There is so much symbolism involved in the play, which adds to its appeal. Read it today! Also, take some time and learn about the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the zoot suit riots.

I first met Valdez and his wife in San Francisco after a preview of the revised "Badges!" in March of 1990. I was impressed by his unhurried cordiality. Valdez's son Kinan was playing Sonny Villa, a Harvard undergraduate who shocks his Hollywood-extra parents with the news that he has quit school. A 1986 production of "Badges!" inspired Josefina Lopez to write her first play "Simply Maria, or The American Dream" and to go on to create more roles for Chicana/Latina actresses.

This past weekend I saw Kinan at the San Diego Rep as the gallant outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez in the fun and bawdy musical "Bandido!" Vasquez was a native Californian of good breeding and above-average education whose legal public execution by hanging in 1875 strained relations further between native Californians and Americans of that era. I read the script immediately before the production, but it's best to wait till later so you don't spoil the suspense of what's going to happen next.

Valdez became the first Chicano playwright to have access to mainstream theater and Broadway stages with the production of "Zoot Suit" in the late '70s. The play was especially successful in Los Angeles, where for people of my father's generation the Sleepy Lagoon case and the Zoot Suit/Servicemen Riots became a part of family history and a bad memory of the virulent racism against Mexicans. Actor Edward James Olmos made the narrator role of El Pachuco memorable.