

Once TENAZ was established, directors of the member teatros “agreed to provide assistance with the publication” of El Teatro in an effort to improve communication with and between student teatro groups.92 Recognizing the publication’s potential to “inform people of teatro techniques and ideas,” the directors agreed to rename the publication El TENAZ93 and announced the title change in the Summer 1971 edition.94 TENAZ advertised the revamped newsletter as “the press of the Teatro Nacional de Aztlan which now begins a new existence within the journalistic culture.”95 According to Huerta,

A total of six issues of EL TEATRO/EL TENAZ were published between the summer of

1970 and the summer of 1972. The notes on Teatro and the articles describing various

theater exercises employed by teatros were of great benefit to new groups who had no

other sources for this type of information.96

91 Ibid.

92 Jorge A. Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theater” (PhD Diss., University of California, Santa Barbara), 2-3.

93 Ibid., 3.

94 “The Teatro and the Chicano Culture,” El TENAZ 1 no. 4 (Summer 1971), n.p., CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B5 F12.

95 Ibid.

96 Huerta, “Evolution of Chicano Theater,” 152. 184

The Summer 1971 edition included a summary of the recently completed “Second Festival of the

Teatros de Aztlán,” a variety of essays and editorials, a list of TENAZ’s seventeen member teatros, a plan of action for the organization, and ten exercises provided by Luis Valdez under the title “Notes on Chicano Theater.”97

The ten exercises described in the Summer 1971 issue of El TENAZ are less obviously rooted in the Theater of the Sphere than those in the February issue of El Teatro. Valdez acknowledges borrowing five of the exercises from other sources: two from the Mascarones teatro group in Mexico City, and three from the San Francisco Mime Troupe.98 A note at the end of the exercises suggests that all are to be considered “improvisations” and that none “are meant as fixed rules or canon for doing Chicano Theatre. They are mainly offered … as examples of creative liberated sessions.”99 The first two exercises required actors to work in partners and mirror one another’s movements, first from a distance of four feet and then from fifty feet. From

Los Mascarones,100 Valdez borrows an exercise in choral speaking and a silent exercise in which participants begin with doll-like movement that gradually becomes more human.101 The first improvisation from the San Francisco Mime troupe is cumulative: one actor begins with a movement and a sound; the second actor repeats the movement and sound, then adds their own; the next actor does the same, and so on.102 Also borrowed from the Mime Troupe are a slow-

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid. 185 motion race exercise and one entitled “The Machine,” wherein actors one by one add individual, complementary movements and sounds to a group in order to form a cohesive whole.103 One of the remaining exercises involves unison stomping and clapping and another requires actors to explore facial expressions in front of a mirror.104 The last, which is titled “La Dualidad,” asks the actors to explore duality by responding to a partner’s movement with “opposite but complementary movement.”105

Even those exercises which Valdez does not credit to another company are not entirely unique. The mirroring work of the first two exercises, for instance, is not unlike exercises suggested in the work of Augusto Boal and Viola Spolin.106 Boal has also published an exercise similar to Valdez’s “Machine.”107 Valdez’s last exercise shows perhaps the closest connection to

Theatre of the Sphere work, given its emphasis on duality. What these exercises reveal, collectively, is that El Teatro and El TENAZ were, at least in part, vehicles for delivering actor training exercises. Some were specifically tailored to the concepts and techniques unique to

Chicanx theatre, but others were in line with what actors might have learned in a variety of settings throughout the twentieth century. It is possible, though in no way certain, that Valdez

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid.

106 See Augusto Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 2nd ed., trans. Adrian Jackson (London: Routledge, 1992),

129-135 and Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1983), 60, 66, 75, 175, 234-235. Though both of these publication dates fall after the printing of Valdez’s exercises, the Boal text uses exercises from throughout his earlier work (see p. xxii) and the Spolin book was first published in 1963.

107 Boal, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 94-95. 186 might have encountered some of this work while at San Jose State.

Many issues of TENAZ Talks Teatro are still accessible. This publication is advertised and reads very much as a friendly newsletter. Written by Huerta, it includes summaries of recent

TENAZ activities, both artistic and administrative, in a section titled “Catching Up”; production reviews; production and publication lists; and miscellaneous tidbits in a section called “Otros

Chismes” (Other Things/Pieces of Gossip), among other offerings. Although TENAZ Talks

Teatro does not offer any specific acting exercises over its six years in print, it serves as a resource for teatro actors looking for training opportunities. Summer and Winter workshops at El

Teatro Campesino were advertised in several issues, as were TENAZ festivals. As late as April

1984, the newsletter (by this time edited by Hank Tevara) featured a short piece on Teatro

Espejo’s involvement in a program at California State University, Sacramento that was “geared toward developing skills of the chicano [sic] actor.”108 Unlike El Teatro, El TENAZ, and possibly

Chicano Theatre, TENAZ Talks Teatro did not publish ready-to-use training materials; it did, however, serve as a conduit to connect Chicanx actors to training opportunities.

The Summer 1971 issue of El TENAZ concludes with two quotations from Stanislavsky.

The first speaks to TENAZ’s commitment to actor training:

Our youth must train itself to patience in work, no matter how small or unskilled

the work proves to be. Let the young actors know and remember that they are the lucky

ones, favorites of fortune, because they are given exceptional opportunities for work. You

must clearly understand that our art is a collective art in which everthing [sic] is

interdependent.

108 Manuel Jose Pickett, “Teatro Espejo Trains Actors in Chicano Theatre Program,” TENAZ Talks Teatro 7 no. 1

(April 1984), 1. 187

Any mistake or unkind word or gossip dropped into the collective, poisons all,

including the one who injected the poison. Only in an atmosphere of love and friendship

and of just criticism and self-criticism can talent grow.109

Stanislavsky’s words echo many of El Teatro Campesino’s ideas of unity. They also, however, suggest one of the other ways in which TENAZ facilitated actor training. While the TENAZ festivals and mini-festivals were in part meant to showcase performances, they were also the site of significant performance critique.

Training Through Critique

The idea that performance critique constitutes a form of actor training is not new. The practice is, in fact, central to the written works of both Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky. In their published works, both figures provide fictitious accounts of acting teachers who, in addition to sharing key theoretical principles, require students to perform publicly and then face critique in order to analyze and improve their performance skills. They were not the first, of course, to teach through performance critique, nor was such critique offered exclusively in classroom or studio settings. In earlier, less formal training systems that relied on the apprenticeship model, novice or intermediate actors undoubtedly received critiques from their masters. While the critiques offered at TENAZ festivals have never previously been considered as such, I contend that they were an invaluable training tool for actors learning the craft of teatro.

Organized performance discussions and critiques were not part of the Chicanx theatre festival in its first incarnation in 1970. A program from that first festival includes a three-day schedule of events that occurred from May 8 to May 10. The first day included a one-hour panel discussion with the directors of ten of the participating teatros, but no other formal discussion

109 Luis Valdez, “Notes on Chicano Theatre,” El TENAZ, 1 no. 4 (Summer 1971), n.p., CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B5 F12. 188 times are listed.110 It is entirely likely, of course, that the participating groups held informal discussions of their work, wherein they exchanged ideas and techniques. The event flyer promised participants “an opportunity to take part in a side-by-side living experience with teatro members; to share their vitality and personal experiences.”111 It may well have been this experience that led festival organizers to introduce formalized discussions and critiques in future festivals.

The second festival, which took place from April 5-10, 1971 in the Aptos/Santa Cruz area, included formal discussions of the teatros’ presented work. An announcement for the event describes it as “a week-long festival of workshops, performances, and an exchange of ideas, techniques, and material.”112 The attached festival schedule indicates that a discussion of the previous evening’s performances took place each morning.113 Discussions were scheduled at

9:30 a.m. each day, with workshops following at 10:30 or 11:00 a.m.114

The next indication of discussions and critiques comes from the fourth festival and provides perhaps the most detailed existing account. A 1973 flyer for the festival promises

110 Program, “El Festival de los Teatros de Aztlan,” 1970, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F1.

111 Flyer, “El Teatro Campesino de AZTLAN presents the first Annual National Chicano Theater Festival,” MSS

142, UCSD, B43 F1.

112 Letter, Luis Valdez to “Compañeros por la Raza,” MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F4.

113 “El Festival de los Teatro Schedule,” 1971, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F4. Though the year on the schedule reads

1970, this is almost certainly a typo. April 5-10, 1970 fell before the May 1970 festival, which is known to have been the first of its kind. Additionally, the schedule reads “Monday, April 5,” “Tuesday, April 6,” etc. These days and dates match 1971 rather than 1970. Finally, the schedule is attached to an announcement letter (see Note 110) that names this festival “the second annual National Chicano Teatro Festival.”

114 Ibid. 189

“workshops and discussions that will cover the major topics concerning Teatro Chicano,” in which all teatros in attendance could participate.115 David Copelin, who wrote a first-hand account of the festival for The Drama Review, provides a glimpse of what these critiques and discussions entailed. Copelin recalls that Luis “Valdez spoke at the festival about the generalist approach to directing that Chicano theatre demands,” encouraging participants to “know the techniques of directing in earlier styles and of using contemporary approaches to performance, no matter what their origin.”116 In opening remarks made with the then-leader of Teatro de la

Esperanza, Valdez claimed that influences on teatro to that date had included

improvisation, Commedia dell’arte, Naturalism, Symbolism, Old Comedy, the choral

work of such groups as the Mascarones, and the theories and practice of Artaud, Brecht,

the Bread and Puppet Theatre, the Open Theatre, the Living Theatre, Grotowski, and the

agit-prop drama of the thirties.117

While such remarks do not constitute an instance of actor training, they speak in some sense to the training some teatro members might have received from Valdez and others in the previous three festivals. Improvisation, commedia dell’arte, and agit-prop drama are regularly associated with El Teatro Campesino and those companies that followed in their footsteps; that Valdez mentions these other companies and individuals in his remarks as part and parcel of teatro is a strong indication that their influence had already been and continued to be felt.

Summarizing his experience in San Jose, Copelin wrote that “the idea of the festival

115 Flyer, “4th Annual Festival de Los Teatros,” 1973, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F17.

116 David Copelin, “Chicano Theatre: El Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” The Drama Review 17 no. 4 (Dec.

1973): 74.

117 Ibid. 190

[was] to provide an especially concentrated seminar in teatro, with cross-pollination of ideas, techniques, and transcultural affinities for participants.”118 As he suggests, and as an undated, unsigned memo confirms, each evening’s performances were critiqued by a panel the following morning for one hour.119 For an hour after that, the performers were permitted to respond and to

“defend” their performances, and the panel took questions and comments from both the performers and other attendees.120 The panels, Copelin recalls, “consisted of four representatives of different teatros (varied each day), who were asked to prepare verbal critiques … In that way, the desired unity and mutual influence of performance and criticism were reinforced, by allowing the teatros to share their perceptions and feelings with one another.”121

It is important to note here the nature of these critiques and discussions, from the perspective of the participating teatros and their members. It would be easy to imagine a session that stops at critique. Copelin’s depiction of the performance critiques and the discussions that ensued, however, suggest that the spirit in which they were given and received was much more complex. Teatros and their individual members were not likely to simply receive their critiques and go on their way, never to think of them again; this was neither their intended function, nor the way in which they were received. Rather, Copelin reports that “performance and criticism

[were] seen by the teatros as being complementary and entirely necessary to each other, if they

[were] to learn from what they [did].”122 Nor did these critiques occur in a vacuum. They were

118 Ibid., 77.

119 Ibid. and Memo, “4th Annual Festival de los Teatros,” MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F15.

120 Ibid.

121 David Copelin, “Chicano Theatre: El Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” 78.

122 Ibid. 191 part of an ongoing process. “The place of rigorous evaluation of their performances [was] constantly very high,” wrote Copelin, “but the criticism [was] conducted on a long-term basis.”123 Thus, the critiques did not serve the same function as a newspaper review, to offer thoughts on a performance that might never be put to use. Since many of these teatros performed and continued to develop their pieces over long periods, the critiques they received at festivals were closer to what one might receive in an acting studio or a master class. The idea was to use the information one received, both in continued performances of the piece critiqued and in other performance pieces moving forward. “What they are becoming,” Copelin wrote at the time, “is as important to them as what they are, and criticism is generally received in the same spirit in which it is given: courteously, with gratitude for the attempt to help solve the enormous problems involved.”124 The festivals, as Copelin suggests, offered an opportunity for teatros to showcase what they had learned since the previous meeting, and to get new input to aid the continued development of their work and skills.

After the panel critiques, teatro members engaged in more active discussions of their work. Not only did they have a chance to respond the panelists’ comments, they had an opportunity to interact with other attendees and audience members. Copelin describes this second hour as “an opportunity for the free exchange of experiences, problems, ideas, opinions, and values among teatros,” in which participants would “discuss topics ranging from techniques and approaches, to various types of audiences, to ways of dealing with lack of theatrical experience.”125 In this second hour, groups and individuals with varying levels of experience,

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 Ibid. 192 skill, and expertise shared responses, questions, and ideas. Following the formal critiques from those selected by TENAZ leadership as capable of offering it, teatro practitioners were able to share their techniques and practices with others, and to hear a variety of opinions and responses to the successes and failures of their work.

Lest I give the impression that these discussions were overly generalized and did not specifically address acting, it is worthwhile at this point to explore some of the specific discussions Copelin’s essay describes. Recounting portions of a panel critiquing a performance by San Jose’s Teatro Urbano, Copelin recalls:

The moderator was Victor Quiles of Santa Barbara. He reminded the panel of the format

for these critiques: that the proficiency of the group was to be assessed according to the

movement, the staging, visual techniques, use of space, and both individual and group

performance techniques. A critique of the pertinence of the show’s content was to follow,

with an assessment of the significance of this material, and the various reactions of the

panelists, the groups they represented, and the rest of the audience.126

Although Copelin’s description of the panel’s parameters certainly includes a variety of topics, they were clearly designed, in part, to critique acting choices. One panelist, for instance, criticized the Urbano actors’ use of their voices and bodies. Copelin sums up the critic’s assessments of the Urbano actors’ performances:

They generally work outside and are not used to performing in a traditional theatre space

… The body is used differently in a closed space than in the open air, said the panelist.

The performance form must change according to circumstances, yet still express the same

126 Ibid., 82. 193

content. Diction is very important in the street, so that has to be worked on

constantly … 127

While at least one audience member “protested the severity of the critique,” Teatro Urbano took it in stride, saying that “though they did the best they could, they still needed to learn and would try to do so.”128

Similar comments were made regarding a performance by Teatro Aztlán de San

Fernando. One “commentator … said that all the performers needed to work on their diction, especially the women.”129 Another “called attention to the spirit of the actors.”130 A member of the audience noted that “the individual characterizations did not retain elements of craziness

[appropriate to the piece performed] except at moments” and that “projection and diction were generally poor, but the play flowed well. In general, he felt the problems were chiefly technical and could be solved.”131 A second audience member “called the play the best work that Aztlán

[had] done in the two years since he [had] known them. He added that they needed body work and practice in sustaining a character.”132

What Copelin describes may not appear to qualify as actor training in the traditional, mainstream sense, but I contend it is a form of actor training nonetheless. Critique—both from a teacher and from one’s peers—is a vital part of the actor training process. As I have noted, both

127 Ibid., 83.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid., 84.

130 Ibid.

131 Ibid., 86.

132 Ibid. 194 have been part of better-known training systems. Aside from Boleslavsky and Stanislavsky, such practices can be seen in the work of Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and others. Students perform, they receive critiques, and they use those critiques to make different choices. While this process does not always entail direct instruction in technique, it remains a valid and oft-practiced element of actor training. This is especially true when the process is ongoing, rather than limited to a one performance-one critique event.

That performance critiques and discussions were an ongoing part of TENAZ festivals is clear. The printed schedule for what appears to be a 1974 mini-festival in San Diego includes an hour and a half for a general meeting and “critiques of presentations.”133 A press release for the

1975 Mexico City festival noted that participants would be “coming together … to share, exchange and unite our ideas, our beliefs, and culture.”134 A proposal by San Antonio’s Teatro de los Barrios to host the sixth festival in 1976 promises “a continuation of the previous festivals in offering teatro groups from Aztlan the opportunity to perform, critize [sic], and learn from each other.”135An undated schedule for a mini-festival arranged by the Southern California region of

TENAZ includes a two-hour “Critique Workshops” session.136 A similar schedule, also undated, for a Midwestern regional mini-festival, lays out three questions on which critiques were meant to focus:

A) What was the main and underlying points [sic] of the presentation? Was it clear?

B) Was the message relevant to the issues confronting our people?

133 “Agenda,” November 29, 1974, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F15.

134 Press Release, “Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” 2.

135 Proposal, “Sexto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos, 1.

136 Schedule, “7th Mini-Festival of So. Calif. Region,” MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F9. 195

C) Did the technique hinder or highlight the main points of the presentation?137

The questions posed by the Midwestern mini-festival corroborate two things: first, that the critiques did not focus solely on acting, but second, that they did specifically address it.

Moreover, the third question reiterates that discussions of acting were, at least at times, related specifically to technique.

Although my archival research thus far has not turned up additional critique sessions, it also has not uncovered programs and schedules for every festival. The evidence so far, however, suggests that performance critiques were a vital part of the TENAZ festival process. As much as these sessions were tied to festival performances, they were also very likely tied to the most significant avenue of training provided by TENAZ, both during and outside of its festivals: workshops.

Training Through Festival Workshops

From 1970 to 1984 (which is as far as the archival records I encountered go), TENAZ provided its most prolific and most direct training opportunities through workshops. Initially, the workshops were offered through the annual TENAZ festivals. Very quickly, however, El Teatro

Campesino began offering extended summer and winter workshops in addition to those available at festivals. When TENAZ divided its member teatros into regions, those regions offered workshops at their mini-festivals. Eventually, periodic workshops were advertised by teatros, individual practitioners, and even colleges and universities. First, I want to provide an account of the festival workshops at all levels. Afterwards, I will address El Teatro Campesino’s extended workshops and the numerous workshops that happened outside these settings. These workshops are perhaps the most significant way in which TENAZ engaged in actor training,

137 Schedule, “El Segundo Festival de los Teatros,” MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F9. 196 primarily because they involved specific and embodied practice for both teatro ensembles and individual actors.

When Luis Valdez published an invitation for teatros to attend the first annual “Festival

Nacional de Teatro Chicano” in the April 13, 1970 issue of La Voz de Aztlan, he emphasized the workshops the festival would feature:

There will be major and minor performances by several of the established companies.

During the day, workshops will be held demonstrating all of the practical techniques for

creating life images of our people on stage. Playwrighting, acting, set construction, make-

up and costumes, lighting, direction and improvisations are some of the workshops to be

offered by Chicanos already in this creative part of the movement. Those teatros already

in existence, or just coming together, may benefit by meeting and exchanging concepts

and techniques with other groups.138

Although Valdez’s invitation promises additional workshops in music and filmmaking, there are no other mentions of performances. The emphasis of the festival, according to this document, is on teaching and learning rather than showcasing work. Flyers for the festival also promise workshops in “improvisation and movement, staffing and direction … voice control … and props.”139 The festival program shows four workshops scheduled simultaneously in a ninety- minute period on each of two days, and that attending groups rotated through them as the festival went on.140 The printed program also indicates a final daily slate made up of two sessions of

138 Luis Valdez, “El Teatro,” n.p.

139 Flyer, “El Teatro Campesino de AZTLAN presents the first Annual National Chicano Theater Festival, 1970,

MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F1 and CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B2 F19.

140 Program, “El Festival de los Teatros de Aztlan.” 197

“Improvisation & Acto Construction,” two sessions of “Movement,” two sessions of “Set Design and Construction,” and one session of “Mask Making.”141 Of the seven sessions that ran each day, four were dedicated at least in part to acting.

In addition to technical theatre workshops, the second annual festival offered two sessions of “Exercise and Improvisation,” two sessions of “Movement,” and a session each in

“Theater Makeup” and “Voice.”142 An El TENAZ article written after the festival identifies these workshops as one of three main components of the festival, the other two being performances and discussions.143 The author reiterates the importance of workshops as a training tool, writing that “experience is the best teacher and also the most revolutionary method of education. The results of the daily workshops was proof to all present.”144 The workshops, which emphasized improvisation, took “materials and their uses” as their shared main topic.145 The article goes on to describe an improvisational workshop “in a large gymnasium with over 100 participants” in which “genocide or mass assassination was presented with an unpredictable climax resulting”; at one point in the exercise, “over a hundred bodies” representing a community “ … running, falling, and shrieking with fright,” “covered the floors.”146 While this description may not immediately call to mind a traditional acting workshop, two things are worth remembering. First, these workshops were taught largely through improvisation. In teatro, that work and acting can

141 Ibid.

142 Schedule, “El Festival de los Teatro [sic]”, 1971, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F4.

143 “Workshops,” El TENAZ 1 no. 4 (Summer 1971), n. p., CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B5 F12.

144 Ibid.

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid. 198 hardly be separated. Secondly, this improvisation was staged in the context of additional workshops on movement and voice work. Since, as the El TENAZ author notes, the workshops shared improvisation as a technique and a focus on “materials and their uses,” it is reasonable to think that the work of one session occurred not in isolation from, but in relation to, the work of the others.

By the time planning for the fourth festival in 1973 was underway, the popularity and use-value of the workshops had become apparent. In a letter to participating teatros, Huerta explained a new structure and policy:

These particular workshops will be progressive. They will progress from day to day. It is

like a class in that you will learn something new from day to day. Due to the shortage of

space we are asking that each teatro only send TWO representatives to each workshop.

We are expecting approximately 350 people, so it will be impossible to have more than

TWO people in each workshop from each teatro. It is hoped that your representative will

share his or her experience with the rest of your group. It is very necessary that once you

Though Huerta cites a lack of space as the reason for the limit on participants (and this is bolstered by the above account of over 100 people participating in a workshop the previous year), it is important to note that such limitations became the norm in future festivals. Also interesting in Huerta’s letter is the change from stand-alone workshops to those that “progress from day to day.” This change in pedagogy shows a marked interest in what Copelin described in

The Drama Review as an ongoing learning process. According to an undated document, the fourth festival offered eight workshops in areas including vocal music performance, voice and

147 Letter to “Teatros,” “4th Annual Festival de los Teatros,” 1973, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F15. 199 diction, and make-up.148 Copelin noted that “theatre workshops ran all during the festival, usually for two hours a day.”149 Copelin’s essay also reveals additional workshops focused specifically on acting:

The daily sessions were followed by other workshops listed as ‘acting training.’ These

ran for approximately the same length of time and included up to four members from

each group. These acting workshops concentrated on movement exercises, theatre games,

improvisations, and directing.150

According to Copelin, the nature of these workshops was such that “fundamental theatrical techniques” were passed “between the advanced and the beginning teatros,” and that there was

“little snobbishness about studying ‘basics.’”151 The spirit of the festivals, then, was one of learning and exchange. A primary aim and one of the primary results of these annual events was education and training.

1973 also marks what was perhaps the beginning of regional TENAZ mini-festivals. In that year, Teatro Urbano and Teatro Machete co-hosted a series of workshops for Southern

California teatros.152 While this three-day event may not have been a complete mini-festival, as it included no performances, its emphasis on workshops speaks to the importance TENAZ and its membership placed on training. The Southern California event featured four three-hour classes at

East Los Angeles Junior College. One class was titled “Political Awareness,” and the remaining

148 “Workshops,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F17.

149 Copelin, “Chicano Theatre,” 81.

150 Ibid.

151 Ibid.

152 Letter, Bernadette Rodriguez to “Estimados Carnales,” November 7, 1973, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F2. 200 three—“Theatre Games and Sensitivity Trust,” “Movement and Exercise,” and “Technique”— were focused on acting.153 Attendees were to rotate through these four classes in groups.154 On the final day, the Southern California region displayed one of TENAZ’s first signs of interest in expanding training beyond the teatro community. On this day, all were invited to attend “a three hour class on the technique of Mime,” taught by Richard Shepard, “Americas [sic] foremost

Mime Artist.”155 Only three years into its existence, members of TENAZ were showing a marked concern with the training not just of teatro members in general, but of actors in particular.

1974 proved a fruitful year for TENAZ’s actor training efforts. While the 1974 Mexico

City festival was different from those that had preceded it in a variety of ways, organizers did not waver in their commitment to training teatro actors. A printed festival itinerary lists workshop

“themes” including collective creation, acting methods, musical theatre, and juggling.156 The

Midwest region held a mini-festival in April of that year, for which it received a grant from the

National Education Task-Force de la Raza to hold workshops for six teatros.157 Workshops were led by Nicolás Kanellos of Gary, Indiana’s Teatro Desengaño del Pueblo and Francisco Rivera of Texas’s Colegio Jacinto Trevino.158 According to a report sent by regional organizers to

TENAZ, participants worked in techniques for choral poetry, voice, and diction.159 A November

San Diego mini-festival included workshops in “Voz y Poesia Coral” (Voice and Choral Poetry),

153 Ibid.

154 Ibid.

155 Ibid.

156 Itinerary, “V Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” 1974, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B4 F28.

