Hope as a Vehicle for Creation with Elisa Bocanegra

Elisa Bocanegra: I love it when I fall or stumble, because I’m like, “Ouch, that hurt. Hearing that hurt, but I’m going to grow.” That, to me, is liberation. It’s like I’ve stopped holding onto what the results are and what the expectations would be and started to embrace the beauty in the unknown, in knowing I’m exactly where I need to be. I need to be a mentor. I need to be a producer. I need to be somebody who helps out. I don’t act as much as I used to. I keep saying I’m sailing into like Quirky Tía Land, and that Quirky Tía and Mamá, and I’m like, “Cool, that’ll happen when it happens.” But real liberation for me came from when I stopped expecting to...

Yura Sapi: You’re listening to Building Our Own Tables, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Yura Sapi, founder of multiple organizations, including LiberArte, a nonprofit nurturing artists for liberated futures; Protectores de La Tierra, a farm and food sovereignty initiative based out of Colombia; Balistikal, an LGBTQ+ healing and art space for communities in Latin America. And through all my programs, workshops, coaching, and this podcast, I’ve helped countless founders and leaders unleash their brilliance and build thriving movements. In this podcast, we share visionary solutions, stories, and snapshots to support you as a leader on your own journey of creation and transformation.

This fifth season is especially meaningful. I’m recording while eight months pregnant, and this experience of bringing a new life into the world has brought a deeper opportunity for lessons in leadership, in legacy, and in creation, all of which I’m sharing in this season alongside the powerful voices you’ll hear from. You’ll hear extraordinary founders building their own tables for their communities, their lineages, and for the planet in this evolutionary time. You are here for a reason, and I'm honored to be on this journey with you. So, stay tuned and enjoy.

Welcome to Building Our Own Tables. Pulling up a seat to liberation. Today, I’m joined by Elisa Bocanegra of HERO Theatre. Thank you so much, Elisa, for being with us today.

Elisa: Thank you for having me, I’m very honored and excited to share.

Yura: Yes, excited to hear more. So you are a producer, director, actor with a long history of performing in theatre and film. You began your acting career at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, and you are the founder of HERO Theatre, a social justice, environmental justice organization based out of Los Angeles that has started a environmental initiative called Nuestro Planeta that also is connecting to all these places in Latin America. Colombia, El Salvador, México, Guatemala, Ecuador, Haití, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico. Wow. And then, in 2025, this year, you have also expanded to open an office in Bogotá, in Colombia, Teatro HÉROE.

Elisa: Yes.

Yura: Wow, that’s really exciting, and we’ll get into it too, because I am myself Colombian as well, and spend a lot of time there. And then, just to let listeners know, too, we’re also connected through NALAC, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, their leadership institutes. So all of these connections, all of this incredible movement work that you’ve been doing, would love to get into it, would love to hear about what inspired you to start building your own table that is HERO Theatre.

Elisa: I was doing a play at the Roundabout Theatre in New York, and I was working with Olympia Dukakis, who passed away several years ago. I remember doing this play, and I was playing her non-English speaking maid. And she had said to me, “Why are you doing a part like this? You’re so much more, you can do so much more.” And I said, “Well, not all of us have that choice.” And I said, I told her about a lot of what was happening, and the racism that I was encountering, and that many of my friends and colleagues were encountering in American theatre.

And she said, “I think you should start your own company. I had started one many years ago, I had it for twenty-three years.” She said, “You’re going to want to stick a pin in your eye sometimes because it’s going to be so hard, but it’s going to make you grow so much, and you’re going to have a voice, and you’re going to be able to help others like you.” I thought about that a lot and I said, “Well, how does that happen?” And she said, “I don't know. Get a group of friends together and do a reading,” and that's how it happened. And we turned fourteen on August eleventh.

Yura: Wow, so powerful. Can you tell us the story of HERO Theatre and, now, HÉROE in Spanish?

Elisa: I had gotten cast at that show at the Roundabout because somebody had seen me do a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and it was Much Ado About Nothing. And I was reading through the play, sort of going, “Maybe this will jog something for an idea for a name for the company.” And then, I remember the lead character’s name is Hero. And I thought about that, and then I looked at the root of the word “hero” and what that meant. And then, of course, Joseph Campbell came to mind and the whole hero’s journey. And I thought, “That’s exactly what an actor is.” So I said, “This is part of my hero’s journey, and I'm going to call it HERO Theatre,” and that’s how it happened. And then, with the NGO [non-governmental organization] that I started, that’s the direct translation of it. I didn’t want to change the name.

