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Marisela Treviño Orta

Marisela Treviño Orta is an accidental playwright. She found her way to the genre while completing an MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco (USF) where she studied poetry exclusively. While a student at USF, Marisela became the Resident Poet of El Teatro Jornalero!, a social justice theatre company comprised of Latino immigrants.

Marisela’s first play Braided Sorrow was presented at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2006 [Inside] the Ford Summer Reading Series. Braided Sorrow won the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama and received a 2008 world premiere at Su Teatro in Denver, CO, and won the 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama.

Her other plays include: American Triage (2012 Repertorio Español Nuestras Voces Finalist); Heart Shaped Nebula (2012 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist, 2015 Shotgun Players world premiere); and Woman on Fire.

Marisela is an alumna of the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwright Initiative, a founding member of the Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network (BALTAN), and a member of the Latina/o Theatre Commons’ national Steering Committee.

Currently, Marisela is pursuing an MFA at the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop. There she is working to complete her grim Latino fairy tale cycle—plays which include The River Bride (2013 National Latino Playwriting Award Co-Winner, 2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival world premiere), Wolf at the Door, and Alcira.

Interview with Javier Muñoz
Essay

Interview with Javier Muñoz

21 April 2016

Marisela Treviño Orta interviews Javier Muñoz, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s alternate in Hamilton.

Should Latina/o Roles Be Cast with Non-Latina/o Actors?
Essay

Should Latina/o Roles Be Cast with Non-Latina/o Actors?

6 December 2015

Playwrights Magdalena Gómez, Irma Mayorga, Marisela Treviño Orta, Elaine Romero, and Martín Zimmerman weigh in on casting practices in light of recent debates.

Coffee and chat
Essay

Coffee and chat

Marisela Treviño Orta

27 October 2015

Abel Muñoz interviews Marisela Treviño Orta

Photo from Su Teatro.
Cafecito
Essay

Cafecito

Tony Garcia & Su Teatro

27 October 2014

There is a very gentle story at heart about a boy who wants his mother. We all feel that separation; we all want to return to that place in our lives where our mother’s voice, scent, and presence can solve everything. That makes it pretty universal.

On Mentoring and Paying It Forward
Essay

On Mentoring and Paying It Forward

10 September 2014

There is so much that we, the new Latina/o playwrights, can learn from those who came before us. And if we as a cultural community are to keep working at diversifying the American stage, we need to be looking behind us as often as looking ahead. Mentorship is about paying it forward.

Baltan logo.
Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network
Essay

Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network

Forging Sustainable Connections Both Locally and Nationally

29 October 2013

What’s the next step when we’ve done this before and nothing has changed? The Bay Area Latino theatre artists reflect on historical patterns to find the answer of what’s next.