157 Memo, “Midwest Report,” April 13, 1974, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F9.

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid. 201

“Movement and Rythem [sic],” Make Up (taught by Huerta), “Dramatico Acting,” and “Politico

Artistico” (The Political Artist).”160

1975’s festivals were built largely on the premise that workshops were a central part of

TENAZ’s value. The proposal by Teatro de los Barrios to host the national festival placed workshops front and center: “Through participation in the workshops during the festival,” it reads, “the groups will ultimately increase their artistic and acting skills by exchanging ideas in the field of Chicano theatre.”161 1975’s festival is also the first with records of children’s workshops. According to a report from Vibiana Chamberlin, identified as TENAZ’s Children’s

Activities Coordinator, these workshops included “Drama Play & Games of the Infant and toddler,” “Music y Cantos for Niños” (Music and Songs for Children), “Mime & Games for

Children,” “Juggling,” “Dance, Folklorico,” “Titeres Simples” (Simple Puppets), “Puppet Show

& Puppet Head Making,” and a special session on “Questions, Problems and How’s [sic] on

Teatro y Niños.”162 Workshops were taught by members of some of the most prominent teatros in the country, including El Teatro Campesino, Teatro de la Esperanza, Los Mascarones, and

Teatro de la Gente.163 A 1975 Southern California mini-festival included workshops in collective creation, juggling, characterization, and improvisation.164

1976’s uneven and chaotic series of national festivals in Seattle, Denver, San Jose, and

160 “Agenda,” November 29, 1974.

161 Proposal, “Sexto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” 2.

162 Vibiana Chamberlin, “Sexto Festival Nacional de Teatros Chicanos,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F11.

163 Ibid.

164 Memo, Teatro Espiritu de Aztlán to TENAZ, “Mini-Festival So. Cal. Reg. TENAZ,” June 6, 1975, MSS 142,

UCSD, B45 F11. 202

Los Angeles saw actor training pushed aside in some cases. Poor planning in Seattle left very few records of the events that took place there; given the sparse attendance and the complaints from New Jersey’s Teatro Alma Latina about their lack of contact with other groups, it is unlikely that much, if any, training occurred. Kanellos praised Los Angeles’s “workshops on voice, body, movement, beginning and advance [sic] acting, and children’s theater.”165 A schedule of workshops almost certainly held at the Los Angeles festival that year corroborates

Kanellos’s account, indicating that topics included puppet making, children’s theatre, theatre games, voice, beginning and advanced acting, collective creation, music, and political theatre.166

In some ways, 1977 was an anomaly. First, El Centro Cultural Mascarones de

Cuernavaca held a sizeable event with “workshops and seminars” that members of TENAZ attended.167 Some subjects would have been familiar to attendees of previous TENAZ festivals—

Teatro Chicano Acting Techniques, Puppets and Marionettes, Mask Making, Choral Poetry, and

Commedia were all included.168 Others, however, focused on theories and techniques that had not formally been offered at TENAZ events. Members of a company from Uruguay held a workshop on Brecht and “his utility in the formulation of a political theatre for Latin America,” while attendees from Ecuador taught a workshop on “physical expression and modern dance in relation to teatro.”169 Other topics included “Contributions of Theory and Practice in the

165 Kanellos, “Séptimo Festival de los Teatros Chicanos,” 5.

166 “Schedule of Workshops,” MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F17.

167 Invitation, “El Centro Cultural Mascarones de Cuernavaca Invita a los Talleres y Seminarios,” MSS 142, UCSD,

B46 F7.

168 Ibid.

169 Ibid. 203

Realization of Teatro in Latin America,” “Tragedy,” “Rasquachi Theatre,” “Video-tape,” “Radio

Teatro,” “History of Public Art,” and “Techniques of Boal’s Popular Theatre.170 Many of these topics—Rasquachi Theatre and Boal, for instance—were likely familiar to many of that year’s participants, even if they hadn’t previously attended formal workshops organized around them.

The Cuernavaca festival marked the first time they had been taught so directly.

1977 was also the year that the TENAZ leadership structure changed and the annual

TENAZ festival was made invitation-only. Like the Cuernavaca festival, the Eighth Annual

Chicano Theatre Festival in San Diego offered a total of thirteen workshops, some of which ventured into new territory. Non-acting topics included the form and style of Chicanx theatre, epic and agit-prop theatre, playwriting, documentary theatre, directing, political theatre, design and technical theatre, and an opportunity to workshop works in progress.171 Actors could choose workshops in choral poetry, biomechanics and expression, Latin American Cantata, and voice.172

Additionally, the festival offered a generalized “actor training” workshop.173 Part of this broadening of workshop offerings might be traced to what the festival program describes as a desire to foster continued “unification—politically and culturally—with the different Latin

American groups.”174 Though the teatro that TENAZ fostered and encouraged had always remained political, the 1977 festival shows a marked desire to return to this focus. That desired

170 Ibid.

171 Memo, TENAZ Eighth Chicano Theater Festival Committee to Participating Teatros, June 13, 1977, MSS 142,

UCSD, B46 F5.

172 Ibid.

173 Ibid.

174 Program, “Festival de los Teatros Chicanos 8,” 1977, MSS 142, UCSD, B46 F5. 204 shift was apparent even in the festival’s workshops.

Commitment to both training and unification across Latinx (and sometimes other) identities remained important to TENAZ for one more festival but may have begun to fall by the wayside afterwards. The invitation for the tenth anniversary festival in 1979 expressed a desire to bring together teatro groups from across the United States and Latin America,” and boasted that the festival would “[include] four guest groups comprised of Black, Anglo, Asian-American and

Native-American Companies.”175 The same invitation made perhaps the boldest commitment to training TENAZ had published yet:

The participants in the Festival will be actively involved in daily workshops aimed at

developing theatre techniques. These workshops will be a major part of the festival as

they will take a high priority in the Festival operation. Top professionals will be

recruited to present intensive training programs, and participants will be expected to

attend the same workshop for the entire week. Key workshop leaders which we

anticipate include Dr. Jorge Huerta, Artistic Coordinator for TENAZ, Ronnie Davis,

founder of San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Luis Valdez the director/Playwright of El

Teatro Campesino.176

Though there is not much information available regarding the eleventh or twelfth festivals hosted by TENAZ, the former was held in San Francisco. A 1981 planning document expresses organizers’ desire to

… reflect the uniqueness and diversities of San Francisco and provide a forum for

discussions and workshops in five areas: 1) Latin American Teatro In & Out of the US.

175 “Statement,” from Pre-registration Packet, MSS 142, UCSD, B46 F15.

176 Ibid. 205

2) Third World and Ethnic Theatre. 3) Alternative, Community and Labor Theatre. 4)

Gay & Lesbian Theatre. 5) Issues of Women in Teatro177

While these workshops may have included actor training, the areas identified by the organizers give no direct indication that this was so. The document later indicates that “teatro authors, scholars and experts from the US and Latin America [would be] invited to give critiques and to offer workshops,”178 but nothing more specific is stated. Although Huerta’s archived papers include a photograph of him sleeping at what a handwritten caption identifies as the eleventh festival,179 neither those papers nor the El Teatro Campesino archives in Santa Barbara include a festival program. Minutes from a 1982 TENAZ Board of Directors meeting suggest that a twelfth festival was planned at UCLA for “April or May of 1983,”180 but no further evidence of this or any other festival exists in either archive.

Several undated documents indicate that mini-festivals around the country included workshops as a primary focus. The same Midwestern festival that included questions for consideration in critique sessions featured workshops in collective creation, body movement and theatre games, music, and voice and diction.181 A mini-festival in Los Angeles focused on children’s teatro and included workshops in puppetry and mime.182 A brief, undated schedule from the “Seventh Mini-festival of Teatro So. California Region” shows two hours set aside for

177 “Idea Statement,” 2.

178 Ibid.

179 Letter, Santos (last name illegible) to Jorge Huerta, December 11, 1981, MSS 142, UCSD, B47 F17.

180 Minutes, “TENAZ Board of Directors meeting of September 12, 1982,” 3.

181 Schedule, “El Segundo Festival de los Teatros.

182 Vibiana Chamberlin, Report to TENAZ National Meeting, April 12-13, 1975, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F4. 206

“workshops,” two hours for “critique workshops,” and two hours for “improvisational workshops.”183 Finally, another Midwest festival document lists “Drama Workshops in the morning on all aspects of Chicano/Latino Teatro” in Gary, Indiana as part of its itinerary.184

Given the number of teatros that held membership in TENAZ and the number of years TENAZ was active, it is likely that other such mini-festivals occurred. Given that there is no evidence of a mini-festival which did not make workshops one of its primary purposes, it is almost certain that these would have included similar offerings.

In many ways, the TENAZ festival workshops, as numerous and varied as they were, served as just one step in an evolving actor training infrastructure. Many teatros began their organized training at TENAZ festivals, but those workshops were only the beginning. Teatros and their members found such training opportunities so useful that they ultimately began to hold workshops outside the festival setting. Many of these were held over longer periods of time and thus allowed for much deeper explorations. Many, though not all of them, tied the exploration of

Chicanx theatre techniques to lifestyle choices; El Teatro Campesino, for instance, combined

Theatre of the Sphere training with principles of communal living. I close this chapter with an exploration of how TENAZ training, which moved from publications to festival critique sessions to festival workshops, culminated in more complex workshops staged by a variety of teatros around the country.

Training Through Other Workshops

Festivals and mini-festivals served as the site of many workshops associated with

TENAZ, but the organization also encouraged and sponsored workshops by individual teatros.

183 Schedule, “7th Mini-Festival of Teatro S. Calif. Region,” MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F9.

184 Flyer, “Midwest Teatro Organization presents Festival de los Teatros,” MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F4. 207

Even before TENAZ was formed, El Teatro Campesino had begun holding workshops for those interested in learning more about teatro—partly to spread the word, and partly as a recruitment tool. As early as 1968, the Teatro Campesino had set up a workshop for its members with Ron

Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.185 Valdez later characterized this workshop as part of an effort to “set up a training program for the group.”186 According to an article in the Fresno

Bee that year, the company held “regular workshop sessions in Del Rey,” as part of its effort to

“[lay] groundwork for a ‘National Chicano Theater.’”187 The company also hosted a music workshop at San Francisco State College that year, as part of the Radical Theater Festival.188 In

1969, Valdez taught another workshop at Fresno State College, where he co-chaired the experimental “Raza studies” program; this workshop brought an “influx of student performers” into the group.189 In 1970, Valdez taught a similar workshop at the University of California,

Berkeley.190 It was this desire to bring in new members, in part, that led El Teatro Campesino to invite other teatros to Fresno in 1970, and then to establish TENAZ in 1971.

Following the 1971 festival and the official creation of TENAZ, El Teatro Campesino began offering extended workshops not only for its own members, but for any teatro practitioners with the desire, the time, and the resources to attend. The first workshop was planned in conjunction with “a number of directors from varios [sic] participating companies” as

185 “El Teatro Campesino: Its History, as Told by Luis Valdez,” p. 16., CEMA 5, UCSB, S17 B3 F2.

186 Ibid.

187 “Del Rey’s Campesino Troupe Sets Workshop,” The Fresno Bee (Fresno, CA), June 22, 1968.

188 Pamphlet, Radical Theatre Festival, p. 5, Sept. 1968, CEMA 5, UCSB, S14 B1 F28.

189 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 242.

190 Ibid., 243. 208 part of an extensive plan of action that also established the cooperative publication of El

TENAZ.191 The workshop was to be conducted in San Juan Bautista and followed by a workshop

“in Mexico City with the Mascarones.”192 Unlike the festival workshops, El Teatro Campesino’s summer workshop lasted two months. “Because so few people working in teatros had any real formal training,” the extended time living and working with the Campesino ensemble provided a

“good opportunity for members of TENAZ to see ‘TEATRO en acción.’”193 Participants, limited to one per teatro,194 were meant to “get all the knowledge they could … and then share it with their own groups back home.”195 In San Juan, they performed “exercises and improvisations to find a communal form of expression.”196 It was at this summer workshop that the first corrido performance was developed; it was presented in public as part of Valdez’s initial goal to create a national touring group composed of TENAZ members from all over.197 While some suggestions for the next workshop included making it four or six months instead of two, or perhaps combining it with the next festival, so that the festival lasted six days and the last four were devoted to the Teatro Campesino workshop,198 the two-month model was ultimately repeated.

191 “El Teatro Nacional de Aztlan is, first of all…,” El TENAZ 1 no. 4 (Summer 1971), CEMA 5, UCSB, S3 B5,

F12.

192 Ibid.

193 Huerta, “The Evolution of TENAZ,” 3.

194 Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theatre,” 153.

195 Huerta, “The Evolution of TENAZ,” 3.

196 Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theatre,” 162.

197 Huerta, “The Evolution of TENAZ,” 4.

198 Handwritten Notes, “TENAZ 9/4/71, San Fernando Stone House,” September 4, 1971, p. 4, MSS 142, UCSD,

B43 F6. 209

A second summer workshop was held in San Juan Bautista in 1972.199 This workshop emphasized “technique and theory, not as separate entities, but as important complements in the complete art of Teatro.”200 Huerta has described details of some of the activities of this workshop, which “brought together many of the first workshop’s participants as well as a few more representatives from other groups.”201 The group developed Los Olivos Pits that summer, which featured a “broad, commedia dell ‘arte style, but the distinctly Chicano flavor was missing.”202 Still, participants worked with Valdez, Ron Davis, and director Bill Purkiss to explore “early theater history, improvisation and non-verbal communication.”203 With Purkiss, they engaged in environmental improvisation exercises, working outside and connecting with the earth in ways that recalled the birth-death-rebirth cycle that was so central to Pensamiento

Serpentino and the Theater of the Sphere.204 As Huerta has noted, many participants found the work so engaging that they chose to join the Teatro Campesino ensemble rather than return to their own teatros.205

In some ways, the years 1973 and 1974 marked a time of inward focus where El Teatro

Campesino’s summer workshops were concerned. No TENAZ workshop took place in the summer of 1973 due to Peter Brook’s time in residence, which produced workshops available

199 Broyles-Gonzalez, El Teatro Campesino, 242.

200 Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theatre,” 178.

201 Ibid, 179.

202 Ibid., 180.

203 Ibid., 181.

204 Ibid., 180-182.

205 Ibid. 182. 210 only to members of El Teatro Campesino.206 A profile of the company by Theatre

Communications Group that year notes that it was by this time hosting “workshops during the winter and summer.”207 The winter workshop is corroborated by the minutes an October 1973

TENAZ Coordinating Committee meeting, during which Valdez announced a workshop beginning in December of that year and continuing in January and February of the next.208 In the same meeting, the Coordinating Council passed a resolution to make the organizing of such workshops TENAZ’s responsibility.209

In 1974, the Teatro Campesino summer workshops took a significant turn. By this time, the company had begun the purchase of forty acres of land in San Juan Bautista, with plans to build their cultural center and institute communal living. While the winter workshop was under way, Valdez, who was by this time serving as TENAZ’s Workshop Representative, announced that the Teatro Campesino was planning a two-month spring workshop that would “contain work on the land that” the company had purchased.210 Lack of housing limited the number of participants, but Valdez warned that any who attended should “be prepared to do a lot of hard work.”211 Minutes from an undated Coordinating Committee report show that, while Valdez and others were working with representatives from the Mark Taper Forum to host a Chicano Theatre

Workshop in Los Angeles, the two-month summer workshop in San Juan Bautista was to “be

206 Ibid., 183.

207 “El Teatro Campesino,” Theatre Communications Group Theatre Profiles 1 (1973), 65-66.

208 Minutes, TENAZ Coordinating Committee Meeting, October 10, 1973, p 5, MSS 142, UCSD, B43 F14.

209 Ibid., 8.

210 “Recorded Minutes of TENAZ Co-ordinating Council Meeting, February 2-3, 1974,” 1974, n.p., MSS 142,

UCSD, B44 F4.

211 Ibid. 211 devoted mainly with [sic] the working of Land, etc.”212 The same document records a suggestion that “all Teatros should not depend on one Teatro for its summer workshop,” accompanied by a suggested “2 month regional Workshop.”213 Another document includes Valdez’s report as

Workshop Representative, in which he reiterates the invitation to “people who are willing to come share our lives, work, and spend 24 hours doing teatro (and maybe learning to act before a film camera).”214 Other directors supported this idea. According to Huerta, “the two summer workshops had … effectively demonstrated an alternative way of life to the participants” so that not only did “the majority of workshop alumni become members of El Teatro Campesino,” but the work of “such physical tasks as tilling the soil and beginning construction of the Centro

Campesino Cultural” seemed a worthwhile endeavor.215 Since “the Centro Campesino [would] be the virtual home of TENAZ,” Huerta wrote that year, the directors supported teatro members working on its construction so that it could benefit everyone.216

As I noted in Chapter II, El Teatro Campesino ended its TENAZ membership after the

1975 festival. Though the company continued to offer workshops, and though outside participants continued to attend, such workshops were often geared towards creating their own work. Additionally, El Teatro Campesino offered workshops outside of San Juan. Valdez held a two-day workshop at the Mark Taper Forum in January of 1974, “sharing ideas and examining

212 “TENAZ Coordinating Committee Report,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F7.

213 Ibid.

214 Minutes, TENAZ Coordinating Committee Meeting, 1974, B44, F9.

215 Huerta, “The Evolution of Chicano Theater,” 183.

216 Ibid. 212 techniques used by the Campesino.”217 El Teatro Campesino announced fall and winter workshops in 1977, inviting “actors, playwrights, directors, musicians, singers and technicians” who might ultimately participate in the company’s productions.218 These are but a small sample of workshops the company continued to offer. A variety of documents in the Teatro Campesino’s archives reveal that it offered workshops to teatros, school groups, and other organizations throughout the country at least through the 1980s.219

Documents from Huerta’s archived papers show that TENAZ workshops also continued in a variety of forms. While some felt in 1974 that El Teatro Campesino’s workshops provided a unique experience in terms of a teatro “life style,” and that workshops in other locations did not typically afford enough time for such learning, it was determined “that it was very important to have an official TENAZ workshop with as many people attending” as possible.220 The emphasis of these workshops, some argued, should be on skills rather than on lifestyle.221 In October of

1974, TENAZ members were encouraged to attend workshops with the San Francisco Mime

Troupe, as well as a six-week workshop with Adrian Vargas and Teatro de La Gente in San Jose that culminated each week in free community performances.222 Vibiana Chamberlin, of Teatro de los Niños, noted that she and a colleague had been working with an outside improvisation

217 “A two day workshop…” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), January 16, 1974.

218 “El Teatro to hold workshop in San Juan Bautista,” Evening Freelance (Hollister, CA), October 12, 1977.

219 See CEMA 5, USCB, Series 15: Organizational Papers: External and Individual Groups.

220 Minutes, “TENAZ Coordinating Committee Meeting, November 24-25, 1973,” 5.

221 Ibid.

222 “Recorded minutes of the Co-ordinating Council Meeting, September 7 & 8, 1974,” p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B44

F10. 213 group.223 A memo from 1974 shows some attempt to coordinate a summer workshop in conjunction with the Farm Workers Union, but no details exist regarding whether those plans came to fruition. Another undated set of meeting minutes reveals that the Southern California region of TENAZ attended three workshops ranging from two days to one week and conducted by a troupe from Venezuela, Robert Alexander from Washington, DC’s Living Stage, and

Augusto Boal.224

Announcements and schedules of such workshops are scattered throughout various archives and indicate an ongoing interest in training among TENAZ’s leadership and its member teatros. In some cases, the workshops were organized and conducted by teatros. In others, guests were brought in or teatro members attended workshops elsewhere. As time passed, more and more of these opportunities came from sources outside TENAZ’s membership. Training began to expand even beyond techniques seen as specific to Chicanx theatre. One Southern California regional newsletter as early as 1973 features a recommended reading list that includes books by

Viola Spolin, Jerzy Grotowski, and Konstantin Stanislavsky.225 Though the primary focus remained within, practitioners were increasingly encouraged to broaden their training. A 1976 letter from Luis Oropeza, then Vice-Chairperson of TENAZ, suggests that

some sort of regular study and training, should be part of the activity of each teatro and

should take place on some sort of regular basis. Teatros should first use those people

who, within our people are able to provide training and then make use individuals [sic],

223 Ibid., 2.

224 Hank Fernandez, Southern California Regional TENAZ Report, November 24-25, MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F10.

225 “Newsletter: So. Califas Region of TENAZ,” 1973, n.p., MSS 142, UCSD, B44 F1. 214

universities and centers.226

As late as 1978, TENAZ was still working to reformulate its training goals, which at that time included “rotating workshop [sic] sponsored by TENAZ, hosted by different teatros.”227 There was even discussion at this time of creating a “teatro academia,” though the details of such an institution are unclear and the idea was never realized.228

Conclusion

Acting workshops for Latinx actors certainly did not stop with the dissolution of TENAZ.

I will address two ways in which this training continued in the next two chapters, and how it continues still today in the subsequent conclusion to this dissertation. What I have hoped to demonstrated in this chapter is the way in which Chicanx and Latinx theatre companies and practitioners banded together, especially in the 1970s, to engage in significant actor training that

1) was not necessarily available to them by other means, 2) focused specifically on the skills needed for performing teatro, and 3) ultimately broadened to include mainstream training topics and techniques. While this training began in publication, it quickly came to be offered through performance critique and, most significantly, through acting workshops offered in various ways over the course of the 1970s. Although El Teatro Campesino’s summer and winter workshops have been written about by Huerta, Broyles-Gonzalez, and others, my archival research has uncovered an extensive network of workshops offered through TENAZ and its member teatros both during and outside of its annual and biannual festivals. This revelation both expands and

226 Letter, Luis Oropeza to “Compañeros,” January 31, 1976, MSS 142, UCSD, B45 F14.

227 “Projected Goals of the Next Two Years Determined by Realistic Priorities,” October 28, 1978, MSS 142,

UCSD, B47 F2.

228 Ibid. 215 deepens understandings of the Chicanx theatre movement beyond what has previously been written about its political aims and accomplishments. An investigation of actor training in the

Chicanx theatre movement reveals additional complexity in Chicanx theatre and lends strong support to my contention that such training is an important part of US theatre history.

Though TENAZ and its workshops may have drawn to a close in the 1980s, they spurred continued interest in Latinx actor training. As that decade gave way to the 1990s and TENAZ’s influence began to wane, more and more Chicanx and Latinx artists would follow the path described by Oropeza, turning to “individuals, universities and centers” outside the Chicanx theatre movement. Though TENAZ had built and maintained an infrastructure of actor training for nearly a decade, many members seem to have taken to heart Oropeza’s suggestion that

“individuals should pursue any degrees, credentials or certificates”229 that might enable them to teach within the teatro community. As noted earlier in this chapter, Huerta has observed that the late 1970s and the early 1980s saw an increase in the number of Chicanx and Latinx artists entering the academy for formal theatrical training. Others sought out professional training. One of the professional programs some of these artists found is at the center of Chapter IV. One of the academic programs is at the center of Chapter V. At the center of both is Jorge Huerta.

229 Letter, Luis Oropeza to “Compañeros,” January 31, 1976. 216

CHAPTER IV: TEATRO META: A GOAL WITHOUT BORDERS

In 1980, the California Council for the Humanities (CCH) awarded a $500 planning grant to San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre for the purpose of exploring a possible project in Mexican-

American Theatre.1 Specifically, the Old Globe wanted to create “a theatre piece on issues affecting the Hispanic and Anglo cultures in the border region of Southern California.”2 The idea for such a project had been in Old Globe Executive Producer Craig Noel’s mind for several years, since a 1974 school tour of The Taming of the Shrew. “I suddenly realized,” Noel told The

San Diego Union in 1982, “that 75 percent of the kids in one school at San Ysidro didn’t even speak English. And we were playing Shakespeare to them!”3 At that time, Noel hired William

Virchis, Artistic Director of Theatre Arts at Southwestern College in nearby Chula Vista, to translate the play into Spanish—but he envisioned something much more expansive. “I’ve always felt it would be interesting,” he said, “to develop a bilingual company which could perform in English, Spanish, or both … I envision developing playwrights who will do for this area what Preston Jones did with The Texas Trilogy or what many playwrights have done for the

1 Handwritten Notes, “7/6 Teatro Meta,” July 6, 1981, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews,

1981-1982,” Box 310, Old Globe Theatre Records, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and information Access, San Diego State University. Since the library’s preferred citation for this archive requires the folder name instead of the folder number, subsequent first citations from this archive will follow this format:

Handwritten Notes, “7/6 Teatro Meta,” July 6, 1981, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews,

1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. See also Letter, Craig Noel to Dr. Bruce Sievers, October

24, 1980, Jorge Huerta Papers, MSS 142, Special Collections and Archives, UCSD, B52 F7.