Towards the end of 2021, when we were at the thick of the pandemic, my brother was found on the side of a road. He had had multiple strokes due to COVID-related issues, and I couldn’t go see my brother in the hospital. Over the course of eighteen months, I watched him pass away on Zoom, really. But my brother loved nature, and he was somebody that was an avid cyclist and loved birds, just loved being in nature. And I thought to myself, “The way I’m going to heal from this is I’m going to go back to my ancestral homeland.” I went back to Puerto Rico once the airports opened. And I remember taking these long walks and spending a lot of time hiking through Survival Beach in Aguadilla, where my family is from. And I was journaling, and writing, and crying, and just writing, and getting so much out, and I felt like that was such a way of healing.

When it came for the time for my brother to leave, I was at such peace with it, because I knew he was part of every tree, every object, every animal that I encountered, and he had become an ancestor. So I thought to myself, “What if this similar kind of healing experience happens to other artists in our community who have suffered so much oppression working in American theatre as Latine?” And I thought, “What if we go back to their ancestral homeland and reconnect with nature?” And I had signed up around the same time for an online program that I had read about, because everybody was doing online college at the time. There were no... You couldn't go to school in person, that was pandemic time. And so Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of BLM [Black Lives Matter], started a wonderful MFA program for mid-career activists. And it was in social and environmental arts practice, and it was about how to incorporate environmental justice work into your artistry.

And I was one of two theatre people in that program. Most of the people were visual artists. So during that time, I had chosen Colombia to be the first country to focus on, because of the amount of biodiversity there, and because it's the second most biodiverse country in the planet. But meanwhile, we weren’t seeing any Colombian narratives really on our stage, on our American stages. I felt that, as a Puerto Rican producer, it’s also really important for us to acknowledge our folk from the other countries that are not getting their due. Not that we’re getting that much, but if we’re getting half of a crumb, we have to share. And so I thought Colombia would be the place to start. When I was in the program, I won a Fulbright research grant that paid for me to do research for about a year at Instituto Humboldt, which is a science center in Colombia.

It was important for me, again, Diana Burbano, wonderful playwright, was writing the play. In order to support her as a dramaturg, as a deviser, as a director, I wanted to root myself in the facts of what was going on scientifically, with the climate crisis, and how we could bring those stories to our communities. I wound up staying for about a year and a half. I fell in love also in Colombia. I met my husband there. And I fell in love with the people. And I was doing a lot of work in the Páramo Mountains of Colombia, where folks are fighting for their rights to have water, and fighting against corporate drilling, and all sorts of things that are happening “illegally,” quote-unquote, in their own country.

So I started this project in the Páramos, and then my Fulbright ended and I said, “I’m going to finish off this project, I’m going to keep doing it.” It’s a five-part play in the Páramo Mountains. It’s totally community devised theatre, with the gente performing, writing, doing everything, using local designers, and so that happened.

It was my intention at first to start a foreign entity of HERO Theatre, but under our current administration, it doesn't really seem like arts funding is something that is being supported. In fact, it is not. And also, if it's environmental-related arts funding, even less. The government of Colombia does have grants, does have support for the arts, for environmental initiatives. And I had learned that from being at Instituto Humboldt, and I said, “You know, I’m not going to be able to do anything while we have our president in office here. The kind of environmental work I want to do. That doesn’t mean the work needs to stop. It doesn't mean the work needs to stop. So if I have to leave the country for a while in order for the work to continue, then let it be so. I’m not going to close my company. I’m going to continue to do the work, but the research and the community outreach to our Latine population abroad and here has to continue.”

So that was part of it, really. It was very hard setting up an NGO in Colombia as an extranjera verdad, because you got to prove why you're doing it, even though my husband is there, I have a residence there. It's also integrating yourself as part of a theatre community, too. It's been happening for a long time. And so one of the things I've been doing is, aside from the volunteer community work that I've been doing in the Páramos and in the Amazon, I've been trying to give back to the local Bogotá theatre community, researching, finding ways how I can provide jobs, and just sitting back a little bit. I’ve now been there for two and a half years pretty much. I’ve first watched other folks do the work, supported the work, bought tickets, helped out artists there, and now I’m just entering into the space of actually becoming a legal theatremaker in the country.

