Taking it to the Streets

The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka

Author: Harry Justin Elam
ISBN: 0472107933

The performances of Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers' theater, and Amiri Baraka's (LeRoi Jones's) Black Revolutionary Theater (BRT) during the 1960s and 1970s, offer preeminent examples of social protest theater during a momentous and tumultuous historical juncture. The performances of these groups linked the political, the cultural, and the spiritual, while agitating against the dominant power structure and for the transformation of social and theatrical practices in the U.S. Founded during the Delano Grape Pickers' Strike and Black Power rebellions of the mid-1960s, both El Teatro and the BRT professed cultural pride and group unity as critical corollaries to self-determination and revolutionary social action. Taking It to the Streets compares the performance methodologies, theories, and practices of the two groups, highlighting their cross-cultural commonalties, and providing insights into the complex genre of social protest performance and its interchange with its

Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Publish Date: 1997

Subjects: Performing Arts / Theater / General, Performing Arts / Theater / History & Criticism, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Raza Recource Centro (Location: Bookshelf 1)