2 Ibid.

3 “Globe Moves Its Border,” The San Diego Union (San Diego, CA), July 16, 1982. 217

South.”4 The CCH grant proposal was the first major step towards making Noel’s vision a reality.

The project on which Noel, Virchis, and Jorge Huerta embarked in late 1981 would eventually grow into Teatro Meta, which would later be described as a “bilingual component of the Old Globe Theatre.”5 Teatro Meta would last, in some form, from its inception in 1980 until the early 1990s. During this time, it would undergo several transformations in purpose, practice and product. In this chapter, I explore those transformations. More specifically, I examine the ways in which Teatro Meta sought to provide training for Latinx6 actors and its successes and failures in doing so. To my knowledge, this chapter represents the first extended account not only of Teatro Meta’s actor training efforts, but of its existence.

This chapter relies primarily on my research in the Old Globe Theatre’s archived Teatro

Meta papers, which are housed at San Diego State University; the work here is supplemented by my research in the El Teatro Campesino Archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in Huerta’s archived papers at the University of California, San Diego. I begin my exploration of Teatro Meta with a brief overview of its first few years, up to the point when it adopted the training of actors and other theatre artists as one of its primary goals. From there, I explore the different avenues through which the program explored training for both adult and

4 Ibid. The article continues: “The late Preston Jones’ three plays about rural Texas, including The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, are widely credited with stirring the same sense of regional identity in Texas that earlier playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Lillian Hellman did for the rest of the South.”

5 Program, Los Truncos/The Fanlights, 1983, CEMA 5, UCSB, S15 B19 F24.

6 As a reminder, I will use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latinx” somewhat interchangeably in this chapter and the next.

I will use the first term when quoting primary sources or referring to programs that used the name in the 1970s and

1980s. In my own analysis, I will use the more current “Latinx.” 218 youth actors. Along the way, I address Teatro Meta’s shifting goals, along with the various populations it sought to reach. Ultimately, I argue that a lack of clarity and continuity in both areas, along with the disintegration of the Chicanx movement and the program’s subsequent capitulation to assimilationist ideas of integration and “mainstreaming,” led to the program’s demise.

Before I turn my attention to Teatro Meta, it is important to clarify the context in which the came into being. As Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez has noted, the 1980s was a time of professionalization for Latinx theatre artists.7 In this process, which might also be termed a

“mainstreaming” of Latinx artists, focus shifted from the collective creation-based efforts aimed at asserting and affirming various Latinx identities (what Sandoval-Sánchez describes as the many legs of an octopus8) that defined El Teatro Campesino and other Chicanx teatros to an emphasis on moving individual Latinx theatre artists into the commercialized world of Anglo-

American regional theatre.9 In many ways, Sandoval-Sánchez’s interpretation of this period has been the prevailing one. As Jon Rossini and Patricia Ybarra have pointed out, longstanding accounts of Latinx theatre history treat the 1980s as “a decade of professionalization and visibility, where Latino theater moved from the margin to the mainstream, with more attention to individual playwrights than collectives, alongside a rise in funding for multicultural projects in

7 Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, José, Can You See? Latinos On and Off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1999), 118-119.

8 Ibid., 103.

9 Ibid., 107. 219 professional regional theatres.”10 Rossini and Ybarra argue against this historiographic view, suggesting that it supports an artificial and neoconservative account of US Latinx history steeped in false ideas of progress and a movement towards equality by the end of the twentieth century.11

I want to indulge in this historiographic model, however, not as an attempt to refute Rossini and

Ybarra’s argument, but to further expose the model’s fallaciousness. According to Sandoval-

Sánchez, much of the professionalization process was predicated on eliminating the emphasis of

“the barrio experience and political/social agenda” that had characterized the Chicanx Theatre

Movement12 and on the “crossing over [of Latinx artists] in order to cater to Anglo-American audiences in English only.”13 I argue, through a chronological examination of Teatro Meta’s changing goals, that the professionalization and “mainstreaming” processes in which the program engaged represented not a trajectory of progress and equality, but one of assimilation and erasure.

Much of what happened in Latinx theatre in the 1980s is closely tied to what Arlene

Dávila has identified as “the homogenization of a heterogeneous population into a single

‘Latino’ market” that began with federal agencies’ establishment of the “Hispanic” identity category in the 1970s.14 In this process of homogenization, the many legs of Sandoval-Sánchez’s octopus were/are brought together under the “Hispanic” category. Thus, although as Cherríe

10 Jon D. Rossini and Patricia Ybarra, “Neoliberalism, Historiography, Identity Politics: Toward a New

Historiography of Latino Theater,” Radical History Review, no. 112 (Winter 2012), 163.

11 Ibid.

12 Sandoval-Sánchez, José, Can You See, 119.

13 Ibid., 118.

14 Arlene Dávila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2001), 2-8. 220

Moraga points out, “US Latinos represent the whole spectrum of color and class,”15 these heterogeneous populations, each with its own distinct origins, cultures, and traditions, have been conflated and given the term “Hispanic.” According to Dávila, this conflation creates out of smaller, disparate groups, one larger market to which the US marketing industry can appeal.

1980s US regional theatre was not immune to the desire to conflate Latinx populations under one umbrella term. Jorge Huerta has suggested that successful productions of Latinx plays in the 1970s led “mainstream” (read: Anglo?) theatre companies “to show an interest in what

Chicanos and Latinos were writing” and to begin producing their plays.16 Citing a desire to

“build a Latino audience, eager to bite into the Latino dollar,”17 Huerta calls into question not only who can and should produce Latinx plays, but their motivations in doing so. Reiterating that

“Chicanos are not Cubans, that Puerto Ricans are not Dominicans,18 that Latin America is as varied in cultures as the English-speaking world,” Huerta calls upon Anglo theatres to be clear about their motives and vigilant in their self-education when it comes to engaging such work.

While he does not directly say so, some of Huerta’s essay is likely informed by his central role in the Old Globe’s Teatro Meta program. Having been active in the Chicanx theatre movement through TENAZ, El Teatro de la Esperanza, and a student teatro he founded at the

University of California, San Diego, Huerta brought to Teatro Meta a distinctly Chicanx and

15 Cherríe Moraga, “Art in America, Con Acento,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 12 No. 3, 1992, 156.

16 Jorge Huerta, “Looking for the Magic: Chicanos in the Mainstream” in Negotiating Performance: Gender,

Sexuality, & Theatricality in Latin/o America, eds. Diana Taylor and Jan Villegas (Durham: Duke University Press,

1994), 38.

17 Ibid., 45.

18 Ibid., 47. 221 teatro-based mentality. What began as a project designed to engage Chicanx artists in telling

Chicanx stories for both Chicanx and Anglo audiences, however¸ would eventually evolve into a program designed to bring “Hispanic” actors into the Old Globe’s mainstage season, much of which remained Anglo in nature. In some ways, the story of Teatro Meta offers a case study of the arguments made by Dávila and Ybarra and Rossini. This chapter is an attempt to chronicle the program’s trajectory in those terms.

Teatro Meta: Beginnings

According to its own published historical narrative, “the Old Globe Theatre was built in

1935 for the presentation of abridged versions of Shakespeare’s plays as part of the California

Pacific International Exhibition.”19 Craig Noel, who would go on to become the theatre’s

Executive Director and who would eventually oversee the creation of Teatro Meta, performed in the theatre’s first post-exposition production in 1937. Although the theatre would open the

Cassius Carter Centre Stage, “an intimate space devoted to the production of new and experimental theatre” in 1969,20 its production output has remained overwhelmingly Anglo in heritage since that time.21

Planning for the project that would eventually become Teatro Meta began in what

19 “History,” The Old Globe Theatre, http://www.theoldglobe.org/about-the-globe-/history/, Accessed November 1,

2019.

20 Ibid.

21 “The Old Globe Production History,” The Old Globe Theatre, https://www.theoldglobe.org/globalassets/pdfs/globe-pdfs/production-list.pdf?id=23620, Accessed November 1,

2019. 222

Patricia Ybarra has described as “the wake of US Chicano cultural nationalism.”22 Ignacio

García agrees, describing the Chicanx Movement as “starting in the early 1960s and ending in the late 1970s.”23 Like Ybarra, Carlos Muñoz sees globalization as partly responsible for the shift away from the Chicanx nationalism that characterized the work of Luis Valdez, El Teatro

Campesino, and TENAZ, noting in 2007 that

When the Chicano Movement emerged, there were only three visible Latino/a groups in

the nation, with Mexican Americans the overwhelming majority. The other two groups

were the Puerto Ricans and Cubans. There are now seventeen distinct Latino/a groups as

a result of globalization.24

As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, and as the shifts in thought and practice among groups like

El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ described in Chapters II and III occurred, notions of Chicanx cultural nationalism subsided in favor of the broader and more unified pan-Latinx identity described by Dávila. While this shift was only somewhat apparent in the early days of Teatro

Meta, it eventually came to define the project in significant and often detrimental ways.

With the initial planning grant from the CCH, Craig Noel hosted a group of “scholars and community representatives” at two meetings in December of 1980 and February of 1981 “to identify together the most compelling issues affecting the border region and to determine what

22 Patricia A. Ybarra, Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,

2018), 10.

23 Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos Among Mexican Americans (Tucson: The

University of Arizona Press, 1997), 3.

24 Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement, Revised and Expanded Edition (New York:

Verso, 2007), 7. 223 issues [would] be the most appropriate for a dramatic presentation.”25 Attendees, including

Huerta and Virchis, discussed themes, specific issues, and theatrical styles that might be appropriate for such a project.26 Ultimately, the group decided to assemble a call for dramatic

“treatments of San Diego as a border region,” compile a list of potential playwrights, and investigate funding possibilities for a project designed to communicate border issues to “as wide an audience as possible, including Anglos, Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, etc.”27 The work was to proceed “improvisationally, with actors”; interestingly, the group cited the musicals Working and A Chorus Line as models for this work, rather than the collective creations of El Teatro

Campesino and those teatro groups with which Huerta had been involved.28

By July of 1981, Old Globe Special Projects Director Tom Corcoran had drafted a budget breakdown for the project that anticipated an additional contribution of $8,000 from the CCH for a total budget of just over $20,000.29 The budget included salaries for a project director, a writer/literary advisor, a dramaturg, a director, secretarial expenses, and fees for Old Globe staff members Noel, James Beall, and Bill Eaton, whose work was described as “Public Relations.”30

Other line items indicate plans for travel, office expenses, promotional materials, and production

25 Letter, Craig Noel to Dr. Bruce Sievers, October 24, 1983, p. 3, MSS 142, UCSD, B52 F7.

26 Meeting Minutes, “Old Globe Theatre/California Council for the Humanities Planning Meeting One,” December

18, 1980,” MSS 142, UCSD, B52 F7 and Meeting Minutes, “Old Globe Theatre Planning Meeting Two,” February

2, 1981, MSS 142, UCSD, B52 F7.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Tom Corcoran, Revised Budget Breakdown,” July 21, 1981, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials,

Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

30 Ibid. 224 costs.

Aside from Huerta, who brought to the table his experience in the teatro techniques at the center of Chapters I, II, and III, the early Teatro Meta staff members came from the San Diego academic and artistic communities. A contract dated January 13, 1982 provides the earliest details of the project’s planned scope and nature. According to this document, University of

California, San Diego (UCSD) graduate student Felipe Zatarain31 was engaged as a

“researcher/writer” from January 1 to February 15 of that year.32 Zatarain was tasked with gathering information, through interviews and other means of contact with community organizations and individuals, on San Diego’s primarily Chicanx Barrio Logan neighborhood.33

In addition to collecting “a verbal history of sociological, economic, political and personal views of persons with whom the Barrio Logan and its development [had] played a part,” Zatarain was contracted to work with Corcoran, Huerta, and a dramaturg “on the evolution of a dramatic theatre piece to be created from the verbal and written history which [he was] compiling.”34 The contract further notes that the nature of the resultant piece had not yet been determined and was to arise from Zatarain’s research.35 Huerta was to work as director, along with Virchis, who had previous ties to the Old Globe as an actor, a director, and a valuable recruiter of college-aged

31 According to Don Braunagel, “‘Over Easy’ is a fine start for bilingual theater group,” San Diego Evening Tribune

(San Diego, CA), October 11, 1982, D-6.

32 Contract/Letter, Thomas Hall to Felipe Zatarain, January 13, 1982, p. 1, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional

Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid. 225 actors.36 At some point in the process, the Old Globe also engaged Stephen Most, a San Diego native and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago, as playwright.37 Most had experience as both a writer and a dramaturg, and had worked since 1979 with the Dell’Arte

School of Mime & Comedy in Northern California.38

Most was responsible for what Old Globe Managing Director Tom Hall described as a

“scenario development white paper” for the project,39 which likely refers to an archival document titled “Toward a Teatro de la Frontera” (Toward a Theatre of the Border) and subtitled a “Concept Paper & Action Plan.”40 Most’s action plan represents a series of brainstormed possibilities for what a Mexican-American theatre project might include. In some ways, it recalls the work of El Teatro Campesino and other teatro groups:

Expressionistic Documentary. Presentational Style. Episodes with music, songs. Comedy

physical & verbal. Visual design which creates & carves space, sets up surprises.

Spectacle: Seven actors: four women, three men; three generations. Narrator telling

stories of people’s lives. The stories form a bridge of lives spanning time. Stage changes

transport us to their scenes. The world changes yet remains the same. Recurrent bits &

36 Letter, Craig Noel to Ann Stevenson, March 19, 1982, p. 1, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials,

Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

37 Stephen Most, “Vita,” Undated, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310,

Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

38 Ibid.

39 Memo, Tom Corcoran to Jack O’Brien and Tom Hall, July 7, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional

Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

40 “Toward a Teatro de la Frontera,” May 28, 1982, p. 1, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials,

Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. 226

themes with connecting narration.41

In a section labeled “Music,” Most lists a variety of Mexican styles and elements that similarly harken back to the Chicanx theatre movement: “corrido with narration,” popular songs with satirical new lyrics “as in carpa,” mariachi, and “instrumental background for myth and dream sequences.”42 The latter note references “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as well as “musica del indio.”43 Most goes on to suggest that the ensemble that would ultimately work on the piece should “consider various forms [and] sequences of dramatic events” to tell the stories of the

Barrio Logan; “since the work is a collaboration,” he writes, “it’s best to keep available a range of possibilities to choose from.”44 The influence of Valdez and the Teatro Campesino is clear. It is also possible that Most’s plan of action was influenced by Huerta, who had been a key figure in both TENAZ and the teatro movement overall. These influences are further demonstrated by

Most’s references to figures like the pelado and the vendido, and his suggestion that the stories gathered by Zatarain might be retold in ways that parallel “indigenous mythology.”45

With additional funding from the CCH, staff members worked to shape the project through much of 1982.46 The name “Teatro Meta” first appears in a memo from Corcoran to

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., 3.

45 Ibid., 2-3.

46 “Proposed Production Budget: Mexican-American Project Phase II,” May 28, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence,

Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. 227

Noel in June of that year, which explains that meta “means boundary, goal, aim, summit.”47

Corcoran, Huerta, and Virchis chose the name because of its capacity “to fill many concepts and connotations.”48 An undated draft of a public statement about the project indicates that the name

“was chosen by the Old Globe Theatre to illustrate it’s [sic] commitment to reaching the area’s many Spanish-speaking residents.”49 The document goes on to argue that “the vision of Teatro

Meta is that of an unprecedented theatrical forum of exchange spanning the four US and five

Mexican states that comprise our international border.”50 As to the kind of work the group planned to do, and the hoped-for effect:

The goal will be to tell a story: the story of borders. Borders of the mind, and more

tangible borders. Borders we as people face and cross each day. Teatro Meta believes that

through theatre we can be transported to or from, above or beyond all borders, real or

imagined, to a summit. A summit of appreciation, of empathy and understanding. Teatro

Meta is a goal without borders.51

A more formalized document from the same year adds the word “aspiration” to meta’s meanings and articulates a more specific and elaborate set of goals:

It will be the goal of the Teatro to reach new audiences with original scripts, popular and

classical plays to be performed in Spanish and English, often mixing both languages. The

47 Memo, Tom Corcoran to Craig Noel, June 2, 1982, p. 1, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials,

Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

48 Ibid.

49 “Old Globe’s: Teatre Meta,” Undated, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,”

B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid. 228

Old Globe is mindful of the rich linguistic and cultural differences that make the Latino

experience in this country unique, and through the theatrical medium will explore the

exchange of cultural events that reflect the lives of Spanish-speaking people on both sides

of the border.52

A 1982 press release added that one of Teatro Meta’s goals was “to provide new creative and performing opportunities for Chicano theatre artists.”53 The document describes Teatro Meta as a

“pilot program” and expresses a hope that it would “plant the seeds for the establishment of an ongoing Chicano theatre wing as part of the Globe’s regular professional operations.”54 Noel relies on the imagery provided by San Diego’s Coronado Bridge to describe the planned function of Teatro Meta: “As the bridge of Barrio Logan links different worlds, so Teatro Meta will serve as another bridge between the cultural and historical differences that the people of the border region struggle to understand in day-to-day life.”55

These early documents reveal a tension that would come to characterize Teatro Meta in many ways. As noted previously, the initial planning meetings addressed questions regarding the project’s target audience. Though Huerta argued that the audience should be as wide as possible, other comments in the notes from those two meetings focused heavily on “directing a production

52 “Teatro Meta,” Undated, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old

Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

53 Press Release, “Teatro Meta,” June 30, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-

1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid. 229 towards the Chicano experience,” focusing on “the conflict between Chicanos and Mexicans,”56 and addressing the fact that “Hispanics are all lumped together, but they have separate cultures.”57 Additionally, some consideration was given not to whether the playwright should be

Latinx but, more specifically, whether they should be Chicanx or Anglo.58 Such comments show the kind of conscious effort to delineate between Chicanx and other Latinx identities that often characterized the Chicanx movement and its rootedness in cultural nationalism. Much of this is buttressed by the project’s focus on the US-Mexico border and the primarily Mexican/Chicanx

Barrio Logan. The documents described in the last few pages, however, often gesture towards a broader focus. Although Noel mentions “Chicano theatre artists,” the documents also refer more generally to “Spanish-speaking residents” and “the Latino experience.” Though I do not mean to suggest any particular intent behind these statements, they begin to display a kind of conflation of Chicanx and other Latinx identities that one might associate with globalization. As Suzanne

Oboler has pointed out, many disparate ethnic and racial identities sharing Latin American and

Spanish descent came together under the abstract, state-sanctioned umbrella term “Hispanic” in the 1970s.59 The term “Latino” later “[emerged] among grassroots sectors of the population, coined as a progressive alternative to the state-imposed bureaucratic label Hispanic.”60 As this

56 Meeting Minutes, “Old Globe Theatre/California Council for the Humanities Planning Meeting One,” December

18, 1980, pp. 1-2, MSS 142, UCSD, B52 F7.

57 Ibid., 2.

58 Ibid., 4 and Meeting Minutes, “Old Globe Theatre Planning Meeting Two,” February 2, 1981, p. 1, MSS 142,

UCSD, B52 F7.

59 Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), xii.

60 Ibid., viii. 230 chapter will demonstrate, Teatro Meta documents variously used the terms Chicano, Hispanic,

Latino, and “Spanish-speaking” to describe the artists and audiences it sought to address. This kind of conflation of terms would inform Teatro Meta’s trajectory on a variety of levels.

This tension remains apparent when one examines the first Teatro Meta production project. Virchis remarked at the time that “little dramatic material [had] been written about the

Chicano experience.”61 Huerta spoke more broadly, recalling Valdez’s desire to express human themes and experiences through Chicanx stories:

It will be the meta of Teatro Meta to dramatize such stories in the manner that will be

good theatre, and through theatre, to express the universality of the hopes, memories, and

aspirations of the Chicano, Mexican, and North American experience in San Diego and

the border region.62

Like the work Valdez and the Teatro Campesino ensemble did with Pensamiento Serpentino and

Theatre of the Sphere, Huerta’s comments speak to the idea of addressing universal problems and solutions through the Chicanx experience. The casting call reflected Huerta’s desire to move more universally, calling for “bi-lingual, cross-cultural actors for a work-in-progress to be developed over the summer months.”63 Though the notice does not specify the exact number of actors needed, it indicates a desire for male and female actors from ages nine to seventy.64 A press release from September of that year describes the company as bilingual, but gives no

61 Press Release, “Teatro Meta,” June 30, 1982.

62 Ibid.

63 Casting Notice, June 30, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310,

Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

64 Ibid. 231 further details of its makeup.65

The September press release announced six performances, described as “public previews” sponsored by the Old Globe, Southwestern College , and the University of California,

San Diego (UCSD), where Huerta taught.66 Performances were divided between Southwestern

College, San Diego High School, and UCSD.67 By this time, the piece had been given the title

Over Easy, or las aventuras del Huevo. Though the archives include no script for Over Easy, production reviews and other archival documents provide key information. A 1982 Old Globe

Newsletter described the piece as an “imaginative work-in-progress” that “follows the travels of its picaresque hero, Huevo, from Mexico to San Diego’s Barrio Logan.”68 “Inspired by the murals in Chicano Park,” the story reads, “Huevo tells the story of his adventures with the humor and fantasy characteristic of Latin American cultures.”69 Here again, the developing tension between the specificity of the Chicanx identity and the vagueness of “Latin American cultures” comes to bear. The story of Over Easy is essentially an allegory for the rise of the Chicanx; but, according to Noel, it is told in a “Latin American” way. In the same article, Noel expressed a

“hope that from the project [would] come not only Chicano actors of high caliber, but also playwrights to write of the Southern California experience.”70 Unwittingly, Noel expresses in this one sentence an underlying conflict that would trouble Teatro Meta for the next few years.

65 Press Release, “Teatro Meta Sets Dates for Public Previews,” September 13, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence,

Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 “Teatro Meta Debuts,” The Herald, October/November 1982, p. 1, CEMA 5, UCSB, S15, B19, F24.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 1, 4. 232

Reviews of Over Easy are highly informative. Dan Braunagel’s review for The Tribune provides a slightly more detailed summary of the plot than did the Old Globe newsletter:

The play—an allegorical fantasy, as one of its creators described it—comprises an hour

or so of short episodes depicting the odyssey of Huevo, a young Baja Mexican, circa

1970, who wants to go to Los Angeles and find a job. He crosses the border illicitly

several times, but is continually thwarted by US authorities until he finally weds a US

citizen and settles happily into San Diego’s Barrio Logan.71

Braunagel’s review reveals that “a crowd of about 400” attended the final Over Easy performance at UCSD.72 Braunagel describes the play as mostly humorous, though he indicates that it dealt with serious issues in satirical fashion. His assessment of the piece is somewhat mixed. He sees it as “clearly a labor of love, with all the attendant pluses and minuses.”73 He characterizes the finished product as “simplistic, inconsistent and a mélange of styles, with an artificially happy ended tacked on”; nonetheless, he ultimately describes it as “a significant first step for Teatro Meta.”74 He concludes by suggesting, perhaps optimistically, that the play could

“encourage the study of Spanish among those Anglophones who see the play, if only to understand the ribald puns on Huevo’s name.”75 A review by Thor Kamban Biberman also addresses the language issue. Biberman criticizes the project as potentially confusing to disparate audiences with differing cultural competencies, but he also encourages audiences to attend and to

71 Braunagel, “‘Over Easy.’”

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid. 233 help shape the play’s future by participating in post-show discussions.76

The idea of Teatro Meta and Over Easy was not universally popular. Before the premise and performances of the show were announced, the bilingual Latinx publication La Prensa San

Diego published criticism of the piece. An August 1982 issue of the newspaper featured a letter from Victor Contreras, written in response to a previously published article “attacking the efforts of the Old Globe theatre in relationship to a play centering in on Logan Heights.”77 Contreras urged La Prensa and its readership to support such projects, since “Chicano Theatre efforts have never received such support in the professional theatre world.”78 Projects like the Old Globe’s, he argued, were necessary if Latinx artists were to move beyond stereotyped roles.79 The original

La Prensa article, which I was not able to locate, is not the only indication that the project received some backlash. A copy of the story describing Teatro Meta’s goals in the Old Globe’s

1981 newsletter appears in the El Teatro Campesino archives. The phrase “the establishment of a bi-lingual theatre involving closer ties with our Mexican neighbors” has been underlined; in the margin, someone has penciled in the question, “WHY?” 80 In October of 1982, an editorial in La

Prensa San Diego offered perhaps the harshest criticism the program received, calling Over Easy

“but the first of many salvos that will be fired between establishment ‘theatre’ groups and

76 Thor Kamban Biberman, “Teatro Meta: Over Easy Or Las Aventuras Del Huevo,” Unnamed Publication,

September 30, 1982, “Budgets, Correspondence, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1981-1982,” B310, Old Globe

Theatre Records, SDSU.

