Latinx Theatre Commons Wallace Planning Grant Concept Paper for Archiving Latine Theatre

In 2023, the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) received a Research Planning Grant from the Wallace Foundation. Two years earlier, the Wallace Foundation initiated a “five-year initiative intended to support arts organizations rooted in communities of color as they explore strategies for achieving organizational well-being.” The LTC became one of the eleven awardees in 2023, receiving a grant as part of the foundation’s multimillion dollar program devoted to “Field Studies by Arts Service Organizations Rooted in Communities of Color.” The grants were awarded for a range of projects, and the LTC’s Planning Grant funded the writing of a concept paper on the archival logics utilized for preserving Latine theatre history.

Over the course of the last ten months, more than a dozen scholars from the LTC worked collaboratively to co-author a concept paper on the archiving of Latine theatre. What is traditionally known as a white paper—a term coined based on the color of the paper itself—poses a problem and a solution within a specific field. The thirteen scholars worked together to define, historicize, and problematize the systems and ideologies that have categorized Latine theatre and Latine peoples, and to offer a definition for Latine theatre itself. Titled “Latinx Theatre Commons Wallace Planning Grant Concept Paper for Archiving Latine Theatre,” the concept paper includes histories, strategies, and suggestions for archiving Latine theatre in all its forms and technologies.

The concept paper is made openly available in an effort to share the information we gathered that is specific to Latine theatre in its own right and in hopes that it can be useful to others.

The scholars collaborated in pairs, working on discrete sections of the paper, and the co-principal investigators acted as developmental editors. We then shuffled the sections, and each pair of scholars reworked a section previously written by another pair, and the process continued as such. We met in person at the LTC’s tenth anniversary convening in March 2024 in Boston. The hours we spent together during and after the convening not only generated fresh, out-of-the-box ideas for forward-looking strategies but became the rare occurrence when we as a community of scholars came together physically in one room.

In April 2024, three of the project’s co-primary investigators, Lillian Manzor, Jacqueline Flores, and I (the fourth is Jorge Huerta) traveled to New York as part of the Wallace Foundation’s meeting of award recipients. It was the first-ever meeting of these Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) arts organizations, and we had the privilege of engaging in conversation with the other theatres, poetry collectives, and community arts organizations.

The LTC is a present-day commons, with its four pillars of advocacy, convening, art-making, and scholarship. Scholars have always been active members of the LTC, its Steering Committee, its Advisory Committee, and its convenings; likewise, most of the scholars of the LTC are scholar/practitioners, conducting performance-based research and writing as part of a conversation with artists and art-making.

The concept paper is made openly available in an effort to share the information we gathered that is specific to Latine theatre in its own right and in hopes that it can be useful to others. The concept paper was collaboratively authored by the Latinx Theatre Commons Circle of Scholars for the Wallace Foundation Planning Grant: Anne García-Romero, Brian Eugenio Herrera, Carla Della Gatta, Chantal Rodriguez, Jon Rossini, Jorge Huerta, Lillian Manzor, Noe Montez, Olga Sanchez Saltveit, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Patricia Herrera, Patricia A. Ybarra, and Trevor Boffone.

Highlights from the Concept Paper

Focus on Community and Connection

At every LTC convening I have attended, a question recurs: how does Latinidad unite us, and will it be enough to unite us in the future? We are comprised of such different histories and experiences; the move to focus on one or a few as representative is compelling because of its ease. The authors wished to steer the conversation toward what unites us, with our shared and diverse experiences that contribute to the breadth of Latine theatre and performance practices. With this as our focus, we both historicize and make the case for a future of connection amongst Latine theatre artists and artistry:

While it may be useful to concentrate on individuals who make Latine theatre, we are better served by considering how we are united as artists, collectives, and theatre companies with missions, visions, and goals to engage, serve, celebrate and support Latine communities. This work has emerged while wrestling with our histories and conditions as we continue to make our presence known in the United States onstage and off. Latine theatre reflects our negotiations as a minoritized and marginalized political identity within the still pervasive hegemony of white culture, amid the celebrations of our distinctive, diverse cultural expressions that have contributed to the formation of dominant culture for centuries.

Positioning Latine Theatre

The authors of the concept paper came together to define and historicize Latine theatre and, in that process, considered how Latine peoples and art-making are positioned within the United States and the Americas. Before any discussion of the process of archiving, we had to come to consensus on the very definitions of our terms. The act of defining our terms set the tone for a conversation about the process and methods that shape Latine theatre without requiring a cohesive agreement about the efficacy or quality of a play or production, or the purpose of theatre: 

Latine theatre is United States theatre and American theatre, in the capacious form of both ideas. Latine theatre is produced by—or reshaped or reimagined by—individuals, teatros, and institutions that explicitly think of themselves in relation to one or more of the influences above.

Compared to prominent positions that the robust histories of Western art hold in universities and archives throughout the United States, the lack of access to Latine histories results in a misunderstanding of American art more fully.

Accessibility Matters

Physical archives are housed at universities, libraries, and in various locations that often require funding, time, and other resources to visit. While this reality affects scholars and artists from every background, the authors probed how accessibility affects Latine artists specifically. Compared to prominent positions that the robust histories of Western art hold in universities and archives throughout the United States, the lack of access to Latine histories results in a misunderstanding of American art more fully. In addition, for Latine artists, this erasure can limit our knowledge of our own histories—theatrical, cultural, linguistic, and national. This in turn will affect our artistry. To move Latine art forward, we must enable access to our own history:

Access to archives that can reveal the concerns, conditions, and results of early Latine theatremakers is a boon to the development of contemporary theatremaking. Being able to respond to the past is taken for granted in Western art; Latine artists deserve the same opportunities.

Creating the Latine Theatre Digital Archive

The preservation of Latine theatre history requires materials stored in locations across the continent, but they are located within Latinx Studies archives, literary archives, theatre archives, and elsewhere. The authors concluded that the priority is to build a central finding aid that will list the known relevant materials. In the process of building the finding aid, we will query institutions for materials that may be housed in other spaces, physical and virtual. Building the finding aid will function in tandem with promoting writing and programming that will continue to add to Latine theatre history: 

The diverse collection of materials requiring digitization or already digitized underscores the need for a comprehensive, and regularly updated, finding aid or research guide to Latine theatre materials housed in archives and collections both nationally and internationally. No such resource for Latine theatre archives currently exists. Efforts are needed to promote public writing and engagement with Latine theatre history through digital platforms, public programming, and community outreach initiatives—all of which can benefit from a Latine theatre digital archive.