Luis Valdez: the father of Chicano theater – Festival honors playwright/director who blazed a trail for Latinos in theater and film

Luis Valdez was just 6 years old when he first glimpsed the power of art.

It was 1946. Little Luis was picking cotton with his parents in the sun-baked fields of the Central Valley. The migrant farmworker family rarely settled anywhere long enough to put down roots. But that season was different. Their truck broke down near Corcoran, and Luis was packed off to school with his lunch in a brown paper bag.

At first, he felt ashamed because all the other boys had shiny new lunchboxes. But then his teacher showed him how to transform that humble brown paper into a papier-mache mask for the school play. He even was cast in the show. Alas, his family got evicted from the labor camp, and he was pulled out of school before opening night.”*

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