77 Victor Contreras, “Teatro Meta,” La Prensa San Diego (San Diego, CA), August 13, 1982. Logan Heights is a

San Diego neighborhood adjacent to and often paired/interchanged with the Barrio Logan.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 “O’Brien to Join Noel at Artistic Helm,” The Herald, February 1981, CEMA 5, UCSB, S15 B19 F24. 234

‘Chicano’ artists.”81 The editorial criticized the CCH for funding an Anglo theatre rather than a

Chicanx teatro to do Chicanx work, San Diego Union critic Welton Jones for failing to acknowledge the historical contributions of Chicanx artists, and the implication in Teatro Meta’s very existence at the Old Globe that “any presentation by Chicano artists was of course ‘un- professional.’”82 In the minds of some, then, Teatro Meta stood not alongside the Chicanx theatre movement in advancing the political and artistic concerns of Chicanxs, but in opposition to it.

For these individuals, the Old Globe’s project did not honor the work of El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ, but in some ways served to erase it. Even in the face of such biting criticism, however, Teatro Meta continued its work.

The program’s next effort, a generally well-received production of Los Soles Truncos or

The Fanlights by René Marqués, which Huerta and Virchis described variously as Teatro Meta’s

“inaugural production”83 and its “first professional production,”84 offers a glimpse at some of

Teatro Meta’s changing aims. An handwritten document from 1983 includes previously articulated goals of showcasing new plays, providing subscribers with “alternative experiences,” and addressing “social and political problems.”85 Whereas Marqués’s play satisfies Teatro

Meta’s desire to provide audiences with an opportunity “to witness theatrical productions performed in Spanish,” it does not meet the program’s goals of developing playwrights and

81 “Chicano Teatro…vs…Old Globe Productions,” La Prensa San Diego (San Diego, CA), October 1, 1982, n.p.

82 Ibid.

83 Program, Los Truncos/The Fanlights, 1983.

84 Letter, from Jorge Huerta to “Theatre Colleague,” November 23, 1983, CEMA 5, UCSD, S15, B19, F24.

85 Handwritten Notes, “Mission Statement,” Undated, “Budgets, Correspondence, Committee Meeting Minutes,

Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. 235 showcasing new works. Unlike Over Easy, which was an original piece forged of a collective creation process, both Marqués and The Fanlights had seen previous success. An August 1983 report to the Old Globe’s executive committee describes Marqués as “a critically acclaimed

Latino playwright.”86 In an August 1983 press release, Noel argued that The Fanlights “is not only one of Marqués’s best, but it ranks among the most successful of the entire Latin American repertory.”87 Additionally, although Teatro Meta’s production was the first in San Diego, it was not the first in Southern California. The archives include an undated program cover from the play’s “West Coast Premiere” in Los Angeles.”88

The August 1983 report to the executive committee argues that “because the goals of

Teatro Meta are multi-facited [sic], no one production will be able to achieve all of the goals.”89 I argue, however, that The Fanlights skirted most of the company’s early aims. As noted throughout this chapter so far, Teatro Meta was built on the premise that it would address issues specific to the San Diego-Tijuana border region—or, if one wishes to take a broader view, issues of the US-Mexican border region. The choice to produce The Fanlights, however, marks a shift from that initial focus to what was rapidly becoming a focus on broader Hispanic or Latinx issues. Marqués is neither a Mexican nor a Chicanx playwright, but a Puerto Rican one.90

86 “Teatro Meta Report, Executive Committee Meeting,” August 17, 1983, p. 2, “Budgets, Correspondence,

Committee Meeting Minutes, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

87 Press Release, “Teatro Meta Announces Fall Production,” August 8, 1983, “Budgets, Correspondence, Committee

Meeting Minutes, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

88 Program, The Fanlights, “West Coast Premiere,” “Budgets, Correspondence, Committee Meeting Minutes,

Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

89 “Teatro Meta Report, Executive Committee Meeting,” August 17, 1983, 2.

90 Ibid. 236

Additionally, the play itself is set in Puerto Rico.91 Although the executive committee report reiterates an interest in finding “playwrights that can write plays about life in about this area,”92

Teatro Meta’s first major production does not satisfy this goal. A fundraising document distributed before the October production of The Fanlights features no references to Mexican

Americans or to Chicanxs; rather, it relies heavily on the word “Hispanic” to identify the artistic and cultural community the group intended to represent and serve.93 Here again, a growing conflation of Chicanx and Hispanic identities is evident.

Though The Fanlights lost money for the Old Globe,94 it was generally well-received—at least by the primarily Anglo press. The San Diego Union called the production “elegantly produced and exquisitely acted,”95 while the Tribune declared it “powerful and intriguing”96 and the Los Angeles Times described it as “vivid and sensuous.”97 Such praise is especially interesting when contrasted with the way the same publications treated 1982’s Over Easy in their reviews of The Fanlights. The Union described the 1982 production as “rough-hewn.”98 The

91 Press Release, “Teatro Meta Announces Fall Production, August 8, 1943.

92 “Teatro Meta Report, Executive Committee Meeting,” August 17, 1983, 1.

93 Fundraising Document, Undated, “Budgets, Correspondence, Committee Meeting Minutes, Promotional

Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

94 Meeting Minutes, “Teatro Meta Advisory Committee,” December 8, 1983, p. 1, “Budgets, Correspondence,

Committee Meeting Minutes, Promotional Materials, Reviews, 1983,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

95 Welton Jones, “‘Teatro Meta’ offers a stunner,” The San Diego Union (San Diego, CA), October 20, 1983, C-12.

96 Bill Hagen, “Teatro Meta’s ‘Fanlights’ a powerful first,” The Tribune (San Diego, CA), October 20, 1983.

97 Hilliard Harper, “Teatro Meta Serves SD a Substantial Portion,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), October

21, 1983.

98 Jones, “‘Teatro Meta offers a stunner.” 237

Times called it “a quaint, curious, and encouraging little ditty,” and the Tribune didn’t mention it at all. What is perhaps most interesting about these differences is the way in which both productions were compared to Anglo, Eurocentric drama. While the Union’s Welton Jones was somewhat dismissive in his characterization of Over Easy, he praised The Fanlights less for its merit as a Latinx play than for its ability to mimic Anglo drama. “Since both directors are experienced professionals in the more varied and vigorous North American theater,” he said of

Huerta and Virchis, “they have introduced subtleties of staging that serve to lighten the gloom and broaden the play’s appeal.”99 The implication that an inferior Latinx drama has been rescued by Anglo sophistication is hard to miss.

Perhaps the harshest criticism of The Fanlights came, unsurprisingly, from La Prensa

San Diego. While reviewer Sara-Jo Berman praised one actor’s performance, she found the portrayals offered by the remaining cast members lacking in depth and dimension.100 Moreover, she took the Old Globe to task for presenting a piece she viewed as incompatible with its mission and its subscriber base:

The Old Globe has never and will never be known for its contemporary hot issued

performances. It is simply not that kind of theatre. It is for ‘traditional theatre,’ not Teatro

Campesino or La Esparanza [sic], the peoples [sic] theatre. It is primarily an Anglo

theatre and shouldn’t attempt to be anything else.101

She concludes with advice for how Teatro Meta might best move forward:

For Teatro Meta to truly reach its goals it will have to eventually find its own theatre

99 Ibid.

100 Sara-Jo Berman, “Los Soles Truncos,” La Prensa San Diego (San Diego, CA), October 28, 1983, 6.

101 Ibid. 238

where you don’t have an existing reputation to uphold and where you don’t have to pay

$14.00 a ticket for one performance. Then there is a possibility of leaving a performance

with a better understanding of a goal, a summit, and mostly a boundary … A Meta.102

Like the contrasting reviews for Teatro Meta’s first two productions in other publications,

Berman’s review highlights many of the tensions undergirding the project. The questions raised in early planning meetings regarding what kind of work to produce and for what audience(s) were arising once again, this time in response to the project’s output in public arenas— sometimes subtly and other times less so.

My analysis thus far has focused on Teatro Meta’s first two years and its first two productions not because they included actor training as part of their goals or activities, but because they laid a foundation and established a series of patterns that would come to define the program’s efforts to that end. I suggest that, from its beginning, Teatro Meta was marked (though certainly not consciously so) by a sense of confusion arising from the assimilationist tendencies that characterized US Latinx existence during a time of globalization. Like Valdez and the

Teatro Campesino and, to some extent, like TENAZ, Teatro Meta struggled with the tension between its need to stoke the embers of a dying cultural nationalism by asserting the value of a specifically Chicanx identity, and a desire to unite various Latinx peoples in an effort to somehow bridge the gap between those peoples and the Anglo majority. As the program began to pursue of the goal of training Latinx actors, this tension would become more pronounced. Unlike

El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ, Teatro Meta did not concern itself merely with training

Latinx actors for Latinx theatre; rather, it ultimately set a goal of training Latinx actors for Anglo theatre.

102 Ibid. 239

Early Actor Training Efforts

The previously cited, handwritten document from 1983 offers the first evidence that those working on Teatro Meta set a goal for the program related to actor training. On the list of goals articulated in this document, “training of Latinos” appears first.103 An August 1983 report to the executive committee likewise states that “one of the … important goals is to provide the opportunity for latino [sic] performers to play major roles in order to develop their craft.”104

Similarly, notes from a December 1983 advisory committee meeting suggest a “need to do projects year-long in order to develop talents.”105 The same notes indicate that Tom Corcoran had also met with Alessandro Usigli, described as “Mexico’s primere [sic] playwright,” to discuss the latter’s plans “for establishing a Drama School in Tijuana/Mexicali.”106 Together, these documents reveal more than a passing interest in the training of actors.

The Old Globe’s interest in actor training was not limited to Teatro Meta. In the 1980s, it established several programs in addition to the existing Old Globe Educational Tours. Chief among these were the Camp Orbit summer program and the Young Globe Company. Camp

Orbit offered classes for youth in topics including scene study, voice production and speech, dance, improvisation, stage combat, technical crafts and skills, textual analysis, and mime.107

According to a 1984 document, Camp Orbit provided a relaxed, camp-like atmosphere in which

103 Handwritten notes, “Mission Statement,” Undated.

104 “Teatro Meta Report,” August 17, 1983, 2.

105 Meeting Minutes, “Teatro Meta Advisory Committee,” December 8, 1983, 1.

106 Ibid.

107 Flyer, “Camp Orbit: A Total Theatre Camp for Students,” 1983, “Camp Orbit/Real Globe: Overview,

Participants, Schedule, Press, Information Packets,” 1983, 1987, 1991, 2001,” B312, Old Globe Theatre Records,

SDSU. 240 students spent four weeks focused “on trying and doing, not on performing.”108 Attending the camp four days a week from ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, students from ages fourteen to eighteen spent their mornings in small classes in “voice and movement” and “dance, combat, and mime skills,” followed by “an acting class that

[concentrated] on improvisation, character building, scene work, and monologue work.”109

Afternoons were dedicated to training in other aspects of theatre, including time in the prop and costume shops, “as well as demonstrations and workshops held in such areas as lighting, sound, stage management, scenery, make-up, business management, development, public relations, house management, and box office work” conducted by Old Globe staff members and “artists in residence for the summer season.”110 An additional document from 1984 advertises eight-week

Camp Orbit acting workshops for youth that met on Saturdays only, from October to December and from February to April.111

The Young Globe Company, established in 1984 and described as a group “comprised of pre-professional actors and directors,” was touted as “the embodiment of the maestro- apprenticeship relation.”112 Members of the Young Globe Company received salaries for performing smaller roles and understudying leading roles in mainstage productions; in some

108 Press Release, “Camp Orbit,” 1984, “Historical Files, 1934-2008,” Box 311, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

109 Ibid.

110 Ibid.

111 Brochure, “Theatre Arts Training For Youth,” 1984, “Historical Files, 1934-2008,” Box 312, Old Globe Theatre

Records, SDSU.

112 “The Teatro Meta Program, 1986-1988,” October 28, 1985, p. 4, “Enscenarios/Scenarios Translation Project,

Three-Year Plan Outline, Correspondence, 1985,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. 241 cases, they taught for the Old Globe’s education department.113 In addition to their production work, they trained in subjects including the Alexander technique, vocal production and performance, dramaturgy, and audition techniques.114 They also attended “special guest seminars by Globe company members in virtually every area of practical creative and business operations.”115 Between Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Company, the Old Globe was deeply invested in training young and emerging theatre artists. Ultimately, Teatro Meta sought to take advantage of these programs for Latinx artists.

The clearest indication that Teatro Meta leadership developed an interest in training

Latinx actors by 1983 comes in an undated “Proposed Three-Year Plan.”116 Goals listed for the

1984-85 season included “Continued support of Camp Orbit Scholarships in summer” and

“Master Class-level workshops.”117 The first of these goals indicates that some effort had already been made to provide scholarships for Latinx students to participate in the Camp Orbit program.

The second shows a commitment to expanding opportunities for those students. The goals identified for the 1985-86 year included “Continue & Expand Orbit Scholarships in summer,”

“Continue and expand Master-class level workshops (4) per year,” and “Add winter children’s training program (2) week workshop.”118 The final year in the plan continued in the same vein:

“Continue & Expand Camp Orbit scholarships in summer,” “Continue and expand Master class-

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid.

115 Ibid.

116 “Teatro Meta: Proposed Three-Year Plan, Artistic Programs,” Undated, 1.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid. 242 level workshops,” and “Continue & Expand Children workshops in winter to (3) weeks.”119

In 1984, the training of theatre artists—and especially of actors—became a central thrust of Teatro Meta’s mission. Arguing that “since its inception, Teatro Meta has had a very definite purpose: to bring Hispanic theater to San Diego,” a January 1984 document entitled “A Proposal to the Board Regarding a Permanent Old Globe Teatro Meta” suggested that the group needed

“time to develop its audiences, time to develop its artists, and time to develop its material.”120

Despite no mention of training in early documents, the proposal went on to claim that “since its inception, Teatro Meta has recognized the need to train Hispanic theatre artists,” describing the rehearsal and performance process of Over Easy as an early effort to do so.121 Additionally, the proposal suggested that if more Hispanic artists were trained for the theatre, projects like Teatro

Meta might proliferate.

In a significant turn, the twelve-page proposal for a permanent Teatro Meta envisions a program dedicated to training theatre artists. The second half of the document divides Meta’s future into three stages. The first is identified as “the training phase.”122 Working in conjunction

“with local colleges such as Southwestern College and UCSD” and in “arrangement with the community college district,” Teatro Meta was to offer “workshops in acting at the Globe on a continuing basis, ensuring a unique opportunity for bilingual theater aspirants to develop their

119 Ibid., 2.

120 “A Proposal to the Board Regarding a Permanent Old Globe Teatro Meta,” January 24, 1984, pp. 1-4, “Budgets,

Correspondence, Schedule, Proposals, 1984,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

121 Ibid., 5.

122 Ibid., 6. 243 acting talents.”123 Craig Noel had agreed to conduct these workshops, while Virchis and Huerta were to “participate as master teachers along with other guest artists/teachers.”124 Though the workshops would be open to any bilingual actors speaking both English and Spanish, it was

“hoped that the majority of participants would come from the Hispanic community, for these are the people who have been historically been unable to get professional training and/or encouragement in theatre.”125 Here again, the focus of the program seems to have shifted from the specificity of the border/Chicanx experience to the more general empowerment and representation of “Hispanics.”

Stage two of the process was to be dedicated to maintaining the program’s visibility in the community through the production of “non-Equity professional theater outside of the Globe’s plant.”126 The goal of this stage, which the document identifies as tied closely to the training phase,127 seems to have been to give actors the opportunity to apply their first-stage learning in relatively low-stakes productions. Although the proposal was very careful to point out that these non-Equity productions would maintain a professional quality, it also clarified the need to minimize costs and ensure mobility, since the productions would appear not at the Old Globe, but at various spaces in and around San Diego.128

One notable aspect of stage two is that the actors were to gain experience in more than

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid., 7.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid., 8-9. 244 just acting. This was largely due to the budgetary restrictions of the mobile, non-Equity productions. “Because this component would be part of the training phase,” the proposal states,

“production responsibilities might be carried by trainees who are not in the play … Members of the training core would guarantee their commitment to the company by helping in the production’s technical requirements when not in a play.”129 The document offers no detailed description, however, of any training the company members might have received in preparation for fulfilling these technical duties.

The third and final stage proposed in the document was “the Equity production.”130 While a minimum of four non-Equity productions was suggested annually,131 the third stage was intended to continue producing Latinx plays on the same level as the previous year’s The

Fanlights. The authors of the proposal opined that “The Fanlights was the most professionally produced Hispanic play in the country besides the [Los Angeles] Center Theatre Group’s Zoot

Suit.”132 The document praises the work of El Teatro Campesino, but makes note of that group’s

“infrequent productions,” arguing that the success of The Fanlights showed how eager San

Diego audiences were to see Latinx theatre.133

1985 was a significant year for Teatro Meta. Though the program produced little work that was publicly visible, Teatro Meta leaders “devoted 1985 to developing a comprehensive

129 Ibid., 9.

130 Ibid., 11.

131 Ibid., 10.

132 Ibid., 11.

133 Ibid., 11-12. 245 long-range plan for the program.”134 This planning period marked a philosophical shift in Teatro

Meta’s purpose. The aim was no longer the formation of a separate arm of the Old Globe dedicated to showcasing Chicanx or Latinx artists and stories. Rather, “chief among its goals

[was] the integration of the Teatro Meta program into every facet of the Globe’s artistic life.”135

This process, which is frequently described in archival Old Globe and Teatro Meta documents as

“mainstreaming” the program, was to involve incorporating Latinx artists into every aspect of the

Old Globe’s operations—including its efforts in actor training.

A list of “Overall Artistic Goals” from August of 1985 included an intention “to develop and provide for the training of Hispanic artists and to stimulate bi-cultural opportunities in theatre.”136 A “Three-Year Artistic Outline” from the same month included the following item:

Education: to provide an increasing number of scholarships in the Camp Orbit and

Young Globe companies reserved for Hispanic youth. Scholarships will supplant, not add

to, levels of personnel in these programs, and will be available for training in acting,

directing, design, stage management, and other production positions, as well as

administration.137

A more detailed version of the three-year plan, also dated August 1985, provided some elaboration on Latinx involvement in both Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Company. This

134 “Old Globe Theatre Proposal,” February 5, 1986, p. 1, “Correspondence, Grant Information, Proposals,

Committee Meeting Minutes, 1986,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

135 Ibid.

136 “Teatro Meta: 1985-1988,” August 13, 1985, “Enscenarios/Scenarios Translation Project, Three-Year Plan

Outline, Correspondence, 1985,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

137 “Teatro Meta: Three Year Artistic Outline,” August 13, 1985, “Enscenarios/Scenarios Translation Project, Three-

Year Plan Outline, Correspondence, 1985,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. 246 document corroborates the earlier indication that Latinx students had been awarded Camp Orbit scholarships.138 This version of the plan goes on to recommend adding “two [Latinx] students to the Camp Orbit program each year,” reaching a total of ten by 1988.139 Additionally, the plan suggested that Latinx actors be cast in the Young Globe Company “beginning with the 1985

Festival season”; Virchis and Huerta were tasked with recruiting auditionees and Teatro Meta was expected to provide scholarships for any Latinx actors cast.140

A much longer document titled “The Teatro Meta Program 1986-1988,” a third draft of which is dated October 28, 1985, further develops how Camp Orbit, the Young Globe Company, and community college and community theatre affiliations might be used both to train Latinx actors in professional theatre and to train Anglo actors and audiences in Latinx theatre.141 By this time, Teatro Meta was being described as “The Old Globe Theatre’s bi-cultural Hispanic

Component,” whose goal was “to provide bi-cultural experience [sic] for theatregoer and audience alike.”142 The same document identifies two goals for the artist: “to provide opportunity and training, and to evolve new work.”143 These goals were in service of an aim “to recognize and support the bi-cultural ethic as an integral part of the Theatre’s artistic process.”144 Judging

138 “Three-Year Plan Outline, Revised,” August 1985, p. 1, “Enscenarios/Scenarios Translation Project, Three-Year

Plan Outline, Correspondence, 1985,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

139 Ibid.

140 Ibid.

141 “The Teatro Meta Program, 1986-1988,” October 28, 1985, “Enscenarios/Scenarios Translation Project, Three-

Year Plan Outline, Correspondence, 1985,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

142 Ibid., 1.

143 Ibid.

144 Ibid. 247 by this document, Teatro Meta’s goals seem to have expanded once again. Whereas previous iterations had focused on issues specific to the border region, by 1986 the project sought to promote a “bi-cultural ethic” that placed Latinx and Anglo artists and audiences in contact and, in some ways, in collaboration with one another.

The October 1985 draft document highlights different methods by which Teatro Meta sought to deliver training. While part of this training was to come through “the involvement of emerging artists and youth in training programs”145 such as Camp Orbit and the Young Globe

Company, training was also undertaken in production. Through both 1983’s The Fanlights and a

1984 production of Corridos co-sponsored with El Teatro Campesino, emerging artists worked with and learned from more experienced counterparts. Especially “on Corridos, in working with a seasoned staff of chicano [sic] professionals, a true assimilation of purpose and direction could be felt between the two companies, with knowledge and learning passing freely between artists.”146 In this way, Teatro Meta delivered on its earlier promise to work within the apprenticeship training model.

Teatro Meta’s philosophy of training was partly grounded in the maestro-apprenticeship model and sought to foster “a full time command of traditional values and techniques.”147 Here, the word “traditional” is key. Unlike the Teatro Campesino and TENAZ projects explored in

Chapters II and III, Teatro Meta did not seek to reinvent actor training from a culturally specific perspective. Rather, it relied on established training practices:

… While no formally structured educational program exists, the foundation for training

145 Ibid., 2.

146 Ibid.

147 Ibid., 3. 248

rests in the age-old principle of the maestro-apprentice relationship, whereby, through

daily exposure to professionals from all areas of the field, emerging artists learn the full

range of practical, career-level working conditions of the theatre scene. Through their

association with a working resident company, young artists experience hands-on

development through continuous contact, observation and guidance of established artists.

It is within this relationship that Teatro Meta’s educational development will both

integrate Hispanic artists and evolve new training processes aimed at strengthening the

creative base from which to build the bi-cultural experience—the proficient, complete

theatre artist.148

This brief passage, taken from the document detailing plans for 1986-1988, claims an interest in

“new training processes,” but provides no further detail as to what those processes might be; nor are such processes described in later archival documents. The document also reveals several things about Teatro Meta’s training ambitions. First, it corroborates the program’s emphasis of the apprenticeship model. Second, in claiming that Teatro Meta had “no formally structured educational program,” it confirms that Latinx actors trained under the auspices of Teatro Meta through programs like Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Company, the same programs offered to Anglo actors. Third, it both recalls and marks a significant difference from El Teatro

Campesino’s ideas of what constitutes a “proficient, complete theatre artist”; while it relies more on technical theatrical training, it also calls to mind El Teatro Campesino’s interactive spheres in its focus on bi-cultural cooperation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the passage states clearly and for the first time Teatro Meta’s aim to “integrate Hispanic artists.” Whereas one might assume from previous documents and the program’s early output a desire to showcase and

148 Ibid. 249 celebrate Latinx difference, this document suggests the possibility of a more assimilatory aim.

The desire to create a bi-cultural experience became the centerpiece of Teatro Meta’s stated training goals, both in production and in training programs. The 1985 draft document claims that, in addition to “acting (on four levels), dance and movement, stage combat, mime, circus techniques, improvisation, voice, singing, textual analysis,” and technical classes, Camp

Orbit was set to “incorporate bicultural theatre training” in 1986.149 Classes were to cover topics including “Hispanic/Chicano theatre history, specialized vocal and diction training, and textual analysis of Hispanic works.”150 While Teatro Meta leadership sought to increase scholarships for

Latinx Young Globe Company members to a total of six by 1988, it also hoped that by that year the bicultural classes would be required of all Young Globe Company members.151 Additionally, it anticipated that all company members would participate in the “production of bi-cultural works for workshop and public presentation.”152 Thus, Teatro Meta’s training goals were meant to work in two directions—not only training Latinx artists in “traditional” theatre, but training Anglo artists and audiences, respectively, to perform and receive Latinx theatre. With this training, those who completed the Young Globe program might also serve as “instructors/performers for in-school programs and other community-oriented work.”153

Teatro Meta’s training goals went beyond the Old Globe’s in-house programming. The authors of the 1985 draft document envisioned helping emerging artists move into the

149 Ibid.

150 Ibid.

151 Ibid., 4.

152 Ibid.

153 Ibid. 250 professional arena through affiliations with two key groups: local colleges and community theatres. By affiliating with colleges, program leadership hoped to augment the training offered by the Old Globe, and to find additional funds and resources. Arguing that community theatre often provided actors with “a step between educational and professional worlds,” and that

Latinxs were “not receiving enough meaningful chances in this arena,” Teatro Meta leaders hoped to partner with local community theatres to provide more bi-cultural opportunities, and thereby to increase Latinxs’ participation in pre-professional activities.154

Primarily, Teatro Meta hoped to build upon its existing relationship with Southwestern

College in Chula Vista, which had co-sponsored Over Easy in 1982. According to the 1985 draft document, the two organizations had already begun discussing “an ongoing relationship in bi- cultural training,” in part due to the fact that the college’s student body was 60% Latinx.155 Part of this partnership involved Southwestern’s planned “world college premiere” of Andrew Lloyd

Webber and Tim Rice’s musical Evita, which tells the story of Argentina’s famed first lady, Eva

Peron.156 By including such production work, Teatro Meta hoped to model its alliance with

Southwestern College after one established between the Pacific Conservatory of the Arts and

Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California, which was at the time “in its eithteenth [sic] year.”157 Training activities at Southwestern were not considered by Teatro Meta leaders to be segregated from those at the Old Globe. Rather, each was part of a longer training process:

The ultimate cycle for the emerging Hispanic artist would then be seen as Camp Orbit

154 Ibid., 5.

155 Ibid.

156 Ibid.

157 Ibid. 251

participation leading to Sotuhwestern/Teatro Meta [sic] instruction and perhaps onto

other training, with the artist then returning as a Young Globe member and ultimately

obtaining a professional union contract at the Globe.158

What begins to emerge from the path described above is a picture of training quite different from that offered by El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ charted in the preceding chapters. While those two organizations primarily sought to train actors for culturally specific theatre, Teatro Meta came to express a goal of training Latinx actors to perform in the more mainstream, Eurocentric productions that characterized that vast majority of the Old Globe’s professional seasons.