Yura: Amazing. I think this is definitely meant to be, because as many may know, I also am in Colombia a lot. It is my home base. My partner is also from there, and I'm also in the environmental space, specifically as a farmer, as an Earth steward, really tapping into that Indigenous wisdom. I also started an organization in Bogotá back in 2019, so it was actually a part of the pandemic quarantine story, too. It was an LGBTQ+ healing and art space with a physical location. And then, we went virtual with the quarantine, which allowed us to do a lot more programs in Spanish for people all over Latin America. And then, we did pop-ups in different countries, too. But ultimately, I also was drawn back to the Earth, especially in that part of the world. Yeah, there's something very rich about being able to be in harmony with nature in this way, and especially in Nuquí, which I know you visited as well, on the Pacific coast of Colombia.

Elisa: So beautiful there, I love it.

Yura: The forest, nature, Earth, it has a different frequency, I would say, of being in power still. And so we join into the forest and become a piece of the forest in a way that it's hard to do. I've found it harder in cities or more, yeah, modernized places.

Elisa: Yeah, or even in Bogotá, surrounded by wetlands and mountains, and I still feel like the folk still have an understanding and an appreciation of the environment, right? And here, I feel like it’s part of the language there. That’s why I enjoy working with the Páramo, the Parameros, the folks that I work with there. They know about what's going on with their land, they’re up on it, they’re all over it. Part of it is the lack of Wi-Fi signal up in a lot of the mountains. So that is what the entertainment is, but that is where their lifeline is. And so working with community members that actually teach me so much about the environment, that’s inspiring to me, and I want to bring that work here to LA, where I am right today. I want to bring that work here, especially what’s happened with the fires, so many natural disasters in California, and the way the Latine community is affected by the climate crisis here. Our workers, our agricultural workers. It’s just criminal.

I have learned so much from being in Colombia. I’ve learned how to be more sustainable as a director. I’ve learned how we don't need to work with so much. You can work with a set designer without having these massive sets. There’s still a way of incorporating vision into the building of the place. And what I find is I was asking some theatremakers there, I'm sure you know this and know this firsthand, right, you see huge plays there that have Broadway production quality. But you do see this incredible, intimate theatre that’s done, and the directors are using such creative ways of devising narratives on stage. And that’s something I really want to bring to my work here. I really do.

Yura: That's beautiful. Going back to this vision that you have for the LA Latino community, those in the US, can you speak more about what this liberation looks like or feels like to you?

Elisa: Oh, wow, I’m going to get emotional. For me, in a literal term of liberation, verdad, I feel I’m very inspired by my mentees, about the folks from the generation behind me that are coming up with a language and a sense of power and the agency that my generation and the generation before me. Like my friend, late Diane Rodriguez, and friends like that that were so harmed in community. I feel that liberation is right behind me, is right there. Recently, I went to Latino Theater Commons, the gathering in Los Angeles, that José Luis hosted at the LATC.

I met a young producer there, and I was so blown away by her, and I just thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is really going to happen. This is happening for our community.” In a lot of ways, work numbers have not gone up for us, right? Justina Machado just said that on The View. We’ve not moved forward. We’re moving backwards, if anything, right? It’s like, the numbers are not there, but I still have a lot of hope. And liberation for me equals hope, equals a passing down of knowledge, a sharing of resources, not hoarding, not feeling like we have one space at that table. We don’t, we’re creating tables. I love the theme of your podcast, I was so excited because of that, and I feel like that next wave is coming, and I'm excited for that.

So I think liberation for me means the lack of oppression for my people here in the US with what's going on in Los Angeles, with ICE, and oh, it's so loaded, and in Puerto Rico, and other places verdad.

Yura: Yeah, it is a defining moment, definitely, for—

Elisa: It is.

Yura: I say the Latino community here—

Elisa: Oh, yeah.

