March 1, 2010
No Latino is more respected as a civil rights advocate than the late, courageous Latino leader Cesar Chavez.
Multitalented playwright, actor, and mask maker Zarco Guerrero portrays the life and times of this iconic historical figure through his unique masked characters and their reverent, yet humorous style of storytelling.
Zarco Guerrero will present his original theatrical tale, Cesar Says, on Saturday, March 20 at 2 p.m. at the Museum of Northern Arizona. This program is part of a yearlong series of Insight Presentations from MNA’s Heritage Program, which is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Zarco puts Chavez’s life and accomplishments into perspective in a delightful and engaging way in this family oriented show. The Cesar Chavez Education Foundation commissioned Zarco to write and stage this new play.
“Cesar Chavez is an inspiration in my life and in the lives of many Latinos. I hope this show will inspire the young people who see it,” says Zarco. “It is an honor for me to be chosen to write and perform in this play.”
Onstage with Zarco will be the poetry-spouting El Vato Poeta, the flirtatious La Comadre, and other beloved characters this prolific playwright has created.
Zarco has a longtime association with Cesar Chavez. Both Chavez and Zarco grew up in Arizona—Chavez in Yuma and Zarco in Mesa. Zarco sculpted a life-sized bronze of the Latino leader for the City of Phoenix that now stands proudly at Cesar Chavez Park in south Phoenix. He also sculpted the monument dedicated in San Luis, Arizona—Chavez’s birthplace—on the occasion of the leader’s 80th birthday, March 31, 2007.
Zarco has been a force in the Arizona arts scene, as a multimedia artist and community arts advocate, since the early seventies. He has performed one-man theater throughout the United States and in Mexico.
He and his wife Carmen de Novais founded Xicanindio, which staged some of the first Chicano theater in parks and at small coffeehouse venues beginning in the seventies. Many of the theater skits performed then were inspired by Teatro Campesino, a theater troupe founded in northern California that supported Chavez’s struggles, his farmworker strikes, and his vision for economic equality and equal justice for all workers.