The relationship Teatro Meta envisioned with community theatres was somewhat different. Here, leadership was focused on helping community theatres provide better opportunities for Latinx theatre artists. Such opportunities were to include touring “Young Globe and other Teatro Meta workshops, including those produced with college-affiliation,” to

“community theatres, cultural organizations, and alternate spaces.”159 The hope was that providing such workshops would encourage the more than thirty community theatres in the San

Diego area to host Teatro Meta productions, as well as to produce bi-cultural works of their own with Teatro Meta’s assistance.160 Teatro Meta leadership hoped to schedule “four to five such affiliated productions” from 1985 to 1988.161

While many of Teatro Meta’s goals rested on the training of Latinx artists, they also required the group to facilitate the development of new Latinx plays. In 1985, leadership saw

158 Ibid., 6.

159 Ibid.

160 Ibid.

161 Ibid., 7. 252

Teatro Meta “[alternating] between serving as a partner, a developer, an umbrella and a networking device.”162 The ultimate goal of all its endeavors, however, became to incorporate

Latinx productions and artists into the Old Globe’s mainstage season. Referring to this process as

“mainstreaming,” the Old Globe sought to fold Teatro Meta’s efforts into its primary operations.

This process, which I argue amounted to a form of assimilation and the program’s eventual erasure, required financial support. Much of that support would come from The Ford Foundation.

The Ford Foundation Years

The various drafts of plans created in 1985 ultimately became the first of several grant proposals to the Ford Foundation. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the Ford Foundation had shown an increasing interest both in the arts and in the US’s minoritized populations. In June of

1984, the foundation published a working paper titled Hispanics: Challenges and Opportunities.

In this roughly sixty-page publication, program officer William A. Diaz described the various groups included under the “Hispanic” ethnic label, their migration histories, the cultural and sociopolitical “problems and issues” they faced in the US, and recommendations for ways in which the Ford Foundation could address their needs.163 In 1988, theatre director and producer

Joanne Pottlitzer compiled a report to the Ford Foundation, detailing existing Latinx theatre activity in the US. Pottlitzer based her report on research she completed “throughout the country in 1984-1985.”164 Based on this research, Pottlitzer offered a description of Teatro Meta that

162 Ibid., 9.

163 William A. Diaz, Hispanics: Challenges and Opportunities, A Working Paper from the Ford Foundation (New

York: Ford Foundation, 1984, 1.

164 Joanne Pottlitzer, Hispanic Theater in the United States and Puerto Rico: A Report to the Ford Foundation (New

York: Ford Foundation, 1988), v. 253 emphasized its actor training goals:

The idea for Teatro Meta, which emerged in 1980, was to offer training to actors of the

San Diego Latino community and to produce Latin American and Hispanic plays. Its

expanded program, which identifies Hispanic actors throughout the country to be

considered for roles in Old Globe productions, is now in its second year. Teatro Meta

recruits young Hispanic actors to participate in the Young Globe apprenticeship program

and Hispanic directors and designers to work at the Old Globe. It plans to introduce

Spanish classics and contemporary Hispanic plays into the Old Globe’s repertory. Its

program also includes educational and community training activities.165

Though Pottlitzer’s characterization of the original impetus for Teatro Meta is at odds with the program’s earliest archival documents (which make no mention of actor training), it begins to hint at the mainstreaming efforts that would come to define the program in the latter half of the

1980s. Those efforts would be funded in large part by the Ford Foundation.

The funds provided to Teatro Meta by the Ford Foundation from 1986 to 1989 helped change the program’s direction significantly. The first of these grants provided over $75,000 for a “nine-month intensive period of planning and education” during which Teatro Meta leaders would “explore the integration of Teatro Meta programs into existing programs at the Old Globe theatre, in order to gain information about the impact of such integration, and to educate the Old

Globe staff about existing Resources in Hispanic theatre.”166 The objectives of this nine-month planning period were four-fold:

1) Recruit and provide training for young Hispanic theatre artists in the Globe’s Young

165 Ibid., 48.

166 “Old Globe Theatre Proposal,” February 5, 1986, 10. 254

Globe Company and Camp Orbit.

2) Incorporate Hispanic actors into mainstream programming by pursuing an aggressive

recruitment strategy.

3) Incorporate Hispanic artists and programming into the Globe’s Play Discovery

Program.

4) Establish a formal planning group to evaluate the progress of the project and articulate

the goals of the Teatro Meta program beyond October 31, 1986.167

Of these four goals, three pertain in some way to actor training. The first involved direct training for Latinx artists, while the second and third would provide training according to the “maestro- apprenticeship” model Teatro Meta had previously described.

Each of these goals was accompanied in the proposal by a plan of action. For both the

Young Globe Company and the incorporation of Latinx actors into the Old Globe’s “mainstream programming,” Huerta and Virchis were to “act as ‘scouts’ to identify Hispanic artists.”168

Funding from the Ford Foundation would allow Huerta, Virchis, and others, to travel more frequently to Los Angeles, as well as to previously untapped cities with significant Latinx populations, to recruit artists to audition for both the Young Globe Company and the Old

Globe’s mainstage production season. Camp Orbit was to continue providing scholarships for

“as many talented young Hispanic students as [could] be identified through [a] county-wide audition process.”169 Funding for Camp Orbit scholarships, however, was not requested from the

Ford Foundation; these funds were to continue coming from other sources. Plans were also made

167 Ibid.

168 Ibid., 10-11.

169 Ibid., 11. 255 to hire Spanish readers to review scripts for the Old Globe’s Play Discovery Program, and to fund “a workshop production of a play by an [sic] Hispanic writer or on Hispanic themes, either as one of three pieces in the Globe’s Play Discovery Festival … or independently.”170 In addition, the grant ultimately provided by the Ford Foundation included funds for two Young

Globe Company members; a workshop production including ten Equity actors and an Equity stage manager; salaries for Huerta, Virchis, a full-time Teatro Meta administrator, and a part- time staff member; recruitment expenses; and readers’ fees.171

In May of 1987, Teatro Meta submitted a second grant request to the Ford Foundation, which included a summary of how the previously set goals had been met. According to this request, eight Latinx students attended Camp Orbit in the summer of 1986, three of whom joined the Young Globe Company that summer; of those three, one stayed with the company through the winter of 1987.172 The program organized acting workshops that were attended by forty-two

“local Hispanic artists” and taught by five instructors.173 Additionally, “an International Theatre

Workshop brought together 22 local actors and 18 from Tijuana, instructed by 4 different directors.”174 Thanks to travel funds provided by the grant, 306 Latinx actors were auditioned in sessions in Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Diego, and “256 additional

170 Ibid., 12.

171 “Approved Budget,” Ford Foundation Grant Notification, April 23, 1986, “Correspondence, Grant Information,

Proposals, Committee Meeting Minutes, 1986,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

172“Old Globe Theatre,” Grant Proposal to Ford Foundation, May 11, 1987, p. 2, “Program Overview, Budgets,

Proposals, Correspondence, 1987,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU.

173 Ibid., 2.

174 Ibid., 3. 256

Hispanic actors were seen performing in 43 Hispanic plays.”175 Of these,

11 actors from Los Angeles and 13 from San Diego were employed for assorted projects,

and 3 from New York [were] hired for the Summer ’87 main stage season, as well as 2

from San Diego. Casting offers were made to 3 other New York/LA actors who declined.

Two of the actors hired in LA became members of Actors’ Equity through their Old

Globe employment.176

The request provides details on the hiring of Latinx directors and designers before it moves on to the Play Discovery Program. For the latter, 174 Latinx plays were submitted and six received in- house readings.177 One play, The Boiler Room by Reuben Gonzalez, received a public reading that used three Latinx actors and a Latinx assistant director.178 Another play, La Fiaca, became the project’s workshop production and used seven Equity Latinx actors; it also boasted a Latinx director, dramaturg, lighting and sound designer, and stage manager.179 An additional performance piece, Border/Frontera, included seven Latinx actors and a Latinx director and assistant director, and “showcased the work of six nationally-known Chicano playwrights.”180

The summary also notes that The Boiler Room was “chosen to receive its World Premiere in the

Old Globe’s Winter ’88 season with a full production.”181

Based on what they saw as the success this summary demonstrated, Teatro Meta

175 Ibid.

176 Ibid.

177 Ibid., 4.

178 Ibid.

179 Ibid., 4-5.

180 Ibid., 5.

181 Ibid. 257 leadership requested a Ford Foundation grant of $280,000 “to assist in a three-year Teatro Meta program with a total cost of $657,110.”182 With these funds, Teatro Meta hoped to expand recruiting efforts, produce annual professional workshop productions, establish a scholarship/employment stipend fund “for non-professional Hispanic theatre artists,” and to recruit Latinx actors for the Young Globe Company and a Master of Fine Arts program that had been established in collaboration with the University of San Diego (USD).183 Recruiting efforts were meant to maintain and/or increase the presence of Latinx actors in Camp Orbit and the

Young Globe Company, as well as in professional productions. The professional workshop productions and the scholarship/employment stipend also aimed to place Latinx artists in professional settings to that they might receive training via the maestro-apprentice model. The

MFA program with USD, however, was a wholly new venture.

According to the Ford Foundation grant request, the two-year MFA program in Theatre

Arts established by USD and the Old Globe was not specifically for Latinx students. It was, however, Teatro Meta’s aim to use Ford Foundation funds to recruit Latinx actors for the MFA program. That program was to be comprised of six to fifteen students each year.184 Students were to “receive advanced technique training and courses in Classical Drama, two areas in which the majority of young Hispanic actors auditioned [by the Old Globe the previous] year [had] been consistently underdeveloped.”185 Aside from taking organized classes, MFA students would “be able to attend rehearsals, become acquainted with the roles, ethics, and daily activities of the

182 Ibid.

183 Ibid., 8-12.

184 Ibid., 9.

185 Ibid. 258 professional artists, and eventually be cast in the second year’s Summer Season at the Old

Globe.”186 Ultimately, students would receive points toward Equity membership.187 Through this program, the Old Globe would train actors in the skills needed for its yearly slate of professional theatre productions. Teatro Meta’s recruitment efforts would attempt to establish and maintain a

Latinx presence in the student body, thereby ensuring that Latinx actors were being

“mainstreamed” into the Old Globe’s professional production season.

The Young Globe Company also factored into the mainstreaming of Latinx actors. The second Ford Foundation grant request noted that, by this time, most members of the Young

Globe Company “[were] involved in [or] had graduated from Masters level training programs around the country.”188 Averaging twenty members at a time by 1987, the program offered a variety of opportunities to its members, from understudy roles, to small roles, to “daily workshops taught by the staff and professional company members.”189 Some company members also worked as assistant directors or on outreach teams in San Diego’s public school system.190

According to the grant request, young Latinx actors especially needed this collection of experiences “to help them perfect their craft and mature into young professionals.”191

The 1987 Ford Foundation grant request included funds to continue the “search and solicitation of Hispanic plays” and to engage in “community outreach.”192 Community theatre

186 Ibid.

187 Ibid.

188 Ibid., 10.

189 Ibid.

190 Ibid.

191 Ibid.

192 Ibid., 11-12. 259 productions were still part of Teatro Meta’s budget, with one production requiring just under

$10,000 planned for each year.193 The request also described an event known as the Spanish

Classics Street TheatreFest, in which “an ensemble of non-Equity Hispanic actors [would] perform abbreviated translations of Spanish Theatre Classics of the Golden Age in diverse locales throughout the county.”194 Additionally, plans were underway to organize an “inter- collegiate festival of Hispanic Theatre” among San Diego colleges, to take place in 1989.195 A new outreach effort, Teatro Meta’s “In-schools program,” was designed to send non-Equity actors into public schools to work with “small groups of students to develop their own scenes, which [would] then be presented to their class, and later to the rest of the student body and/or their parents.”196

A three-year plan associated with the 1987 request includes $2,700 per year for an

“Acting Class”; these funds were to cover both an instructor’s fee and scholarships for ten Latinx students.197 Though the acting class is not described at length, this is likely because no Ford

Foundation funds were requested for it; it was to be funded by the Old Globe. Nonetheless, the class is featured in a document sent to the Ford Foundation in February of 1987:

A new class—“Beginning Acting for Hispanic Students”—will be added to the Globe’s

adult education offerings. The class will be taught by an [sic] Hispanic artist. Local

193 “Teatro Meta Three-Year Plan Budget (detailed),” May 1987, p. 1 “Program Overview, Budgets, Proposals,

Correspondence, 1987,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records, SDSU. This budget is attached to the proposal under discussion in the notes directly preceding this one.

194 “Old Globe Theatre,” Grant Proposal to Ford Foundation, May 11, 1987, 13-14.

195 Ibid., 14.

196 Ibid., 12-13.

197 “Teatro Meta Three-Year Plan Budget,” May 1987, 2-5. 260

Hispanic actors will be encouraged to audition for regular beginning and intermediate

acting classes as well, and those who do not qualify will be encouraged to audition again

after having completed this class.198

As described here, the class would seem to constitute a remedial course designed specifically for

Latinx actors. Why the course would not simply have been offered as another level available to all inexperienced actors, and why Latinx actors, specifically, would need to be separated from a

“regular” sequence of courses, is not made clear; perhaps the imbalance of training opportunities for Latinx actors served as unwritten justification. In any case, the class provided yet another opportunity for Teatro Meta and the Old Globe to bring Latinx actors “up to par” with their mainstream, usually white counterparts.

Over the next three years, Teatro Meta set to work carrying out the plans set forth in the

1987 Ford Foundation grant request. As the last several pages have indicated, much of this work was completed in an effort to incorporate Teatro Meta into the Old Globe Theatre’s overall infrastructure. If the availability of archival documentation on Teatro Meta is any indication, that effort succeeded. After 1987, documentation grows increasingly sparse. Several productions were staged under the auspices of the Latino Play Discovery Series, which seems to have developed as its own entity apart from the Globe’s main Play Discovery Series. A few plays featured in readings and workshop productions were ultimately slated in the Old Globe’s mainstage seasons. And the In-Schools program, which became an outreach program that used improvisation and collective creation techniques to encourage school attendance and engagement

198 “Old Globe Theatre Teatro Meta Three-Year Plan: A Proposal to the Ford Foundation,” February 1987, n.p.

“Correspondence, Grant Information, Proposals, Committee Meeting Minutes, 1986,” B310, Old Globe Theatre

Records, SDSU. 261 among high risk, primarily Latinx middle school students, ran for several years and even won awards. Piece by piece, however, the many components that had formed Teatro Meta over the course of several years were either absorbed into the Old Globe’s central programming, or else faded away entirely.

Endings and Assessments

Although some remnants of Teatro Meta (primarily the In-Schools program) would continue into the early 1990s, Los Angeles Times writer Nancy Churnin proclaimed the end of

Teatro Meta in 1989, when the Latino Play Discovery Series staged its final production. This event, she noted, “[signaled] the death of the 7-year-old Teatro Meta program as an independent organization and the culmination of its absorption into mainstream programming at the Old

Globe Theatre.”199 Raúl Moncada, who had been made Teatro Meta’s Program Administrator under the first Ford Foundation grant, was to remain on staff “to help with casting and scouting for Latino plays to include in the Globe’s regular season.”200 The Latino Play Discovery series, however, was folded back into the broader Play Discovery Series. Artistic Director Jack O’Brien saw this move as a sign of Teatro Meta’s success—its stated goal for some time, after all, had been to “mainstream” its programming into the Old Globe’s.201 Craig Noel, who was the first to envision the program and who insisted on directing the final Teatro Meta production, expressed mixed feelings: “A lot of it is economics,” he told Churnin, “We are just continuously so

199 Nancy Churnin, “Final Play in Latino Discovery Series Marks Bittersweet Ending to Program,” Los Angeles

Times (Los Angeles, CA), October 28, 1989.

200 Ibid.

201 Ibid. 262 economically strapped.”202 Tom Hall corroborated this claim, suggesting that workshop productions might continue, but that it was “not yet clear how many workshops the Globe

[could] afford to present [the following] year.”203 Churnin also noted ways in which Teatro Meta had succeeded in its early goal of exposing audiences to more Latinx plays. Several productions, she stated, had by that time been slated for production at other theatres from Los Angeles to the

State of Washington.204 A year later, another Los Angeles Times article highlighted two Latinx plays scheduled for production at the Old Globe, as well as a $45,000 grant the company had been awarded, again by the Ford Foundation, to fund drafts of plays by Latinx playwrights.205

Additional archival documents indicate that the award-winning In-Schools program continued at least through 1991.206 As recently as 2005, an article in the San Diego Union Tribune noted that

“after support from the Ford Foundation ran out and state and federal money evaporated, Teatro

Meta became a largely educational program.”207

The question of whether Teatro Meta “succeeded” is a difficult one to answer. Firstly, at the point that some efforts were folded into the central operations of the Old Globe, they become

202 Ibid.

203 Ibid.

204 Ibid.

205 Nancy Churnin, “Mainstream Seems to Suit Still-Thriving Teatro Meta,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA),

September 7, 1990.

206 “1991: Miniplay Synopses in the Language Opposite the One They’re Written In,” 1991, “Camp Orbit/Real

Globe: Overview, Participants, Schedule, Press, Information Packets, 1983, 1987, 1991, 2001,” B312, Old Globe

Theatre Records, SDSU.

207 Anne Marie Welsh, “This ‘Romeo’ will cross both the borders of love and life,” The San Diego Union-Tribune

(San Diego, CA), July 10, 2005. 263 difficult to track. It is impossible to say, for instance, how many Latinx students and actors entered programs like Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Players after Teatro Meta ceased to exist as an entity of its own. Secondly, an investigation into those numbers—along with the numbers of Latinx plays, playwrights, designers, technicians, and other artists and professionals the Old Globe has engaged in the years since 1989—is beyond the scope of this chapter and of this dissertation, since such data strays from the central topic of training designed specifically for

Latinx actors. Finally, it is difficult to measure the success of a program whose goals so often changed. Should one, for instance, hold 1989’s Teatro Meta accountable for the goals set in

1981, or for those set in 1985? Is one to consider the program as one entity and therefore consider all stated goals from throughout its existence, or is one only to evaluate the program according to one set of goals, until those goals change? In the previous case, it might be too easy to deem the program a failure; in the latter, it might be necessary to consider Teatro Meta as a set of disparate programs when it clearly was not. Fortunately, determining whether Teatro Meta was a success is also, in many ways, beyond the scope of my project. Rather, my goal is to document and consider the implications of the program’s contributions to training for Latinx actors.

I suggested at the beginning of this chapter that “mainstreaming” was in some way responsible for the demise of Teatro Meta. While the program may or may not have increased the number of Latinx plays and employees engaged by the Old Globe Theatre between 1980 and today, the fact that the mainstreaming process ended or reduced actor training efforts aimed directly at Latinx actors is fairly clear. In the various archives with information about Teatro

Meta, there exists no documentation of the number of Latinx actors engaged in programs like

Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Players after 1987. A 1988 report to the Ford Foundation 264 indicates that, while two Latinx students entered the joint MFA program at USD in 1987, none were admitted in 1988.208 As Churnin’s article noted, Teatro Meta workshop productions ceased in 1988 or 1989, thus eliminating one avenue by which Latinx actors trained under the “maestro- apprentice” model. Additionally, there is no continued mention of “bi-cultural” educational collaborations with the local community colleges or community theatres, and there is no further mention of workshops or classes offered specifically for Latinx students. The 1988 report to the

Ford Foundation notes that Latinx actors appeared in five out of six mainstage productions in the summer of 1987, in “three plays fully cast with minority actors” the following winter, and in

“four of the seven plays” staged in the summer of 1988.209 As I noted earlier in this chapter, a list of the Old Globe’s mainstage production seasons from 1990 to today does not reveal many plays by Latinx playwrights produced in that time. It would be difficult, if not impossible, moreover, to ascertain the number of Latinx-identifying actors who have been cast in mainstage roles that might have provided maestro-apprentice style training in the past three decades.

In many ways, the history of Teatro Meta fits the narrative of mainstreaming and professionalism in 1980s Latinx theatre criticized by Rossini and Ybarra. What I want to argue, however, is that it reflects not progress and equality, but assimilation and erasure. This is especially true when one considers the trajectory of Teatro Meta’s actor training efforts and even more so when one considers this program alongside the more culturally specific training offered by El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ. While Teatro Meta’s desire to introduce Anglo audiences

208 “Interim Report to the Ford Foundation,” November 11, 1988, p. 3-4, “In-Schools Project Proposal, Reports,

Mayor’s Proclamation, Grant Information, Reports, Correspondence 1988,” B310, Old Globe Theatre Records,

SDSU.

209 Ibid., 1-5. 265 to Latinx artistic sensibilities might be satisfied by an incorporation of Latinx plays into the Old

Globe’s mainstage and secondary production programming (an assertion that would require extended analysis of the plays themselves), no such effort was made in actor training. Rather, actor training efforts were focused on introducing Latinx actors to Eurocentric acting techniques.

Teatro Meta’s first production engaged actors in the process of collective creation that had characterized Chicanx theater up to that point; after the first year, however, any attempts to incorporate a Latinx aesthetic into training were all but dropped. Latinx actors working at the

Old Globe through Teatro Meta were not trained for teatro after this point, nor were they engaged in the collective creation or indigenous-based Theatre of the Sphere training that dominated the Chicanx theatre movement. Instead, Latinx actors were enrolled in programs like

Camp Orbit and the Young Globe Company, where they studied Eurocentric acting theory and practiced Eurocentric techniques. Whereas the program’s early goal had been to introduce

Chicanx and Anglo cultures to one another, and while one might regard production choices as having successfully done so, the introduction in actor training was unidirectional. The effort to

“mainstream” Latinx actors amounted to incorporating them into these Eurocentric traditions; by and large, Anglo actors were not likewise educated in Latinx acting styles. Through training programs and often through production, Latinx actors were “mainstreamed” into professional

Anglo theatre. What began as a project based in intercultural exchange and mutual learning eventually became, with funding from the Ford Foundation, a project of assimilation.

My goal in this chapter has not been to take the Old Globe Theatre, Teatro Meta, or their leaders to task for what might be perceived as failings in their efforts to provide training for

Latinx actors. It has merely been to examine their efforts to that end, and how those efforts were shaped by the conflation of terms pertaining to ethnic identity, and by goals that shifted 266 repeatedly over the life of the Teatro Meta project. The lack of clearly defined and consistent goals made it easy, perhaps, for leaders to adopt actor training as an aim after the program’s first two years; likewise, it facilitated shifting ideas of how those goals might be achieved.

Ultimately, however, the Old Globe could not sustain a project designed to focus exclusively and specifically on issues and needs related to the Chicanx or Latinx communities. Like the Chicanx theatre movement before it, Teatro Meta gave way to the homogenization of Latinx populations and was ultimately subsumed by assimilationist efforts.