Yura: And a lot of the solidarity. I feel really connected to what you’re saying about what’s this moment that’s right about to happen? It does feel like, almost, the switch, the turnover, especially because a lot of times I remember there’s this statistic about when the minority will become the majority, in terms of numbers. And so it almost feels like that is actually right about to happen. And so that’s why there’s oh so much of this pushback, so much of this struggle. But then, it’s like, okay, “Well, we’re just in this eye of the storm, and then tapping into what liberation is feeling like, is coming through, is just around the corner.”

Elisa: Yes.

Yura: It actually might be exactly where we’re always going to be going, and so it’s just a matter of getting through this moment.

Elisa: I feel like you and I are in sync in this. I’m like, “We must create together.” I feel like we’re in sync, because it’s like that sense of liberation for me internally came from when I stopped expecting American theatre to give me something that it wasn’t going to. We started when I started to create a table, and welcome others, and try to create a language. And I’m not saying I’m perfect as a leader. Every day is a lesson for me. We’re all a work in progress. I love it when I fall or stumble, because I’m like, “Ouch, that hurt, hearing that hurt,” but I’m going to grow. That, to me, is liberation. It’s like I’ve stopped holding onto what the results are and what the expectations would be and started to embrace the beauty in the unknown, in knowing I’m exactly where I need to be. I need to be a mentor. I need to be a producer. I need to be somebody who helps out. I don’t act as much as I used to. I keep saying I’m sailing into like Quirky Tía Land, and that Quirky Tía and Mamá, and I’m like, “Cool, that’ll happen when it happens.”

But real liberation for me came from when I stopped expecting to have that same place at the table that I saw white folks having and just started to go, “I come from resilient people who have not been knocked down yet.” You hear so many crazy stories about what happened in the fifties in Utuado, in Puerto Rico, and the bombings, the US bombing us verdad. And I’m like, “Wow, look at what I’ve come from, and that sense of resilience.” And I think when you live in Hollywood and you’re a Latine artists in Hollywood, there’s so many expectations. It’s the land of the have-not and the have-little. And we as a community have so much. In fact, we have it all.

It doesn’t matter how long the organization or the arts initiative that you start lasts, the point is that you’re doing it.

Yura: Before we get further into this episode, go ahead and hit subscribe on this podcast. This is the best way to stay updated on new episodes, and it helps spread the word to other visionaries who are making a positive impact on the world. So go ahead and hit subscribe and let’s keep this good energy going.

I think what you’re saying too about this kind of accepting a power role, it’s definitely one of those wisdom nuggets that has come through over the years of realizing that there’s those in power, or there’s these systems in power, there’s these practices in power of the current status quo. And if I don’t like them, if I don’t agree with them, there’s also an aspect of saying, “What power am I going to step into then to change that, to be a part of the change?” And sometimes, there can be this resistance to power overall, because in my experience in this way, it’s been so toxic or it’s been so harmful that I just don’t want anything to do with this idea of leadership, or of being in power, or having decision-making power.

Elisa: Yeah.

Yura: But then, it’s really holding us back. And ultimately, it’s not inherently evil, having power or being in a leadership role. It’s like anything, like any tool, it is about how we use it. And by making sure that we do stay true to our values, to our community, to our accountability of others, creating those different systems in place, we can definitely avoid some of the toxic side of power, of what can happen. But then, actually, the truth is we need more good people in the world who have power, and really, everyone to remember our power. To remember that we can create what we desire, that we don’t have to wait for someone else, expect someone else or something else to offer it to us, that there’s things we can do to get to that place.

Elisa: I’m always saying that, and to my friends in Colombia, especially the women, the mujeres. I’m like, “Start your own.” And they’re like, “Ay, Elisa.” I’m like, “Mmm.” I was like, “You have this skillset. The company you’re working for is not valuing you. You’re feeling oppressed.” I said, “I started a company with seventeen dollars in my pocket.” Yeah, somebody said to me, “What are you doing now with all the NEA cuts? What are you going to do? What are you going to do?” And I said, “Well, we’re fourteen, we were not even able to get one of those grants until we turned ten. And then, when we turned ten, we got them. We got several of them.”

But I said, “Okay, they got cut, so we go back to where we were before ten years.” It’s like we do the crab walk, like side, back a little bit, and then we’re going to go forward, and still have radical faith that there’s some good people out there.

