Following a series of casting controversies in Chicago, Tlaloc Rivas offers counsel and perspective to Latinx actors while calling out theatres that practice whitewashing.

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.

And although I’m proud of the production and of the nearly-all Latina/o creative team that gave Mariela en el Desierto an authentic voice, an issue arose as the last weekend of performances approached: No critics from the periodicals in the Atlanta area had attended or reviewed the show.

By allowing only a European/Western perspective to lead the artistic presentation of stories about class, race, and gender, are we continuing to allow those narratives to be appropriated, assimilated, or turned into the universal, etc. to the point of irrelevance? Perhaps in the attempt to distill a story to its essence there is a dilution that takes place at the hands of the dominant culture?

Emerging from the  Latina/o Theatre Commons is a list of plays everyone should have access to. This list helps start jumpstart the exploration of (but not define) Latina/o theatre.