Perhaps because of this lack of clarity and consistency, early Teatro Meta leaders Huerta and Virchis seem at some point to have parted ways with the project. In October of 1987, the Los

Angeles Times reported that the two were working on a “bilingual offshoot of Teatro Meta” that was “tentatively called Teatro San Diego.”210 Although the article claimed that “the creation of the new theater [would] not affect the Old Globe’s pursuit of its objective of ‘mainstreaming’

Latino artists under its Teatro Meta program” and indicated that Tom Hall described the company as a “natural evolution of Teatro Meta,”211 Virchis took a different view. Suggesting that even with the Ford Foundation grant “Teatro Meta still [did] not meet the cultural needs of that Latino community,” Virchis boldly proclaimed: “‘If the Globe is not going to do it, then we have to do it’.”212

Huerta’s archived papers include a lengthy proposal for what was likely to have been the

210 Hilliard Harper, “Bilingual Offshoot of Teatro Meta in the Works,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California),

October 7, 1987.

211 Ibid.

212 Ibid. 267

Teatro San Diego project, which premiered in 1990 as Teatro Máscara Mágica.213 Though that company’s published history reveals that it has sometimes worked in collaboration with the Old

Globe Theater, there is no indication that it has engaged in actor training.214 This was not, however, the end of Huerta’s efforts to provide a training ground for Latinx actors. Having founded Teatro de la Esperanza in Santa Barbara in the 1970s, Huerta had also established a teatro group at UCSD in the 1980s. Towards the end of that decade, he sought to form a more formalized training program for Latinx actors and directors, establishing an MFA program in

Hispanic American Theatre at UCSD. That program ran for only three years and graduated only one class. It is also the subject of this dissertation’s final chapter.

213 “The History of Teatro Máscara Mágica,” Teatro Máscara Mágica, https://www.teatromascaramagica.org/company-history.html, Accessed August 2, 2019.

214 Ibid. 268

CHAPTER V: SEPARATE BUT UNEQUAL: UCSD’S MFA IN HISPANIC-AMERICAN THEATRE Jorge Huerta’s commitment to establishing training for Latinx actors through TENAZ and the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta program is documented in the preceding two chapters. His efforts to provide culturally specific actor training did not end there. Rather, as the previous chapter noted, he carried these efforts forward into US higher education. Having been instrumental in the development of Teatro de la Esperanza at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Huerta turned his attention to creating a similar group at the University of California, San Diego. This undergraduate group, which was supported by organized courses in teatro, followed in the footsteps of El Teatro Campesino, embarking on a European tour in 1988 to perform that company’s Los Vendidos, as well as Johnny Tenorio by Mexican American playwright Carlos Morton.1 In the same year, Huerta began work on a graduate program at UCSD for Hispanic2 students.

UCSD’s MFA in Hispanic-American Theatre, which ran from 1989 to 1992, was predicated on the idea that a dearth of well-trained Hispanic actors and directors created a lack of professional opportunities for those few Hispanic theatre artists there were.3 Although El Teatro

1 Letter, Jorge Huerta to Various, December 9, 1987, Jorge Huerta Papers, MSS 142, Special Collections and

Archives, UCSD, B30 F7; Letter, Jorge Huerta to Prof. Dr. Renate Von Bardeleben, January 20, 1988, MSS 142,

UCSD, B30 F7.

2 As a reminder, I will use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latinx” somewhat interchangeably in this chapter. I will use the first term when quoting primary sources or referring to programs that used the name in the 1970s, 1980s, and

1990s. In my own analysis, I will use the more current “Latinx.”

3 Draft, “Proposal for a Graduate Program in Acting and Directing in Hispanic-American Theater,” p. 1, November

30, 1988, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F9. 269

Campesino, the other teatros it inspired, and TENAZ had created an entire Chicanx theatre movement, that movement had remained fairly insular. As I noted at the end of the previous chapter, Huerta and Bill Virchis, as early directors of the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta program, were not entirely satisfied with the way it approached its initial goal of fostering cultural exchange between Latinx and Anglo theatre. Although the teatro they subsequently started did not focus on actor training, Huerta was clearly still interested in training Latinx artists. Citing the Hispanic-American population as “the fastest-growing group in the United

States,” Huerta’s initial proposal for the MFA program at UCSD argued that Hispanic-American theatre students and their audiences had unique needs that could only be met by “graduate actors and directors committed to the research, development, production and enhancement of professional Hispanic-American theatre in the United States.”4 Acknowledging “the importance of universal training for theater artists,” the proposal argued that “a growing network of

Hispanic-American theaters” and “an expanding number of non-Hispanic regional theaters producing plays relevant to the Hispanic experience” were creating increased opportunities for

Hispanic-American artists that necessitated an increase in training and practical experience.5

Noting that Hispanic-American theatre artists were rarely employed in mainstream, Anglo theatre without either having to “put aside their cultural [identities] and blend in” or being

“limited to supporting roles and characters,” the proposal suggested that the MFA in Hispanic-

American Theater “would offer the actor and director an opportunity to express a cultural reality closer to his/her experience and preparatory to the needs of” both Hispanic-American and

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid, 2. 270 regional Anglo theatres alike.6 As was Teatro Meta, UCSD’s Hispanic-American Theater MFA program was short-lived, enrolling and graduating only one class before it was shuttered at the end of the 1991-1992 academic year.

In this chapter, I chart the life and death of UCSD’s MFA program in Hispanic-American

Theatre as part of the next phase in Latinx actor training, which saw the efforts of the Chicanx theatre movement and even those of Teatro Meta move from professional theatre into the academy. Using original research performed in 2019 in the archived papers of Dr. Jorge Huerta at UCSD, I first examine the program’s inception and its initial planning and design. Next, I explore the coursework and production work in which its students ultimately engaged. Then, I identify and analyze the challenges the program faced as a new and culturally specific unit within an established university theatre department. Finally, I explore the program’s demise and aftermath. Ultimately, this chapter will chronicle the story of a culturally specific training program that sought to expand and formalize the kind of training offered by TENAZ but that, like Teatro Meta, could not survive in a primarily Anglo and Eurocentric tradition. I also examine the ways in which its cultural specificity was ultimately traded in for vague ideas of pluralism and multiculturalism.

Program Planning

Although Huerta’s papers at UCSD do not make it clear how early he began to conceive of a graduate training program for Hispanic-American actors and directors, it could not have been long after he left Teatro Meta; it is possible, in fact, that he was still working on that project. The first archival reference to the program comes from a June 1988 document

6 Ibid. 271 announcing funding plans for six years.7 In a memo to Theatre Department Chair Adele Shank,

Graduate Studies and Research Dean Richard Attiyeh projected funding that included tuition, fees, and a stipend for one student in the 1989-1990 academic year, and two students in each of the academic years that followed, through 1994-1995.8 These funds were in addition to those provided for the existing MFA programs in theatre and were not intended to fund the total number of students enrolled. The memo projects, for instance, four total students in the program’s first year, ten in its second year, and a total of thirteen for each year thereafter.9 In

November of 1988, funding was provided for “travel expenses and costs of printing a brochure” under the category of “Graduate Student Affirmative Action Recruitment.”10Although these memos give no indication of when funds were requested or when any other aspects of the program’s planning may have been initiated, it is clear that it was conceived and discussed before June 1988.

Curiously, given that funding was already in place by June 1988, the draft proposal cited above is dated November 30 of that year.11 Noting that Huerta was in the process of completing a study of university theater departments and that “artistic directors across the country agree that training is of the utmost importance,” the proposal concludes that “too few theater departments

7 Memo, Richard Attiyeh to Adele Shank, “Hispanic Theatre Program Graduate Student Support,” June 6, 1988,

MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F8.

8 Ibid. The funding was provided through the San Diego Fellowship program, which funded a first- and second-year student in each academic year.

9 Ibid.

10 Memo, Richard Attiyeh to Adele Shank, “Request for Funds for Graduate Student Affirmative Action

Recruitment,” November 15, 1988, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F8.

11 “Proposal for a Graduate Program,” 1. 272 are addressing the needs of either Hispanic students, audiences, or theaters.”12 Arguing that specializations in design, dramaturgy, playwriting, and production management “are not culturally distinct, but rather, form the broad fabric of theatrical production not distinguished by ethnicity or gender,” the proposal contended that these areas were sufficiently addressed by

UCSD’s existing MFA programs.13 Thus, the program Huerta proposed differed from the MFA program at the University of San Diego discussed in Chapter IV in that it was to focus solely on the development of Hispanic-American actors and directors.

Huerta’s proposal laid out a clear trajectory for the MFA program in Hispanic-American

Theater that combined traditional coursework with the practical production training envisioned by Teatro Meta. As Huerta imagined it, students would be admitted every two years into a three- year program wherein “the first two years would be studio-oriented, with performance opportunities on campus and with the Department’s ‘Teatro Ensemble’” and “the third year would constitute a professional residency either on campus or in a local venue, and on tour.”14

Acting students, admitted at a rate of six to eight every two years, would spend their first year in the following courses over three quarters:

Theatre Seminar

New Plays Workshop

Voice

Improvisation

Popular Entertainment [to include mask work, stage combat, juggling, magic, and

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 3.

14 Ibid., 4. 273

acrobatics]

Hispanic American Dialects [in English]

History of Hispanic American Theater

Singing

Text Analysis

Comic Techniques in Acting

Chicano Ensemble

Latin American Dramatic Literature

Movement/Dance

Chicano Dramatic Literature

Ensemble Tour15

Following the first quarter of the first year, “the Hispanic students would feed into the [Teatro]

Ensemble productions.”16 This aspect of the program would include “a local tour … or a residency in a local non-Equity theatre space,” enabling students to build practical production experience in the maestro-apprentice model favored by Teatro Meta while they continued to take winter quarter courses.17 The tour was imagined with the potential for expansion into the spring semester.

The second year of the program “would begin to focus on Hispanic theatre processes such as bilingual productions of a Spanish classic”; “ideally, the students would rehearse a play in both Spanish and English and either perform it in workshop or in a fully mounted

15 Ibid., 4-5.

16 Ibid., 5.

17 Ibid. 274 production.”18 The proposal suggests that a “practice of multiple and cross-gender casting would

… [give] every student a variety of roles to develop and explore.”19 Courses for the second year were to include:

Speech II

Movement for the Theatre II

Translation and Adaptation (an elective for actors)

Stage Choreography

Acting Styles

Latin American Dialects II (Spanish)

Process Studio: Spanish Classical Texts (in Spanish and English)

Spanish Golden Age Drama ([to be taken in the ]Spanish Literature Department)

Ensemble tour ([as a] possible thesis production)20

The second year, which was to be in some ways more heavily focused on production, would also require actors to “take part in touring productions and/or a season offering relevant to their concentration.”21

The third year of the program was to be dedicated entirely to production work. Actors were to intern with a professional company on a Latinx production in the fall quarter.22

Moreover, students of the MFA program in Hispanic-American Theater were to produce a

18 Ibid., 6.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 5-6.

21 Ibid., 6.

22 Ibid., 7. 275

“resident professional company season … touring and producing Hispanic plays in an off- campus venue” in the winter and spring quarters of the third year.23 The formation and maintenance of this professional company was to be the ultimate mechanism by which the program offered its students professional experience:

By the year 1992, a new phase in production possibilities would ensue. In an ideal

situation, the student Ensemble would continue to exist as before while the professional

company would be in residence in San Diego. However, because of the resources

required to maintain a six-month professional company, the student group may no longer

be possible. In that case, the professional company would begin accommodating the new

students as interns in the winter and spring quarters whenever possible.24

In this way, the resident professional company to be formed by the MFA students was to serve as an extension of—or, if necessary, as a replacement for—the undergraduate teatro group Huerta had started at UCSD previously. The goal of the program was to shift the focus on teatro and

Latinx theatre from the fringes of the undergraduate program to a centralized and bona fide training program at the graduate level. The program also meant to take advantage of the teatro

Ensemble’s European connections; the proposal notes that an invitation to complete a month- long residency in Spain (which the Ensemble had to decline due to costs) might ultimately be extended to and accepted by the MFA company at a later time.25 Based on these plans, the MFA program would appear to combine the training and touring efforts of El Teatro Campesino and other TENAZ teatros in the 1970s with the professionalization trend that sparked the Old Globe

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid. 276

Theatre to establish Teatro Meta earlier in the 1980s.

Directing students were to follow a similar path as acting students. Two directors were to be admitted every two years, “focusing their directing specialization on the Hispanic repertoire in terms of course projects and productions.”26 In addition to the work existing MFA students in directing completed, Hispanic-American directing students would explore “a classical Spanish text, a Latin American absurdist play, a contemporary Hispanic-American play, the collective process, and an example of commedia dell’arte street theatre.”27 While production work for directing students would also focus on “the touring and resident productions within the Hispanic season,” these students would be required to work specifically with Hispanic playwrights—from within the UCSD playwriting MFA program or elsewhere.28 Directing students were also expected to intern during the summer and/or fall of the third year and to work as directors or assistant directors in the resident professional Latinx company in the two quarters that followed.29

The November 1988 proposal also articulates the MFA program’s infrastructural needs.

These included an additional faculty member “familiar with the Hispanic repertoire and capable of teaching any of the Hispanic core courses.”30 The added faculty member was also to teach undergraduate classes, including those offered in connection with the teatro ensemble.31

26 Ibid., 8.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 8-9.

30 Ibid., 10.

31 Ibid. 277

Additionally, the proposal suggested the hiring of a part-time Tour Coordinator, to be chosen from the pool of graduate or undergraduate student workers.32 Most importantly, perhaps, the proposal notes that the MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre would need access to “the department’s facilities available to all students and faculty”; “in other words,” Huerta noted,

“there will be no ‘Hispanic corner’ of the department.”33 To that end, Huerta highlighted the importance of the department providing a dedicated theatre space, “either on campus or off,” to students in the Hispanic-American program, so that its students might enjoy the same level of production opportunities and experiences as those in the existing MFA acting and directing programs.

Ahead of welcoming its first and only class of students, UCSD’s MFA program in

Hispanic-American Theatre received ample attention both within and outside the university.

Aside from the funds mentioned in the previously cited memo, Huerta received additional support for an audition/recruitment trip to El Paso.34 A January 1989 letter from Huerta to various parties announcing the program and requesting names of prospective students notes that

Huerta planned to “either travel to cities with several candidates or invite individuals to come to

La Jolla to audition.”35 A February 1989 memo requests funding to bring one prospective student to San Diego from Seattle.36 Huerta’s papers also include correspondence about the program with the University of Puerto Rico, the El Paso Herald Post, and a variety of potential students,

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Travel Funding Paperwork, February 27, 2918, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F6.

35 Letter, Jorge Huerta to Various, January 10, 1989, p. 2, MSS 142, UCSD B30 F13.

36 Memo, Carmen Jacobo to Henry Rutland, February 16, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F8. 278 faculty, and staff.37 In March, Huerta reported to Shank that he had been assured of what may have been “Affirmative Action monies” from the Chancellor’s office, and that he had been in contact with both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, each of which had expressed a potential interest in the third year professional residency plan.38 The following month, American Theatre magazine made note of the program, which “[would] include the school’s standard graduate coursework plus specialized classes and production opportunities directly related to Hispanic-

American culture.”39 This echoed the claim in a previous press release that students would

“[participate] in the same basic training in acting and directing” and that their study would be different only in the sense that working with Hispanic history and texts would afford them

“unique production opportunities.”40 A document detailing advertising and recruiting plans indicates that Huerta planned to print a brochure or poster and to visit “recognized centers of

Hispanic population in order to locate the most talented students.”41 In particular, he targeted

“theatre departments in this country that have Hispanic theater programs or projects,” which he identified as California State University, Sacramento; the University of California, Los Angeles;

37 Several documents of this nature are found in MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F6-F15.

38 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Hispanic American Graduate Program Funding for 1989-90 and beyond,”,

March 22, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F12.

39 “Theatre Studies Expand,” American Theatre, May 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F7. The article included in

Huerta’s archived papers includes no further publication information. I have not been able to locate the original source.

40 Press Release, “UCSD Department of Theatre announces new program in Hispanic-American Theatre,” March 6,

1989, p. 2, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F13.

41 Recruitment planning document, Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F9. 279 the University of Texas at El Paso; and Texas A and I University in Kingsville.42 Though

Huerta’s archives include a color brochure for the program, the date of its printing is unclear.43

By April of 1989, a list of ten students had been finalized for admission. 44 Audition notes from various dates reveal that each student was given a thirty-minute audition that included two prepared scenes in English, one from a contemporary play and a second from a contrasting classical play, and a prepared monologue in Spanish.45 Auditionees were evaluated on their choice of scenes, voice, diction, movement, and “performance.”46 A “general impressions” section included room for comments on each actor’s “appearance, training, attitude, potential, and financial situation.”47 Directors also gave an acting audition, and were asked to present portfolio materials and discuss both a contemporary play and a Shakespeare play. According to later documents, these students arrived from “Puerto Rico, Texas, Buenos Aires, Washington, and everywhere else in between”48 with “prior theatrical experience.”49 At first, the program in

42 Ibid.

43 Brochure, “University of California, San Diego, Master of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre, Hispanic-American

Theatre Program,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F13.

44 Memo, Jorge Huerta to “Carmen,” “Final List of Hispanic American Candidates Nominated for Admission,”

April 5, 1989, B30 F6.

45 “University of California, San Diego Hispanic American Theatre Program Instructions for Preparing Audition,

Interview Materials,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B30, F6.

46 Various audition sheets are in MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F6.

47 Ibid.

48 “The First of Its Kind: A Graduate Hispanic-American Theater Program,” Voz Fronteriza XV No. 1, University of

California, San Diego, pp. 1 and 7.

49 Flyer, “The Trials of Don Edwardo,” MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F7. 280 which they enrolled would bear a close resemblance to the plans laid out in Huerta’s initial proposal and subsequent documents. As they progressed, however, logistical and political difficulties would alter several details of the program. Students and faculty alike would find themselves dissatisfied, both within the Hispanic-American MFA program and in the department’s previously established programs. Remarkably, amid a great many tensions and challenges, all ten students would complete the program by 1992. They would, however, be the only students ever admitted. Even before their graduation, the program would be closed to future applicants. Before I begin an analysis of that process, I turn to a chronicling of the program as it unfolded—how it met the goals of early planning documents, how it diverged from them, and the challenges that precipitated its demise.

The Program

According to the May 1989 American Theatre profile of UCSD’s MFA in Hispanic-

American Program, the first-year curriculum had been modified (and noticeably reduced) before students arrived for classes that fall. This article advertised the following courses for first-year acting students:

Dynamics

Movement/Combat

Voice

Scene Study

New Plays Workshop

Script to Performance

Hispanic-American Dialects

Hispanic-American Theatre History 281

Production Studio

Chicano Dramatic Literature

Acting Process50

The list of courses for first-year directing students included some overlap as well as unique courses:

Contemporary Theories of Theatre and Drama

Modernism

Text Analysis

Chicano Dramatic Literature

New Plays Workshop

Hispanic-American Dialects

Hispanic-American Theatre History

Scene Study

Script to Performance

Directing Seminar

Directing Concepts

Hispanic-American Dramatic Literature

Concepts in Stage Movement51

While some of these courses (e.g. Hispanic-American Dialects and Chicano Dramatic Literature) were specific to the Hispanic-American MFA program, others, including courses such as Acting

Process, Directing Concepts, and a movement and conditioning course labeled “Dynamics,”

50 “Theatre Studies Expand,” American Theatre.

51 Ibid. 282 either mirrored courses taken by students in the pre-existing MFA programs, or enrolled students from both programs.

Hand-drawn course grids included in Huerta’s papers confirm that the courses above were offered in the first year52 and show that they were taught by Huerta and by existing UCSD faculty. Department Chair Shank, for instance, taught the New Plays Workshops and Liz Terry, who taught speech for the department’s existing MFA programs, also taught it for Hispanic-

American Theatre students.53 Huerta was scheduled to teach courses in Hispanic-American

Dialects, Hispanic-American Theatre History, the Acting Process Studio, Theatre Production, and Chicano Dramatic Literature.54 Courses in Acting Process were also taught by Tony Curiel, who is identified in a later document as both a faculty member at UCSD and Associate Artistic

Director of El Teatro Campesino.55 These course grids reveal two significant things. First, not all courses were taught by Latinx instructors or instructors familiar with Latinx theatre or the Latinx experience. Second, Huerta was tasked with teaching a heavy load of courses that ranged from history to literature to practice. As this chapter will later reveal, this would play a significant role in the program’s ending.

The curriculum for the last two years of the program is somewhat difficult to identify.

Huerta’s papers are filled with curriculum drafts and course grids, many of which seem to have been built in anticipation of future cohorts that would never arrive. Much of this information,

52 At least one of these courses was canceled; the cancelation is addressed later in this chapter.

53 Course Grid, “Fall 89 – Actor I,” September 20, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F10; Course Grid, “Winter 90 –

Director I,” December 11, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F17.

54 Ibid.

55 Flyer, “The Trials of Don Edwardo.” 283 even as it applies to the ten students who completed the program, was purely speculative and may not have come to pass. A June 1990 curriculum document for second-year acting students includes surprisingly few culturally specific classes. Although Huerta was slated to teach a course in “Latin-American Dramatic Literature,” and a “Teatro Seminar” course was offered in each of the year’s three quarters (the latter taught twice by Huerta and once by Curiel), the remaining courses were fairly standard MFA courses taught by presumably non-Latinx instructors.56 Aside from continuing courses in Acting Process, Movement, and Voice/Speech, second year students took classes in dance, singing, audition technique, and improvisation.57

Huerta would reiterate in a summer 1991 interview with the UC Mexus News that this was intentional. “The students receive the same training as in traditional theatrical study,” the article notes; “‘We veer off in production,” said Huerta, ‘in which we’re geared towards promoting

Hispanic American theater.”58 The general premise of the program, then, was predicated on the idea that skills-based courses such as voice, speech, and movement, would include pedagogies considered universal to all actors, while students of the Hispanic-American program would study

Latinx texts in their courses on literature and Latinx production processes in classes such as

Production and Teatro Seminar.

The culturally specific courses in which students enrolled likely incorporated and built upon Huerta and Curiel’s knowledge of techniques and methods used at El Teatro Campesino and in other TENAZ teatros. Along with a course in the History of Hispanic-American Theatre,

56 “Hispanic-American Theatre Program Curriculum 1990-91 (Second Year),” June 11, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B30

F17.

57 Ibid.

58 “Don Edwardo on tour,” UC Mexus News, Summer 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F7. 284 which explored “Hispanic American theatrical movements from the early Spanish religious colonial drama of the Southwest to the current Hispanic American theatre movement,”59 the

Teatro Seminar and Production Studio courses served as vehicles through which students did much of their culturally specific study. The Teatro Seminar course was intended to “focus on the particularities of the Hispanic American theatre movement, its leading directors, artists, and companies.”60 Other topics included the mainstreaming of Latinx theatre, developing Hispanic

American plays, collective creation, border issues, the aesthetics of Latinx theatre, and Brechtian technique.61 Various notes also indicate that Huerta taught on topics including Greek mythology,

Aztec Mythology, architecture, and the archetypes of teatro in his Production Studio course meetings.62 Together, these courses provided a summary of those figures, companies, movements, and methods that not only defined Huerta’s experience of Latinx theatre, but which are also the subjects of many of this dissertation’s chapters.

Following a successful European tour under the name Teatro Nuevo Siglo (Theatre of the

New Century) in the summer of 1990,63 the program’s second year focused heavily on production. Archival documents suggest that Huerta hoped to present a student-directed, full- length play in Spanish during this year and was encouraged to instead to produce a play that

59 Syllabus, “History of Hispanic-American Theatre,” Fall 1989, MSS 142, B30 F10.

60 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Spring Scheduling for Teatro Students,” January 24, 1990, p. 2, MSS 142,

B30 F17.

61 Syllabus, “Hispanic American Theatre Program, Teatro Seminar,” Spring 1991,” MSS 142, UCSD, B31, F4;

Memo, Jorge Huerta to All Teatro Grads, May 28, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F1; “Teatro Seminar, Fall 1990,

Schedule for Remainder of Quarter,” MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F20.