Yesterday—I have to share this story, because it was wild—I applied for a foundation grant a couple of times and not gotten it. And someone wrote to me from this specific foundation and said, “We’re not done, nearly done with the application process, but I read your application, and there’s something else you might be right for that actually does have some funding. And in fact, I just put your application over there and it came back with, '’We want to give you five thousand dollars.’” And I said, “What? This is like...” I was like, “Somebody just thought, from the generosity their heart, ‘I read this and thought you’d be right for this, and here.’” And I was like, “Oh, my gosh.” Having that sign, right? That I think we’re at this place now where artists are mobilizing and going to be working together more and more, and that is so exciting to me. We need that space, we need that support.

Yura: Yeah, and I love what you shared earlier too about how there’s opportunities, there’s expansion happening in other parts of the world globally that we can tap into. And for me, that was also remembering back to the quarantine, pandemic, when our space in Bogotá, we closed down what was happening physically. But then there ended up being this opportunity to connect even farther with people from other parts of Latin America virtually, because everybody was online. So we got to do all these really interesting events online, and that really expanded us into another level.

So I feel like that’s the opportunity here to say, especially as a founder, as a leader in these times of uncertainty, of challenge, stepping into that visionary leader side of saying, “Here’s another option, here’s another idea, here’s some passion, here’s the next iteration of what our mission is and what we’re here to do, and how it's actually now even more relevant and going to be making even more impact.”

Elisa: Yeah, I think so too.

Yura: Yeah. What other advice would you offer someone who’s just beginning to build their own table?

Elisa: You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I have to share. I do have to say that when you get an award or when you get a donation, try giving a small percent of it to the person behind you, because it’ll come back, it always comes back. That’s one of the big things. The other thing is it doesn't matter how long the organization or the arts initiative that you start lasts. The point is you’re doing it. And that’s not thinking about, “I have to get this company to a place, to X, Y, and Z budget group.” Right? I can’t stand that. It's not about what budget group you’re at. It’s not about looking on the other side of the fence. Create, keep creating.

And I think now I run a pretty robust mentorship program at HERO, and that’s one of the things I shared with the mentees. I’m like, “Keep creating. Start production companies. You don’t have to do necessarily just theatre. Do short films. Do different multidisciplinary work.” But that’s the biggest thing. And also, have a lot of faith in yourself and faith in something out there. I don’t care what you believe in. I always tell my students that if you believe in the trees, the universe, God, whatever you’re going to believe in, you have to believe in something, a higher power than you. You have to, because we’re not going to make it through, right? We have to have some hope, something to look up to.

And also, there’s no one path. I started acting very young, and when I first went to college, I went to fashion school. And then I was like, “Maybe fashion, not fashion.” Oh, years later, a worldwide pandemic hits and I start to study science. I just wrapped up my PhD work. And so if I thought that I was going to become a doctor, I mean, what? You know what I mean, or a conservation biologist, or somebody that uses theatre to convey that education, I would've told you you were nuts. Yeah, I feel like you could plan as much as you want to plan, but there is a higher order out there. I do think that, I do.

Yura: With that understanding of tapping into kind of the offering of the moment and the higher order, and even with what you mentioned about not tying success to funding or a certain category of funding, starting with the actual impact and what you actually want to see happen, the bigger we try to do something in terms of the impact and the amount of people to reach, the money is going to grow, is going to be larger. Yeah. But if we’re not tying success to these understandings, what does success look like for you, for your table?

Elisa: I’m kind of smiling now, because one of my mentees, he finished the MFA/JD program at Columbia University, so he’s a lawyer and a theatre producer now, and he’s my board of directors. And so I keep going, “Success for me is helping that next generation and watching them thrive.” Or, even my mentee Shanae today, she said, “Oh, I got my first apartment,” and I was like, “Oh, we have to buy you some furniture,” you know what I mean? So it’s just that thing of when you watch that next generation, when you pass on wisdom, because wisdom is invaluable. It’s more valuable, this, than anything. Passing on the stories, that’s so important. That kind of education, that Indigenous story work, that’s so beautiful, when you pass that on and then you watch those trees grow. That’s incredible, that’s incredible.

One of my mentees at HERO Theatre from twelve years ago is now producing their own film. Another one is head of the film company. And they all say the same thing, “Elisa, we are helping people. We’re trying to break down some barriers,” and I could not ask for anything more. And the elders that have passed wisdom down to me, Irene Fornés, Cándido Tirado, Migdalia Cruz. I think about those generations that have passed down so much wisdom and how I want to do the same. I really do.

