Valley of the Heart
Finished Dec 9, 2018
Mark Taper Forum
The Father of Chicano Theatre Luis Valadez presents a sweeping historical drama about immigrants in America following the Great Depression
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It is a history lesson wrapped in a love story, with themes that could not be more contemporary: struggling immigrants, xenophobia and racism, cultural confusion and identity.
LA Times
It is a history lesson wrapped in a love story, with themes that could not be more contemporary: struggling immigrants, xenophobia and racism, cultural confusion and identity.
LA Times
Finished Dec 9, 2018
Mark Taper Forum
The Father of Chicano Theatre Luis Valadez presents a sweeping historical drama about immigrants in America following the Great Depression
Finished Dec 9, 2018
Mark Taper Forum
The Father of Chicano Theatre Luis Valadez presents a sweeping historical drama about immigrants in America following the Great Depression
Following its world premiere at the San Jose Stage Company in 2016, Luis Valdez's searing drama Valley Of The Heart comes to Los Angeles as part of the Centre Theatre Group's Mark Taper Forum 2018/19 season. Hailed as the father of Chicano since his first ever work Zoot Suit was the first Chicano play on Broadway, as well as the La Bamba movie, Valdez presents a sweeping epic filled with the emotionally-charged history of Japanese and Mexican immigrants struggling in the face of the Great Depression and anti-immigrant politics post Pearl Harbour.
Whilst the Japanese Yamaguchi family and Mexican Montano family come from vastly different countries, they find common ground in their shared plot of farming land in America, as well as their American-born children, the eldest of which have fallen in love. When the Pearl Harbour bombing turns popular and political opinion against Japanese immigrants, the Yamaguchis are interned in camps, tearing thousands of Japanese-American families and the play's two star crossed lovers apart.