62 These notes appear throughout MSS 142, UCSD, B31, F4.

63 See various documents in MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F7 and F12. 285 could be performed alternately in Spanish and English.64 This project ultimately came to fruition, with one directing MFA student working on Maria Irene Fornes’s The Conduct of Life and the other directing Roosters by Milcha Sanchez Scott.65 Additionally, students appeared in a production of La Maestra by Enrique Buenaventura; a bilingual version was directed by Huerta and a fully Spanish version by the playwright.66 Students also appeared in a spring 1991 touring production of Uno Puño de Tierra: A Handful of Dust, written by Luis Urrea and directed by

Jose Valenzuela under the auspices of the Máscara Mágica teatro company that Huerta had founded with Bill Virchis upon leaving Teatro Meta.67 Though it is unclear whether any funds were awarded, Huerta’s papers include an undated request to the Parker Foundation for nearly

$10,000 to support off-campus performances of Roosters.68

Production training for the Hispanic-American MFA students did not stop at producing plays. An audition course was also designed to serve as “a general introduction to the techniques, pitfalls, etc. of auditioning.”69 A March 1991 draft of possible topics for the Production Studio course reveals that students were to witness design presentations, explore cockfighting practices and symbolism along with other “social games/rituals involving violence/fighting,” and study

64 Memo, Jorge Huerta to MFA students, “Meeting with Adele,” February 15, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F17.

The alternating performances were suggested, according to Huerta, because “there was concern that the department could not equitably evaluate [the production] if they did not understand the language.”

65 Program, La Maestra, October 20, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F7.

66 Ibid.

67 Flyer, Uno Puño de Tierra: A Handful of Dust, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F5.

68 Grant request, “A Proposal to the Parker Foundation for Financial Support for the Graduate Program in Hispanic

American Theatre at the University of California, Sand Diego,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B30, F9.

69 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Bill Anton, March 20, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F6. 286

Aztec and Mayan mythology, the dynamics of dysfunctional families, Campesino life, and even

“how to make tortillas.”70 There is little indication as to how students might have studied these topics, but the draft schedule includes the possibility of at least one guest artist.71

The final year of the program revolved around three events: summer and fall externships, thesis productions, and a professional showcase. The term “externship” is used regularly in archival documents in reference to what was described in early planning documents as the

“residencies” students were expected to take with professional theatre companies. In February of

1991, Huerta sought funding for these externships from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, though whether either foundation made any grants for this purpose is not clear.72 A list of externship assignments reveals, however, that students were placed at organizations including

San Diego Repertory Theatre, the Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis, the Latino Chicago

Theatre, the Bilingual Foundation in Los Angeles, the Magic Theatre and the Eureka Theatre in

San Francisco, and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.73 Huerta’s papers include positive evaluations and other mentions of several students from supervisors, as well as his review of one actor’s performance in a Chicago production of Octavio Solis’s Man of the Flesh.74

In the final quarter of the 1991-1992 academic year, many students of the MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre were engaged in thesis productions. One of the directing students

70 “Possible Production Studio Schedule,” March 12, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F4.

71 Ibid.

72 Letter, Jorge Huerta to Tomas Ybarro-Frausto, Suzan Sato, and Ruth Mayleas, February 15, 1991, MSS 142,

UCSD, B30 F9.

73 “Hispanic American Students Externships Summer/Fall 1991,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F14.

74 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Casting of Teatro Thesis Plays, 1992,” June 5, 1991, p. 1, MSS 142,

UCSD, B31 F1. 287 directed a production of Roosters, while another directed a play that goes unnamed in Huerta’s papers.75 In fact, little is said of these productions beyond the challenges they faced in casting, which I will address in the next section of this chapter.

For the actors, at least, the program seems to have concluded with a professional acting showcase for agents and other professionals. Although it is unclear whether the Hispanic-

American MFA students held their own showcase or joined the actors in UCSD’s preexisting

MFA program, archival documents show that all but one of the Hispanic-American acting students likely showcased one monologue and one scene in New York City sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1992.76 A list in Huerta’s archived papers shows nearly three hundred invitees.77

Altogether, the MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre at UCSD represents an attempt at an evolutionary step in efforts to offer training specifically to Latinx actors. As did the training offered by El Teatro Campesino, TENAZ, and other teatros, the program focused heavily on Latinx literature and techniques. As did Teatro Meta, the program sought to combine this training with that used in Anglo theatre and considered by some to be “universal” in value. It also represented a third step in moving Latinx actor training from the informal setting of the early carpa tradition, to the more organized but in many ways still amateur early days of El

Teatro Campesino, to the professionalization represented first by TENAZ and then by the Old

Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta, and finally into US higher education.

75 Ibid., 1-2.

76 Memo, Jorge Huerta to “Actors and Tony” Curiel, “New York Presentations,” April 17, 1992, MSS 142, UCSD,

B31 F11.

77 “1992 NY Presentation List,” MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F11. 288

The fact that all ten students admitted to UCSD’s MFA program in Hispanic-American theatre completed the degree is in no way a sign that it was without complications. The desire to create a program that in many ways paralleled the existing MFA programs in acting and directing led to both competition for resources and interpersonal tensions. Eventually, the program was shuttered in favor of moving all previously existing MFA programs in a more

“multicultural direction.” It is to the process by which this happened that I now turn my attention.

Program Challenges

In considering the challenges that led to the demise of UCSD’s MFA program in

Hispanic-American Theatre, it is perhaps best to begin at the end. In May of 1991, Drama

Department Chair Adele Shank issued a memo announcing the end of the Hispanic-American

Theatre MFA as a standalone program.78 Though she insisted that the existing MFA programs would continue to consider Hispanic-American Theatre an area of specialization, she also indicated that the department would no longer admit “a separate class of Hispanic students.”79

Shank’s memo suggested that the admission of Hispanic students to other concentrations would become a priority, and that the department’s audition tour would be expanded to assist faculty in admitting “a consciously multi-ethnic student body.”80 A curricular reorganization was also meant to ensure that elective courses would be expanded to include the culturally specific courses that had been offered as part of the shuttered program. Additionally, the department was to develop “other special emphasis courses” that might include “for example, African American

78 Memo, Adele Shank to Theatre Department Students and Staff, May 30, 1991, p.1, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid. 289

Dramatic Literature and Issues in Multi-Cultural Theatre in the United States.”81 Finally, the memo promised that future production seasons would include “work that is relevant to various aspects of a multi-cultural student body.”82 Shank concluded her memo by expressing pride in and gratitude “for the presence of the Hispanic American program and students” and citing both

“financial realities” and the desire for a unified student body and faculty as reasons for abandoning the idea of a “separate but equal” program.83

Shank’s memo was preceded by a particularly damning assessment of the program performed by an ad hoc program review committee consisting of Huerta, Curiel, and four other faculty members. In April of 1991, Shank issued a memo to the committee requesting a review of the program similar to one that had been completed for the MFA Acting program the previous year.84 Shank requested that the “outside committee members”85 interview all of the department’s MFA students in every concentration as part of its process. She also included a list of issues to be addressed:

1. Having acknowledged that training substantial numbers of Hispanic-American theatre

artists is a desirable thing, is a separate program the best way of accomplishing that goal?

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid., 2.

83 Ibid.

84 Memo, Adele Shank to Ad Hoc Teatro Program Review Committee, April 23, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3. In the previously cited Memo, Adele Shank to Theatre Department Students and Staff, May 30, 1991, Shank indicates that the department had a policy of reviewing a different program each year.

85 Ibid. Huerta and Curiel both sat on the ad hoc review committee. The phrase “outside committee members” refers to the remaining committee members, identified in the memo as Steve Adler, Jim Carmody, Floyd Gaffney

(committee chair), and Walt Jones. 290

2. How has the overall philosophy of the program changed in the two years since its

inseption [sic]? Is it compatable [sic] with the philosophy of the department?

3. What theatre does the faculty believe they are training students to enter? Do these ideas

correspond to the goals of the students in the program?

4. Is it important (essential?) that students in this area be bilingual?

5. Does the education offered in this area reflect the identified goals and philosophy?

6. What academic areas need to be strengthened?

7. Are the present academic personnel resources serving the program to its best

advantage? Are they adequate? Is it important or essential that those teaching in this

program be bilingual? If so, in what areas of training is this important or essential or

unimportant?

8. Are there problems that exist or are perceived to exist between this area and other areas

of the program?86

Huerta’s archived papers include handwritten notes from a meeting of the review committee the following day. Though the authorship of these notes is uncertain, they address questions about both the program and the review process:

1. Does the comm have to follow chair’s directive? No.

2. How can we interview EVERYBODY in other groups?

3. TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE GRADUATE PROGRAM

4. THIS PROGRAM WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO TAKE 1 CENT NOR 1 MINUTE

FROM OTHER PROGRAMS/PRODUCTIONS/CURRICULA/RESOURCES

5. MULTICULTURAL GRAD PROGRAM

86 Ibid., 2. 291

For Next meeting

What went wrong

What worked87

Together, these two documents reveal multiple tensions that existed in and around the Hispanic-

American MFA program. Inherent in Shank’s first question, for instance, is a suggestion that a separate program is perhaps not the best way to train Hispanic-American theatre artists. Her seventh question seems to call into question the ability of the program’s faculty (perhaps, though it is not explicitly stated, Huerta and Curiel in particular) to deliver the training the program promises. Her final question points to tension between the Hispanic-American MFA and “other areas of the program” that are suggested by other documents in Huerta’s archived papers, an analysis of which will come later in this chapter.

The handwritten notes from the following day suggest further tensions regarding the

Hispanic-American program and its place within the larger department. The first point directly questions Shank’s instructions, concluding that they do not have to be followed to the letter. The second and third questions resist the idea that the interviews Shank has requested can be feasibly conducted. Interestingly, one word in the second question is written in all caps, as are points three through five. The notetaker suggests that there are too many graduate students to interview.

Combined with the somewhat combative tone of the third and fourth questions, this change in format suggests an overall energy of resistance. Whether that resistance is to the process itself or to its suggested aims (or to both) is not entirely clear. Additionally, point four on the list, which

87 Meeting Notes, “Teatro Review Committee,” April 24, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3. I have maintained the document’s shift to all caps and the use of an underline here because I believe they are suggestive of the energy with which the review questions were received; an analysis of this energy follows the quotation. 292 reiterates that the Hispanic-American MFA program was not meant to use resources needed by or promised to other groups, suggests a certain animosity towards the program itself.

The review committee’s work resulted in an official report in May of 1991. It is in this report that the tensions between the Hispanic-American MFA program and other groups, as well as within the program itself, are most clearly laid out. Although the committee did not interview all MFA students as suggested, they did interview all students in the Hispanic-American MFA programs, two representatives from the MFA program in acting, and one representative each from the MFA programs in stage management, directing, design, and dramaturgy.88 According to the report, the committee met three times “and focused on the three areas of curriculum, production, and teaching as well as on the ways in which the Teatro related to the department as a whole.”89 Ultimately, the committee recommended that the program cease existing “as a separate entity within the department as it had been initially envisaged,” and that efforts be instead refocused on increasing diversity in both curriculum and recruitment.90

Among the challenges voiced by the Hispanic-American MFA students in acting was that the training they received from Huerta and Curiel “was not as rigorous as expected or desired.”91

While they had positive responses to their training under other faculty members, they noted that

Huerta’s attentions and energies were spread too thinly, resulting in unpreparedness on his part.92

88 “Teatro MFA Program: Report of the Ad-Hoc Review Committee,” May 24, 1991, p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B31

F3.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid., 2.

92 Ibid. 293

Early on, this led to at least one instance in which the Acting Process course was mistakenly not scheduled as planned.93 Although a course in “Comic Techniques” was substituted, a memo reveals that no one knew who would teach it.94 Students also remarked on Huerta’s lack of expertise in acting; as the report states, “the primary strength of [Huerta and Curiel], by self- admission, [was] not actor training.”95 Additionally, Huerta was hesitant to teach the promised course in Hispanic American dialects, noting that he was “not a student of IPA, much less an instructor” and calling the idea of his doing so “ludicrous.”96

Handwritten meeting notes from May 1990 confirm that Hispanic-American acting students were not receiving training equal to that of their Anglo counterparts, noting that they received “No [Tadashi] Suziki [training] when other actors have two quarters.”97 A memo from

Huerta to Shank written one week later confuses matters, suggesting that the Hispanic-American actors wanted “a second semester of Suzuki” and a movement class for the fall.”98 It may be that

Huerta had by this time negotiated one semester of Suzuki training for the Hispanic-American students for the next academic year and was advocating for a second. The same memo notes that the students had expressed a desire for a different acting teacher. “They want an actor to teach them,” Huerta noted, suggesting that faculty member Robyn Hunt might take over their acting

93 Memo, “Spring Scheduling for Teatro Students,” 1.

94 Ibid.

95 “Teatro MFA Program: Report of the Ad-Hoc Review Committee,” 2.

96 Memo, “Spring Scheduling for Teatro Students,” 1.

97 Notes, “Meeting with TNS,” May 24, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F1.

98 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Curricular needs for Teatro actors 1990-1991,” May 31, 1990, MSS 142,

UCSD, B31 F1. 294 training.99

Huerta’s archived documents also reveal some of the problems that might have led to a confused or less than rigorous course of study in the area of literature. An April 1990 memo references failed attempts to provide Hispanic-American MFA students with appropriate literature courses. According to this memo and another, a Fall 1989 course in Chicano Dramatic

Literature proved unworkable with students’ “all-encompassing daily schedules,” and all students were asked to drop it.100 What is certain from the memo is that “another attempt to incorporate the Teatro grads into an upper-division literature course … failed.”101 Huerta goes on to explain that the students were dissatisfied with their experience in a course with fifty-two undergraduates; agreeing that they were not enjoying an adequate learning experience, he advised the students to drop the course.102 A photocopy of notes from a meeting with graduate students corroborates this frustration. According to these notes, at least one student complained that graduate students needed seminars on literature rather than lecture courses shared with undergraduates.103

Students may have voiced these concerns previously to departmental Graduate Advisor

Jim Carmody. An April 1990 memo from Huerta to the students references a “private meeting”

99 Ibid.

100 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Teatro Graduate Students, “Chicano Dramatic Literature,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD,

B30 F17; Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adel Shank, “Hispanic American Dramatic Literature,” April 17, 1990, MSS 142,

UCSD, B30 F12.

101 Memo, “Hispanic American Dramatic Literature,” April 17, 1990.

102 Ibid.

103 Notes, “Meeting w/Grads,” April 20, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F1. 295 the students requested with Carmody to discuss “concerns.”104 While the details of these concerns are not made clear in this memo, Huerta calls the students’ “notice of another private meeting” “disturbing, to say the least.”105 He urges students to consider bringing concerns to him first, relying on familiar El Teatro Campesino rhetoric to describe the group as “an ‘ensemble,’” and as “‘familia.’”106

The Hispanic-American MFA students were not the only students to express dissatisfaction with the way the program was handled, nor were complaints limited to teaching and curriculum. In February of 1991, an MFA student in design107 delivered a letter to Adele

Shank calling for better treatment of what he terms “the Teatro program.”108 The student calls for better overall communication between the department’s administrators and its students. More specifically, he takes the department to task for the inequity between programs. “On more than one occasion, students in the Teatro program have been denied access to opportunities in the theatre department,” he writes; “I find this appalling, offensive, and unacceptable for any reason.

The Teatro program is comprised of talented theatre artists, refining their craft just as the rest of us are, who deserve our absolute respect and support.”109 He calls for a more equitable distribution of resources, even if it results in a decrease in those available to students in his own

104 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Teatro Graduate Students, “Follow-up of yesterday’s 4:00 p.m. meeting,” April 17, 1990,

MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F12.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.

107 The letter is from Pierre Clavel, who is identified as a design student in the review committee’s report; see Note

75.

108 Letter, Pierre Clavel to Adele Shank, February 4, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F1.

109 Ibid. 296 and other MFA concentrations.

Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the review committee’s report, the problem of inequities in production resources and opportunities is periodically suggested in Huerta’s archived papers. This seems particularly problematic when, as previously noted, so much of the program’s literature emphasizes that production is the area in which the Hispanic-American

Theatre MFA distinguishes itself from other concentrations. Apart from the student letter to

Shank, this inequity first reveals itself in the previously cited memo from Huerta to the two

Hispanic-American directing students, notifying them that they would be limited to productions of “no more than 60 minutes in duration” to accommodate performances in two languages so that non-Spanish speaking faculty could adequately assess their work.110 Additionally, while a document detailing the program’s core philosophy claims that “the Hispanic Program shares the facilities”111 with other concentrations, other documents reveal that this was not always the case.

In September of 1990, Huerta wrote a memo to Shank to request support for a production directed by one of the Hispanic-American students, reminding her that it should be given rehearsal space since it was an MFA project that should be considered equal in stature to those produced by students in other concentrations.112

Inequitable casting opportunities for both actors and directors presented additional problems. As early as November 1989, Shank distributed a memo to clarify who could be cast in

110 Memo, “Meeting with Adele.”

111 “The Philosophy of a Graduate Program in acting and Directing Hispanic-American Theatre,” Fall 1990, p. 2,

MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F20.

112 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Support for Laura Esparza’s production,” September 14, 1990, MSS 142,

UCSD, B31 F1. 297 which productions. The memo suggests that three productions had held auditions for which the

Hispanic-Theatre MFA students believed they were ineligible, and cites a printed policy that

“unless specified otherwise, auditions for all productions in the UCSD Theatre season are open to all MFA students.”113 The confusion may have resulted, in part, from a communication between Huerta and Walt Jones in March of that year, when Jones wrote:

As for the casting of your students in the production season, what we had talked about

was that they would be available for casting in something like Brazo Gitano, but not

available for general casting. I will assume that the student directors can audition them as

they audition others, to assume roles if appropriate; the casting pool does not

automatically include them as actors who have to be cast each quarter.114

If my reading of Jones’s missive is correct, MFA students in acting who were not part of the

Hispanic-American program formed a talent pool with guaranteed performance opportunities that were not available to the Latinx students. Shank’s November memo would seem to backtrack on or undo this claim. Tensions would heighten again, however, as students moved towards the acting showcase in their final year and questions arose as to whether including the

Hispanic-American students in the same showcase as the other actors might result in an over- stuffed program.115

Following the review committee’s report, the casting of the Hispanic-American students’ thesis plays further demonstrates the confusion and inequity they experienced with regards to

113 Memo, Adele Shank to All MFA Students, November 19, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F6.

114 Memo, Walt Jones to Jorge Huerta, March 9, 1989, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F9.

115 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Hispanic American Courses and Actor Presentations,” June 5, 1991, MSS

142, UCSD, B31 F1. 298 production work. A June 1991 memo from Huerta to Shank describes this process as

“troublesome” to both him and the student actors.116 Because the structure of the program required students to complete the off-campus externship during the fall of their third year, they would thus be ineligible to audition with other MFA acting students for the department’s 1991-

1992 season. Additionally, it was unclear whether the Hispanic-American student directors casting thesis projects would have the same access to the undergraduate and graduate actors outside their own program that other MFA directing students enjoyed. By this point, the continuation of the program beyond the first graduating class had already been canceled. Still, those students who had yet to graduate continued to experience the inequities that had marked their production experiences at UCSD.

One issue that is mentioned frequently in Huerta’s archived documents is that of the financial concerns that plagued both the funding of the Hispanic-American MFA students and the program’s position within the department. Although the previously cited memo regarding financial support of students projected some level of funding through the 1994-1995 academic year, overall funding for students and for the program was at times uncertain. Huerta’s April 17,

1990 memo to the graduate students, wherein he referenced their private meeting with Carmody, also sought to “clarify the financial situation.”117 Here, he argued that program funds must be used not only for “graduate course enrichment,” but also for undergraduate courses, which could potentially fund teaching assistantships for graduate students.118 A second memo, written to

Shank on the same day, reveals that a previously awarded fellowship may have become

116 Memo, “Casting of Teatro Thesis Plays, 1992.”

117 Memo, “Follow-up of yesterday’s 4:00 pm. meeting.”

118 Ibid. 299 unavailable to both incoming and returning students.119 In light of the unstable funding situation,

Huerta expresses deep concern for the future of the program:

I do not believe it is too soon to tell you that I cannot, in good conscience, bring in

another group of Hispanic American graduate students without support such as the San

Diego fellowship. The hardships this year have already been discussed, so I will not bore

you with the details. The point is this:

Unless more support is secured for our next class (admission date yet to be

determined) I will not be able to continue with the program.120

Though Huerta’s concerns would prove prophetic, they were not his alone. Students also expressed concern about both the continuation of the San Diego fellowship and the availability of teaching assistantships going into the program’s second year.121 As noted earlier, at least one member of the program’s review committee reiterated that “the program was not supposed to take 1 cent … from other programs/productions/curricula/resources,” which would seem to imply that by that point it had.

Financial concerns also appear in the documents that led to the end of the program.

Following their interviews with students, the review committee reported that one student “voiced the concern that the impulse to mainstream [the program] was a financial decision in response to the budget crunch, and that admitting fewer students and mounting fewer productions would help relieve some of the department’s financial burdens.”122 While Shank’s May 1991 memo

119 Memo, Jorge Huerta to Adele Shank, “Graduate Student Support,” April 17, 1990, MSS 142, UCSD, B30 F12.

120 Ibid.

121 Notes, “Meeting w/Grads.”

122 “Teatro MFA Program: Report of the Ad-Hoc Review Committee,” 1. 300 announcing the program’s end focused most heavily on cultural, production and pedagogical issues, she did not ignore financial concerns. While remarking on the value of the Hispanic

American MFA program, she also argued for the need to “[look] for ways to improve it that are within the financial realities of today.”123

The challenges faced by students and faculty of the MFA program in Hispanic-American

Theatre were numerous and complex. Moreover, the program also presented challenges to the previously established MFA programs. These challenges formed part of the core of the program review. The other part of that core was a question that echoed Huerta’s experience with Teatro

Meta at the Old Globe Theatre: Should the program continue to develop as a separate entity within the program, or should it be “mainstreamed” into the existing MFA programs? According to the review committee’s report, at least seven of the ten students enrolled in the Hispanic-

American MFA program recommended the latter course of action.124 These students argued that folding the program into those that preceded it would result in better training. They expressed their concerns that “more crossover between … programs was essential, not only to mitigate the separationist feelings, but also to take advantage of the excellent teaching and training available and to attempt greater cross-fertilization among cultures.”125 They also felt that “one result of a separate program, although unintentional, was ‘ghetto-izing’ them from the ‘other’ MFA students.”126 Two of the program’s students, both actors, believed the program should remain

123 Memo, Adele Shank to Theatre Department Students and Staff, May 30, 1991, 2.

124 “Teatro MFA Program: Report of the Ad-Hoc Review Committee,” 2.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid. 301 intact, but that “more time [was] needed to focus on and streamline the program.”127

The review committee’s ultimate recommendation was to discontinue the Hispanic-

American Theatre program as a separate MFA concentration. Because it is succinct and informative, I include the full, two-paragraph recommendation here:

It is the Committee’s recommendation, in view of the strengths of the Hispanic-

American Theatre Program, that there be a continued emphasis in this area in both course

and production work in the Department. It is suggested that more ethno-specific course

work and workshops be offered, and that productions of Hispanic-American plays

continue to be produced with Hispanic-American (and other) students in the acting

program. It is the Committee’s further recommendation that the Department engage in a

real pursuit of other ethnicities including, but not limited to, African-American and Asian

American students of theatre.

Because one student’s primary coursework is of the same nature as another’s in

the same discipline regardless of ethnic background, the Committee suggests that all

acting students be auditioned or interviewed at the same time, using the same standards,

and that all students be admitted to one program. Further, the Committee recommends

that those students of color admitted to the program be given the opportunity to

participate in and embrace both multicultural and ethno-specific coursework and

productions during other training here. To that end, the Committee suggests that the

recruitment tour include Jorge Huerta or Tony Curiel and Floyd Gaffney, and that steps

in the South and Southwest be added to the tour itinerary.128

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid., 3. 302

As is made clear in the previously cited announcement from Adele Shank that followed this memo, the committee’s recommendations were taken. UCSD’s MFA program in Hispanic-

American Theatre was put to rest before it had even graduated its first and only class. With a year left before those students would receive their degrees, however, discussion of the program and its future implications for the department did not end.

After the Review: Results and Responses

Adele Shank’s directive to the committee that reviewed UCSD’s MFA program in

Hispanic-American Theatre was issued on April 23, 1991. The review committee made its report a month later, on May 24. Shank published her memo announcing the program’s end less than a week after that, on May 30. Her announcement reiterated that all MFA students received degrees in theatre. To that end, future admissions of Hispanic students would be “to all creative areas,” and such students would be brought in through “an extended publicity and recruitment process.”129 Going forward, the department would offer only one acting class at a time, to be comprised of twelve students; this, she argued, would guarantee that “all students [would] have the same teachers and core curriculum” and “that departmental resources [could] realistically benefit all students.130 As noted previously, she also announced plans to incorporate a wider variety of culturally specific courses and to expand the department’s annual recruitment tour in order “to admit a consciously multi-ethnic student body.”131 The department, she claimed, had also committed to “produce work that is relevant to various aspects of a multi-cultural student body,” to “continue to produce Hispanic plays,” and to “make a conscious effort to further

129 Memo, Adele Shank to Theatre Department Students and Staff, May 30, 1991, 1.

130 Ibid.

131 Ibid. 303 expand the cultural pallette [sic] of [the] production season.”132 This was the departmental response to the review committee’s report.