Yura: I love your sharing about mentees, receiving mentorship, elders. Can you share a bit about what makes a successful mentee-mentor relationship?

Elisa: Yesterday, because I’m here in LA, working with a new cohort of mentees, and I asked my new mentee, I said, “How can I help you succeed at that project that you just presented?” I think we both felt like that presentation was not quite what it could be. Instead of saying, “These are some constructive notes I have for you,” I said, “May I ask what I can do to help you succeed, and so that you feel really good about the next time you present?” And she just looked at me, her eyes got really watery, and I said, “You can dish it out, you can tell me. I can take it.” And she said, “I need this, and this, and this.” I said, “Okay, good. Great, okay. So you'll have that by the end of the week, I look forward to seeing your presentation in ten days.”

So I think for me, I try not to play in hierarchical models. I think folks come and they know that I’m the artistic leader of HERO. I don’t need to have other things feed that ego, I can hear it. My board vice president and former mentorship program participant Gabe Figueroa, put it perfectly. He said, “This is why I liked being at your table, because you would always say, ‘What do you think? What do you think? What do you think of this idea? Yeah, it’s not so good, right? It sucks. What should I do?’ And it was done with the humility and the vulnerability, and you are not scared to just be so vulnerable and to hear it from us.” And he said, “That’s the difference. That’s what I feel, that’s the kind of leader I want to be.” It's in that, it’s just thinking of we know that we are the founders and the leaders of these organizations. There’s no need for infrastructurally, for us to be huffing and puffing like a dragon. That doesn’t need to happen. Loving boundaries, that’s what I always say. Yeah.

Yura: Yeah, absolutely. I think with mentorship, so I’m also a trained leadership coach, as well as kind of soul purpose coach. But I think these words often get used interchangeably, and I think that there are maybe different ways that you can have these relationships. So what I find really helpful with the coaching side is a lot of what you just shared about asking what folks need, and also creating space for helping you move through a journey, through the experience that I’ve had. But also not necessarily forcing something, like letting you come to your conclusion, pass through your journey in a different way.

And then, also, I do think there is something really special about mentorship, about finding someone who has done something in particular that you have not yet done, so that you can get that information, that story, that wisdom coming through. And then, yeah, we all have our own paths, like you’ve said. So it's going to be different for each person, but there is something powerful about getting to hear, “Oh, maybe just knowing that option is there or going this way would probably leave here. This might be an easier way to do this,” just to know. Yeah.

That kind of education, that Indigenous story work, that’s so beautiful, when you pass that on and then you watch those trees grow.

Elisa: If anybody told me that I was going to be directing plays in the Amazon Rainforest, I, never. Like, I never thought in my wildest imagination… Or in the Páramos, that I'd be up in those mountains, knee deep like that. It's so hard to get in some of the mountains to execute some of these projects, and I love every minute of it. Walk through those doors that open, and you'll see, things will start to manifest. I tell my mentees that, “Walk through the doors that open and don’t control.”

I was the worst control freak. Also, I grew up in so much chaos, right? And so I wanted to always control everything around me. I thought that order was the way that you got things done. It’s like trusting in the gray, trusting in the disorder, almost.

Yura: How has that shown up for you in your leadership or decision-making over the years?

Elisa: It’s showing up for me more and more in my directing work, and especially when I am directing in communities, trusting that disorder. Knowing, “Okay, I know what a professional play needs to look like. I don’t need to introduce my almost, for lack of a better term, colonialistic ways of creating a play in this community." And trusting, speaking of elders, I worked with a community of elders in Las Amas and Puerto Nariño, and they teach me so much about that. They teach me so much about the wisdom in the listening, and in the knowing, and also watching, right? And I use that a lot in my directing work when I do community devised work.

It’s like letting folks create, shaping, play doulas, I call it a little bit, right? Like, play doula, that’s also hippie-sounding, but true. And allowing the birth to happen, but you don’t need to create that child. That’s going to happen already. That play’s going to come out of them. That theatre piece is going to come out. They know what they want to create theatre about. They might not know the form of what stage, left stage, but that's nothing. So I think being in that unknown has helped me a lot as a director, and as a leader too. As a leader, having that extreme faith, because every now and again, especially when these NEA cuts happened, well, I took those like a bullet, I did. Because I said, “Oh, it took so long to get this kind of funding. It took so long.”

