Yolanda Broyles-González's article "El Teatro Campesino and the Mexican Popular Performance Tradition" looks at the development and significance of the El Teatro Campesino theater company founded in the 1960s to support the United Farm Workers movement. Broyles-González argues that El Teatro Campesino draws on a long history of Mexican popular performance traditions like carnival and religious pageantry, as well as European avant-garde theater techniques. She examines how El Teatro Campesino's performances incorporated elements of these traditions, such as satire, physical comedy, and music, to engage audiences and create a sense of community. Broyles-González also explores how the theater company's performances challenged dominant cultural narratives and offered a vision of social change that centered the experiences and struggles of Chicano farm workers. A quote that resonated with me was that "the real language of African theatre is to be found in the struggles of the oppressed, for it is out of those struggles that a new Africa is being born." The people of Africa are doing everything they can to use their struggles as good and try to create a better tomorrow. Overall, Broyles-González argues that El Teatro Campesino's performances were an important part of the Chicano movement and the larger history of social justice in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvDmbc8V6Z8
Here is a 1972 El Teatro Campesino performance from KNBC studios in Burbank, California.
Will, you have a fine summary of Broyles-Gonzalez's argument here, but I'm a little confused about the quote you pulled out, since it is not in her article (it's on the last page of the Ngūgī Wa Thiong'o article that preceded Broyles-Gonazlez's piece in the anthology, but we didn't read Thiong'o's article).
ReplyDeleteWhat does that quotation say to you about the materials for this week? Why did it appeal to you? How does it relate to Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, and/or El Teatro Campesino?