As one might imagine, Huerta’s papers do not reflect a uniformly positive response to the review process, its findings, or the department’s response. While some meeting notes indicate that these decisions opened productive discussions, others reveal disappointment and even anger.

Handwritten notes from the May 1991 faculty meeting at which the review committee’s report was discussed reveal that one Hispanic-American graduate student attended to speak on behalf of the group.133 Whether the thoughts represented by these notes belonged to the student or to

Huerta is difficult to discern. The overall sentiment, however, was that the review and its findings were unfair. The notes express a feeling that the “program was not adequately reviewed” and that the review process was carried out with a “sub-text” that “[leaned] towards a multicultural program” as a “forgone conclusion”; the only choices considered, the notes suggest, seemed to be a shift to a multicultural program for all units or the complete elimination of the Hispanic-American program.134 The notes also argue that fifteen-minute interviews were insufficient and that, while the review committee’s report claims MFA students in playwriting were not interviewed because their work did not substantially intersect with those in the

Hispanic-American program, those relationships did in fact exist.135 Whomever spoke also objected to the term “mainstreaming,” and argued that multiculturalism should not be

132 Ibid., 2.

133 Notes, “Faculty meeting – Review of Teatro Program,” May 29, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3.

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid. 304 unidirectional; the notes seem to advocate diversity training for all students.136 Finally, the speaker suggested that the program should be continued, but that the level of training should improve.137

A memo written on the same day to review committee member Floyd Gaffney looks to the future in terms of how a multicultural approach might affect other areas of the department.

The memo’s author, Kevin Krieger, indicates a dissatisfaction that the committee’s report did not address the ways in which the Hispanic-American MFA drew upon funds and resources that were taken from other departments and projects.138 Krieger argues that “if the Teatro is to be fully autonomous, then it seems right that the group should have their own designers, dramaturgs, and stage managers”; if the program was to be “mainstreamed,” he suggests, it might be “appropriate to accept a few more design, dramaturgy, and stage management students to relieve some of the strain.”139 Krieger is pointing here to the fact that the Hispanic-American

MFA program increased the number of productions the department produced, without increasing the personnel required to do so.

Handwritten notes from a June 1991 meeting with the Hispanic-American MFA students, held after Shank’s announcement was published, also look towards the future. The notes from this meeting focus on how such students might maintain a Latinx identity in a department that no longer addressed their specific needs.140 Student responses, however, called attention to the way

136 Ibid.

137 Ibid.

138 Memo, Kevin Krieger to Floyd Gaffney, “Teatro Evaluation,” May 29, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3.

139 Ibid.

140 Notes, “Discussion w/ Teatro Grads,” June 4, 1991, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3. 305 in which the MFA program in Hispanic-American Theatre engaged in the same kind of homogenization of Latinx identities that I argued in Chapter IV characterized Teatro Meta. Even among themselves, they suggested, there was no singular, unifying “Latino” culture; rather, many of them came from different cultural and theatrical backgrounds.141 Students expressed a desire to share their cultures with their colleagues, noted that they rarely had opportunities to do so even in the Hispanic-American Theatre program, and argued that electives encouraging such exchanges should be required of all students.142

Huerta’s papers include an undated document that sums up his thoughts on the program, its demise, and the future of a multicultural approach at UCSD.143 After reviewing some of the program philosophy drafted in the 1991 winter quarter, he argues:

… the failure between our goals and the realization of those goals comes when we look at

the following crucial concepts: (1) offering the same training as other students receive;

(2) exploring Hispanic/Latin American dramatic literature; (3) producing off-campus;

and (4) sharing the facilities.144

According to Huerta’s assessment, it was almost immediately evident “that the department could not, in fact, offer the same curriculum offered to other MFA students, especially to the actors.”145

Noting that the Hispanic-American program included too many actors to add to existing acting

141 Ibid.

142 Ibid.

143 Jorge Huerta, “Algunos Pensamientos Sobre (Some Thoughts on) the Hispanic American Graduate Program in

Theatre,” Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F3.

144 Ibid., 1-2.

145 Ibid., 2. 306 classes, he admits that they were shunted into classes with instructors they didn’t want, who taught methods they didn’t find valuable.146 He agrees with the report’s findings that the curriculum did not provide a strong education in dramatic literature, as scheduling did not permit him to teach such a class; “Ironically,” he notes in a moment of self-referential lament, “this class will have passed through these halls without having studied Chicano Dramatic literature from the world’s leading authority.”147 In regards to producing off-campus work, Huerta notes that any attempts to do so with “the production standards of [the] department” proved “virtually impossible” due to “limited administrative and production capabilities” and a lack of “full production and promotional support from the Department.”148 In terms of sharing departmental facilities and other resources, Huerta admits to having underestimated the strain a new program might place on various departmental units. “The bottom line,” he writes, “is this: If the Hispanic

American program is to be of the highest quality, paramount to any of the other graduate programs in the department, it will have to be supported with more faculty, more resources, more staff, and more financial aid.”149 He concludes with a nod towards his commitment to creating the kind of multicultural program his colleagues have suggested:

At this time, then, the only way to gracefully and equitably grow out of this

experiment is to commit fully to a multicultural graduate program unlike any other in the

146 Ibid. Huerta does not name what these methods were. He simply states, “The number of students needing attention was too great to incorporate them into other acting classes, thus we attempted to offer them alternative methods of actor training. Methods they did not want. Quite simply, the Hispanic students want the same teachers as the other students.”

147 Ibid.

148 Ibid.

149 Ibid., 2-3. 307

country. A program that gives much more than lip-service to the all-too-popular and

political concept of pluralism in the arts. If any department can do this, we can.

We must, therefore, continue to train a critical mass of Latino students, along with

like numbers of representatives of other so-called minorities. If we fulfill the promise of

productions relevant to particular cultures, along with non-traditionally cast plays, we can

attract the highest quality of students in this effort.150

Following this assessment, an undated document titled “How Would a Multicultural Theatre

Program Work?” appears in Huerta’s archived papers.151 It contains thoughts on recruitment, curriculum, and production, and draws heavily on lessons learned from the Hispanic-American

Theatre program. Whether or not the UCSD Drama Department effectively created such a multicultural program would require extensive research that is beyond the scope of this project.

It is enough to say, however, that the very attempt at such a task might not have been possible or even considered had it not been for the Hispanic-American MFA.

Conclusion

As previously noted, all ten students in UCSD’s MFA program in Hispanic-American

Theatre completed their degrees. Despite the challenges they faced as students and as artists, and despite the elimination of their unique MFA concentration a full year before they graduated, not a single student left the program. A flyer archived in Huerta’s papers includes the names and

150 Ibid., 3.

151 Jorge Huerta, “How Would a Multicultural Graduate theatre Program Work?”, Undated, MSS 142, UCSD, B31

F3. 308 headshots of all eight acting students featured in the final showcase,152 though one ultimately could not make the event.153

It is difficult (although I am not entirely sure if it is possible or necessary) to gauge the success of a program like UCSD’s MFA in Hispanic-American Theatre. To judge it by longevity is necessarily to deem it a failure. To judge it by its impact is difficult and imprecise, at best.

Instead, it might be useful to remember the lessons learned from its existence. Huerta pointed to many of these in his own archived reflections. Perhaps the most valuable of these lessons is that a culturally specific actor training program cannot succeed without full commitment in terms of budgetary, faculty, staff, and facility-based support. What Huerta’s experiment revealed is not that such a program is doomed to inevitable failure. Rather, it revealed that creating a culturally specific program is an endeavor of such magnitude that it cannot be done quickly or easily. It would require a full slate of faculty qualified to teach in a variety of areas but also attuned to the culturally specific needs and experiences of its students. It would require a full production budget and full access to facilities and other resources. In sum, it might require either a centralized position in an existing theatre department or even a department of its own. In any case, it would require a space in which its mere existence does not compete with or is not seen as a threat to other departmental units and programs.

There is no question that Huerta’s project at UCSD was a bold one. It is also important to note that, however it may have succeeded or failed, it was a worthwhile endeavor. As I noted in the introduction to this dissertation, scholars in the last two decades have both recognized the

152 Flyer, “University of California, San Diego, Master of Fine Arts, Hispanic-American Theatre Program, Class of

1992, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F11.

153 Memo, Jorge Huerta to “Teatro Actors and Tony,” April 17, 1992, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F11. 309 need for culturally specific actor training and pondered the best methods by which to provide it.

Huerta has been part of an ongoing effort to answer that question, from his early efforts in

TENAZ, to his leadership of the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta program, to his efforts in graduate education. Although none of these endeavors provides clear answers, each represents a step towards doing so.

As I reach the end of this chapter and prepare to conclude this study, I find myself feeling indebted to those whose lived experiences have populated these many months of research and these hundreds of pages of writing. Thus, as I continue to ponder the successes and failures of

Huerta’s efforts to create a graduate program specifically for Latinx actors and directors, it feels most appropriate to conclude this chapter in the same spirit that Huerta’s archived papers on the program draw to a close—with a one-year check-in on the program’s graduates. Having been the sole author and editor of TENAZ Talks Teatro for many years, Huerta is no stranger to creating newsletters. His archival records of this program end with a document titled “UCSD Graduate

Program in Hispanic American Theatre Occasional Newsletter … Issue Number One AND

TWO!”154 In the newsletter, Huerta updates his former students on his own activities (he is on sabbatical at the time, conducting interviews for his next book project) and shares what he knows of others’ work. One student, who is living in New York City, has recently reported that “she is up for a role in Josefina Lopez’s Real Women Have Curves with Asolo State Theatre in Florida, as well as a part-time teaching position at New York’s Lehman College”; she has also filmed a few commercials and continues to audition.155 Another has started his own teatro in Phoenix,

154 Jorge Huerta, “UCSD Graduate Program in Hispanic American Theatre Occasional Newsletter,” March 15, 1993, p. 1, MSS 142, UCSD, B31 F12.

155 Ibid., 1-2. 310 while a third works with a developing theatre program at the Mission Cultural Center in San

Francisco and has directed a play in San Jose.156 A fourth student is preparing to direct a play for

Huerta’s former company, Teatro de la Esperanza, which “will tour and will be featured at the

TENAZ festival in San Antonio, TX” that November.157 He is also directing a reading for the

Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, and has directed another play which Huerta has seen and calls

“very nice work. Very professional.”158 Another actor is in Seattle, “has not stopped working since she left San Diego last year and played in that big hit, Real Women Have Curves.”159

Another student left the theatre to work for a law firm, but has “recently moved to Los Angeles to get into the loop” and has already been called to participate in a reading.160 Yet another actor has been working at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse but has recently given up a multi-year contract with Minneapolis’s Mixed Blood Company to take a tenure-track teaching position at the University of Texas at El Paso.161 Another actor has just finished playing Shakespeare in

Berkeley and has taken on an Equity contract for a six-month tour with El Teatro Campesino, and another continues to act in Los Angeles.162 Only one student is unaccounted for in Huerta’s newsletter.

This one-year check-in is by no means an assessment of the Hispanic-American Theatre

MFA’s efficacy. For one thing, it offers no suggestion of where these Latinx theatre artists were

156 Ibid., 2.

157 Ibid.

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid.

160 Ibid.

161 Ibid.

162 Ibid. 311 or what they were doing five, ten, or twenty years later, or what they might be doing now. For another, it is impossible to know whether any professional work they did at any point after graduation is either a direct or an indirect result of their time at UCSD. It is encouraging, however, to know that they found work in the field for which they trained. It is especially interesting to see that at least two of them spent time in higher education, serving among the very few Latinx artists who were doing so at that time. In many ways, they may have played a part in paving the way for what has become a growing group of Latinx artists and educators who have created and continue to foster a robust practice of the making and study of Latinx theatre. 312

CONCLUSION

In October and November of 2014, Los Angeles’s Latino Theatre Company and the

Latinx Theatre Commons organized Encuentro 2014, which Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero, and Chantal Rodriguez have described as “the largest national Latinx theater festival and convening of theater artists and scholars since the last TENAZ (Teatro Nacional de Aztlán) festival in 1992.”163 According to this trio of scholars, “the aims of the festival were two-fold: to give artists and audiences the opportunity to explore a broad range of Latinx work and creative methodologies, and to reinvigorate professional relationships between Latinx artists and companies across the country.”164 Listed among the festival’s goals were methodology workshops designed to culminate in the presentation of ten collectively created performance pieces.165 Also in 2014, the Hemispheric Institute hosted its ninth Encuentro festival in Montreal, which included lectures, discussions, and workshops on topics including community engagement, Performance Studies, processional theatre, voice and movement, and solo performance.166 Although TENAZ and its festivals are no more, the work they helped begin in actor training continues.

In the preceding chapters, I have documented only a few historical efforts to create training programs and opportunities specifically for Latinx actors in the United States. Beginning

163 Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero and Chantal Rodriguez, Editors, Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New

American Theater (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019), xv.

164 Ibid.

165 Ibid.

166 Program, “Hemispheric Institute IX Encuentro,” The Hemispheric Institute, http://archive.hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/component/docman/doc_view/641-encuentro-2014-schedule- english?tmpl=component&format=raw, Accessed December 23, 2019. 313 with the informal training actors might have received while working in the carpas, moving through the training provided to farm workers and other amateurs through Luis Valdez’s El

Teatro Campesino, to that company’s more organized Theater of the Sphere training and the training offered through TENAZ, to the Old Globe Theatre’s Teatro Meta program, and finally to

Jorge Huerta’s MFA program in Hispanic-American Theater at the University of California, San

Diego, I have demonstrated a variety of ways in which mid- to late twentieth-century Latinx artists took actor training into their own hands. In the cases of El Teatro Campesino and TENAZ,

I have shown how these training efforts were rooted in the cultural nationalism that defined the

Chicanx theatre movement. I have argued that Luis Valdez’s increasing interest in spiritual matters led him to move beyond specifically Chicanx concerns to pursue more broadly humanist goals. I have also posited that the training offered through TENAZ constituted a much more complex and significant infrastructure of Latinx actor training than has previously been recognized. Following Jorge Huerta out of the Chicanx theatre movement, I have offered the first existing analysis of the ways in which globalization shifted the focus of Teatro Meta from specifically Chicanx concerns to those of a more homogenized “Hispanic” population, and argued that this change led the program to adopt assimilationist aims that ultimately led to the program’s erasure. Finally, I have offered the first extended documentation of Huerta’s MFA program at UCSD, noting especially the challenges it faced as a culturally specific program existing within a larger, more Eurocentric university theatre department. In sum, I have offered a summary of the trajectory of Latinx actor training from early carpa performances to the university classroom. In each of these instances, I have shown how Latinx artists took responsibility for the training of their own community of actors. I have explored the challenges, the successes, and the shortcomings of each of these efforts. Above all, I have demonstrated that 314

Latinx theatre artists have long recognized the need for such efforts and that they have made great strides toward meeting that need.

Micha Espinosa and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman’s 2010 essay, “Identity Politics and the

Training of Latino Actors,” reveals that by that year, Latinx actors were still struggling to make use of the Eurocentric methods and models that dominate actor training in the US.

Acknowledging the training still offered by various festivals nationwide (and noting the incomplete nature of such training), Espinosa and Ocampo-Guzman identify “three main challenges” in training Latino actors:

First, there is the fluid relationship that most Latinos have with language, having been

exposed to both Spanish and English in varied degrees and disparate circumstances.

Secondly, there is the complex relationship most Latinos have to the physical body,

having been given contradictory messages about sensuality and expression by religious

ideology and/or cultural beliefs, as well as by the media. And thirdly, Latino actors face

many difficulties finding work in an industry that frequently holds them hostage to

phenotype, relegating them to stereotypes, disregarding their fullest artistic potential.167

In some ways, the training programs documented in this dissertation speak to these concerns; in other ways, they may also typify them. Both Teatro Meta and Huerta’s MFA program at UCSD sought to create bilingual productions, and the latter recognized the need for actors to do work in specific Latinx dialects. Although my research regarding the Theatre of the Sphere uncovered nothing about challenging hegemonic characterizations of the Latinx body, the method placed much of its emphasis on movement. It is possible, however, that this emphasis on the body as a

167 Micha Espinosa and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, “Identity Politics and the Training of Latino Actors” in The

Politics of Actor Training, Edited by Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud (New York: Routledge, 2010), 151. 315

Latinx way of knowing perpetuates rather than challenges these hegemonic characterizations. A similar tension exists between Teatro Meta and Huerta’s MFA program and Espinosa and

Ocampo-Guzman’s third concern. Huerta, for example, sought to train Latinx actors to play

Latinx roles in Latinx productions. Since Huerta advocated the production of Latinx playwrights,

I would not argue that his philosophy forced Latinx actors to engage in stereotypes, but in what way might such an emphasis on specifically Latinx characters “[hold] them hostage to phenotype?” On the other hand, what is the alternative? Does training Latinx actors to play

Eurocentric roles amount to assimilation and erasure, as I have argued it did in the case of Teatro

Meta? In the face of such contradictions, what are scholars and practitioners and educators who seek to address the needs of Latinx actors to do?

In 2010, Espinosa and Ocampo-Guzman were “developing workshops to offer solutions”;168 in their essay, they offer some suggestions. The first is bilingual instruction.

Arguing that most professional training programs, which operate in English, require Latinx students to “standardize their speech sounds” and thereby “shut down an inherent part of the individual’s identity and diminish their students,” Espinosa and Guzman argue that speech training should move away from teaching standardized speech sounds and embrace speech training methods that focus on teaching actors to develop a wide variety of speech sounds

(including their “original” speech sounds) as a tool for developing an array of characters.169

Unfortunately, their suggestions for the body are less specific. Here, they cite stereotyped representations in the media as the source of the problem, offering little for the acting teacher other than a call for “developing an awareness of the thorny issues of identity development their

168 Ibid., 151

169 Ibid., 151-153. 316

Latino student might be experiencing”; the only (somewhat) actionable advice they offer on this front is that “Programs should be able to identify the students in need, and to serve as a referral agent.”170 On the topic of relegating Latinx actors to stereotypical roles and characterizations,

Espinosa and Ocampo-Guzman are similarly vague, suggesting that the industry should look beyond “conventional standards of training.”171 Ultimately, they call for training programs to

“commit to enhancing learning while affirming and creating cultural identity” by “stretching their own boundaries and generating new approaches and knowledge.”172 Their remaining suggestions reflect those efforts that I have described in this dissertation. Training programs, they argue should engage in “bi-cultural” education that recognizes, engages, and honors cultural differences; they should introduce more Latino playwrights; they should confront their

Eurocentric admissions practices; they should “provide positive role models for these Latino student-actors among their faculty” and “establish mentoring and apprenticeship programs with

Latino theatre companies and festivals.”173 Espinosa and Ocampo-Guzman summarize their suggestions by arguing that training programs must “[foster] among their faculties, staff, and student body, a clear understanding of the politics of identity.”174

In the same volume of essays, Venus Opal Reese discusses the ways in which mainstream actor training requires Black American actors to rely on dominant modes that grew out of Stanislavsky’s System and to engage in performances of roles that perpetuate racial

170 Ibid., 156.

171 Ibid., 158.

172 Ibid.. 159.

173 Ibid., 159-160.

174 160. 317 stereotypes.175 She also argues that Eurocentric training “can leave the [non-white] actor with the strong impression that one must erase all racial markers, signs, and signifiers, in order to be marketable.”176 Reese offers advice to both actors and teachers on a process of “embodiment” that she argues allows an actor of color to “deconstruct a stereotype and reconfigure it.”177 This process, she argues, allows actors of color to take on roles that engage stereotypes to truthfully and productively speak to culturally specific experiences in the US in ways that José Esteban

Muñoz might describe as “disidentification.”178 Reese offers three examples of how this process of embodiment might occur, along with exercises that encourage actors to confront and make connections between their own culturally specific experiences and the stereotypes they might encounter working in the Eurocentric theatrical canon. Reese’s approach has less to do with acting methodology and technique than it does with finding ways to work within a canon and an industry that continues to marginalize actors of color.

Canon is a common factor in the two essays described above. It is also a common theme that runs throughout this dissertation. El Teatro Campesino developed its own canon of actos, corridas, and mitos, which were ultimately taken up by other teatros in TENAZ. Teatro Meta began with a goal of introducing a Latinx theatrical canon to Anglo audiences. Ultimately,

175 Venus Opal Reese, “Keeping It Real Without Selling Out: Toward Confronting and Triumphing over Racially-

Specific Barriers in American Actor Training,” in Margolis and Renaud, The Politics of Actor Training, 164.

176 Ibid.

177 Ibid., 165.

178 José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis,

University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Muñoz examines performances by queer artists of color to theorize about ways in which marginalized peoples and individuals engage in hegemonic representations of themselves as a form of resistance. He terms this process “disidentification.” 318 however, that goal was subsumed by a desire to assimilate Latinx actors into the Anglo canon.

Huerta’s MFA program at UCSD focused exclusively on a Latinx canon. In the end, maintaining a production season dedicated to this canon proved neither feasible in the context of a

Eurocentric training program, nor desirable for student-actors who wished to work beyond the confines of teatro. Canon also remains a concern for those still pushing for forward movement on the topic of Latinx actor training. Espinosa edited a 2014 volume entitled Monologues for

Latino/a Actors179 and another in 2019, with Cynthia McCure, entitled Scenes for Latinx Actors:

Voices of the New American Theatre.180 It may be that widespread Latinx actor training concerns cannot be fully addressed unless or until the Latinx canon grows enough in volume and esteem to compete with or truly integrate with the Eurocentric canon.

Another common thread in the issue of Latinx actor training, and one which only entered this dissertation in the last two chapters, is that of the US academy. As I noted in Chapter III,

TENAZ’s Jose Luis Oropeza suggested that Latinx artists should turn to universities for continued training and production experience. Huerta wrote in 1982 that “without instructors who are either Chicano or interested in Chicano drama, few if any Chicanos are motivated to enter into the realm of academic theatre.”181 In the nearly 40 years since the latter remark, more and more Latinx scholars and artists have entered the academy. The number of books and articles concerning Latinx theatre has increased in that time, as have both academic and professional productions of playwrights like José Rivera, Nilo Cruz, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Lin Manuel

179 Micha Espinosa, ed., Monologues for Latino/a Actors (Hanover: Smith and Kraus Publishers, 2014).

180 Micha Espinosa and Cynthia DeCure, eds., Scenes for Latinx Actors: Voices of the New American Theatre

(Hanover: Smith and Kraus Publishers, 2019).

181 Jorge Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti: Bilingual Press, 1982), 221. 319

Miranda. Still, the emphasis in the academy has remained on these playwrights and on the development of the Latinx canon.

The canon is a productive place to begin—perhaps even a necessary place to begin—but it does not fully address the challenges facing Latinx actors in a predominantly Anglo industry.

There are few, if any, well-known Latinx acting teachers. Training programs continue to emphasize the System and the Method, taking as their alternative and supplementary materials the works of other Eurocentric theorists like Brecht, Grotowski, and Brook. I hope that in documenting these historical efforts at Latinx actor training, I have demonstrated that such efforts are both necessary and possible. Perhaps, for instance, some of El Teatro Campesino’s

Theatre of the Sphere principles can be usefully incorporated into training programs that otherwise privilege Anglo theorists. Perhaps, also, programs might begin to consider the collective creation practices that characterized the Chicanx theatre movement alongside those that are now described as “devising” techniques. Perhaps considerations of Latinx dramatic literature, dialects, and culture can be nuanced in ways that recognize the heterogeneity of those peoples long homogenized under the category “Hispanic.”

I do not contend, however, that the answers to all questions about how best to train Latinx actors (or any actors of color) can be found in the past. On the contrary, what is needed, perhaps most of all, is a willingness among theorists and practitioners and educators to theorize new ways to approach training for an increasingly diverse pool of actors who will perform in increasingly diverse theatres. Espinosa and Ocampo-Guzman’s thoughts on language, the body, and casting have provided a start. Reese has offered a compelling way for actors of color to historicize and reconsider problematic roles and the work that embodying them can do. Still, these essays are now nearly ten years old. Such ideas need more traction and more encouragement. 320

As I conclude this dissertation, the second decade of the twenty-first century has also drawn to a close. Methods of actor training in the US have not changed substantially in the last fifty years; neither, I would argue, has the position and experience of the actors of color who engage in that training. Great minds have identified many problems in that time, and many hands have been wrung. I hope this study will encourage those with the power and the ability to put both minds and hands to work. Latinx actors have moved from the carpas to the classroom, and they have done it largely on their own. It is time to recognize and honor not only their history in

US theatre, but their presence. 321

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