In this first installment, Milta Ortiz discusses the backstory of Barrio Stories, while playwrights Virginia Grise, Martín Zimmerman, and Elaine Romero talk about their collaboration for this project.

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

As a Chicano director and writer, I am inspired by my own culture—the influence of poetry and magical realism, the contradictions and collision of European and Indigenous cultures, the corridos and huapangos of home, the memories of sitting on the porch hearing my family’s stories, and my own ever-growing inquiry into the nature of storytelling—from the specific to the universal—all came to mind in the design of the play.