‘It came full circle’

El Teatro Campesino was built on Luis Valdez’s ‘Zoot Suit,’ and
now the success of the 1977 play will take it on the road across
America.
To put it in the playwright’s own words, “It came full circle.”

And it has, indeed. The success of Luis Valdez’s play “Zoot Suit” gave El Teatro Campesino the money to create its own home in San Juan Bautista more than 20 years ago. And the return of the story of the death at Sleepy Lagoon will take El Teatro Campesino back on the road.

The thrilling, thrice-extended run of “Zoot Suit” at El Teatro Campesino’s playhouse, the house that “Zoot Suit” built, has done more than just surprise packed houses in the quaint town of San Juan Bautista. Its unprecedented success has now opened the door to a national tour.

“We’ve been meaning to bring this back,” said Valdez, who originally wrote the play in 1977 for audiences in Los Angeles, but since has seen it achieve wild success in San Diego, Chicago and even on Broadway. “We needed to see if the Teatro Campesino could pull it off. We’ve shown we can do this, and the next step is to take it on the road.”

As the former packing-shed-turned-playhouse brings in more than 150 people five nights a week to see the show, several producers also made their way to San Juan Bautista to talk to Valdez about taking the show national. While a deal isn’t official, it is almost certain that “Zoot Suit” will be working its way across the United States starting at the end of the year.

“We went to New York and had these negotiations,” said Valdez, who could not divulge who would be producing the show until the negotiations are complete.

However, as the negotiations continue, El Teatro Campesino has announced its third extension, which means the show will run until March 30. Tickets for the third run of the show are still available, but not for long.

“We’ve been running at 100 percent for several months,” Valdez said. “It always feels great to sell out performances. And it’s great to see young people relating to it. Families are coming to the show together. All across the board, it has been great.”

The play itself is a look at the so-called “zoot suit riots” in Los Angeles in the early 1940s. It takes a critical look at the role society and the media had on the riots – in particular, the story of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial.

“I thought this was a piece of history that was swept under the carpet, so to speak,” said Valdez, who used a Rockefeller grant to conduct interviews with people who were a part of the zoot suit riots and the murder trial.

Valdez said the zoot suit took on a powerful meaning in 1940s America, at a time when the U.S. was at war and a new trend was sweeping the across the nation’s youth, starting in Brooklyn and working its way west to Los Angeles. 

“Its roots were in African American culture,” Valdez said of the zoot suit. “It was a youthful phenomenon like the rap clothes of today. But it was a suit. All that became an emblem of life of the street. The Chicano youth picked up on it.”

The zoot suit took on extra meaning for the Chicano youth. The suit is characterized by its baggy pants, long suit chain that ran nearly to the floor, and by the long jacket, which they called “drapes.” The suit was a symbol of a way of life for the zoot-suiters, also known as “pachucos.” It was characterized by swing music, partying and dancing, Valdez said.

“It’s the American costume of the time period,” he said.

Valdez’s story centers around the 38th Street Gang, which was blamed for a death in 1942 at a ranch near Sleepy Lagoon, a popular youth night spot outside of L.A. Twenty-two members of the gang went on trial together for the death in an absurd proceeding that tried the men together but allowed the court to make individual judgments.

“That was a part of the inconsistency of the trial,” Valdez said. “It was a mass trial, but people were treated as individuals.”

Accurately portraying the story for a stage audience was no easy task.

“I had to fictionalize some of the characters,” Valdez said. “There was no way I could get 22 actors on the stage. So I picked four. They were symbols of the rest of the group.”

The play even brought people who experienced the zoot suit riots first-hand to San Juan Bautista. Alice Greenfield McGrath, who is portrayed in the show as Alice Bloomfield, was a major player in the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial. Now 85, Greenfield McGrath has made trips to see the show.

‘Zoot Suit’ is playing at the El Teatro Campesino Playhouse in San Juan Bautista until March 30. Tickets are $12 to $20 and are available by calling (831) 634-2444.