I was like, “Elisa, go to the northern tip of Colombia, right. And the things that we see there, the Wayuu, the mujeres, and the things that the children suffer there, where people don't have a right to water.” And then I start to go, “What am I fighting for here? Because I’m not able to put up a play this year? That’s silly.” So trusting that unknown and just having that faith. It might seem very New Agey to some people listening to me for the first time, but if I can just tell you. I was born in Newark, raised in the South Bronx, really from humble beginnings. My mom suffered so much. I was raised by my mom and my trans cousin, who was a beautiful Puerto Rican woman herself. And these two incredible mujeres taught me so much about joy, love, faith, and hope, and that’s what I want to keep carrying on.

Yura: That’s so beautiful. As this theatre industry and our world is evolving, what do you believe it’s asking of us? But it sounds like this type of mindset shift could be one of those things?

Elisa: The nonprofit system in the US has been broken for a really long time, and I think many of us know it and not a lot of us say it. And sometimes, I worry about folks in our community that really, I was just talking to my friend, Brian Quijada, a colleague of mine about this, about their dream is to run a regional theatre, my God. And it’s not that you don’t want to judge what somebody's dream is, but the system is so broken. It’s not meant to uphold us. It’s been built on our backs, if anything. Nonprofit theatres especially is supposed to be a service to community. And I live in a city, in LA, and I’m here to tell, who, who out of these big theatres is servicing my community, our community?

And we live in Los Angeles. And so I’m not looking at that door waiting to open anymore. I did for so many years, and it did open for me a crack. It did. I got further than a lot of my other friends. But then, you put half a foot through the door, then they keep slamming the door over and over again on top of that foot till they hobble you, really. And that's what happened to the few of us, the 1 percent that maybe were let in, whether it be because of skin privilege or because of connection, nepotism, whatever it is. It’s just not there. I don’t want to judge other Latine theatre companies that are around. “Oh, that person has weird practices, blah, blah, blah.” Look, those folks learned how to survive in a way that newer generations are not having to learn how to survive in. Let’s just give them some grace and hope that it’ll change.

And I think that’s going to change when our elders start opening those doors to the newer generations in a real, authentic way. Giving honest, true space at the table to make decisions, and not training you to think the way I do. It’s not welcoming you to come in and think the way you already do, and let that influence me, regardless of what our age is. I think that our community has to help one another in a very authentic way, and we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. I have hope that we’re getting closer. I see progress, but we’re not there yet.

And if the folks behind us, the newer generation is going to look at those broken nonprofit theatre spaces or nonprofit museums. The nonprofit system has not been meant to serve us. It’s done nothing but take from us. If we’re looking at that and leading an organization like that as a mark of success, where are we going to go here? So I do believe in creating your own, bringing what you bring. If you want to work at a larger organization, make sure they bring you with all of the nooks and crannies, and everything that you come with, right? We are in the power seat, not the boards of directors looking to hire us. Bring all of us.

Yura: Yes, create the new systems. Bring all of us. Bring all of you. Keep going. Elisa Bocanegra, thank you so much for joining us.

Elisa: Thank you. I just want to make new friends.

Yura: Tell us how we can find more information, how we can follow your work.

Elisa: Yes. My website is herotheatre.org, and if you send an email to us, it comes to my mailbox. I read everything. I do. And sometimes I wish I could clone myself into five people so I can go see every single show I get invited to. But I have an amazing team of leaders that work with me, all former mentees, and when I can't go, they go, and we report back, and our doors are open.

Yura: Amazing. Yeah, so we’ll put those links in the show notes. Thank you again so much. Thank you, HERO Theatre, Teatro HÉROE, and we’ll be in touch.

Elisa: Thank you.

Yura: This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and any HowlRound show wherever you find podcasts, including non-commercial, open-source apps, like Anytime Podcast Player for iPhone and AntennaPod for Android. If you loved this podcast, please share it with your friends. You can find a transcript for this episode along with lots of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com. Have an idea for a meaningful podcast, essay, or TV event the theatre community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and submit your ideas to this knowledge commons. Thanks for pulling up a seat to liberation with us at Building Our Own Tables. Catch you next time.