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Latinx Theatre

Content in this section is created by or highlights the work of Latinx theatremakers from around the world. Start with the Journal series Taking the Temperature about issues facing Latinx theatre artists in the United States, or with the video series Latinx Superfriends Playwriting Hour. Looking for more? Check out the Latinx Theatre Commons, a national movement to transform the narrative of the American theatre and a flagship program of HowlRound.

The Latest

Sustaining the Flame at the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening
Essay
Sustaining the Flame at the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening
by Olga Sanchez Saltveit
13 May 2024
Sowing Futures at the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening
Essay
Sowing Futures at the Latinx Theatre Commons Tenth Anniversary Convening
by Georgina Escobar
8 May 2024
The Longer We Live
Essay
The Longer We Live
by Iraisa Ann Reilly
7 May 2024
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.

Poster for Encuentro 2014.
Encuentro 2014 at the The Los Angeles Theatre Center
Video

Encuentro 2014 at the The Los Angeles Theatre Center

#CafeOnda

Saturday 18 October through Monday 10 November 2014
Los Angeles, CA, United States

The Los Angeles Theatre Center in association with the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) proudly presented Encuentro 2014: A National Latina/o Theatre Festival livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Saturday 18 October through Monday 10 November 2014.

A child's drawing of their father.
Archiving the Past, Present, and Future of Teatro
Essay

Archiving the Past, Present, and Future of Teatro

17 October 2014

My experiences doing archival research in Austin led me to question the current state of Latina/o theater and the growing need not only to return to the archives to learn about the past, but the urgent need we have to archive the present for the future.

Collage of theatre artists gathering and speaking at the From Scarcity to Abundance convening.
Participate in The Latinx Theatre Commons Second National Convening Nov. 6-9 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center's Encuentro 2014
Essay

Participate in The Latinx Theatre Commons Second National Convening Nov. 6-9 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center's Encuentro 2014

17 October 2014

The 2014 Latinx Theatre Commons Second National Convening at Los Angeles Theatre Center's Encuentro 2014 runs November 6-9, 2014 and is open to all theatermakers, artists, scholars, administrators, and advocates with an interest in Latina/o theater (or the New American Theater). If you plan to come to any Convening events, please RSVP here no later than November 1, 2014.

Collage of theatre artists gathering and speaking at the From Scarcity to Abundance convening.
Our Digital Present
Essay

Our Digital Present

11 October 2014

Café Onda (the Journal of the Latinx Theatre Commons) can’t make all our virtual dreams come true, but this space can celebrate the dynamic creativity and connectivity of Latina/o theatermakers as together we build our digital present.

Faces of the DCRT.
Cafecito
Essay

Cafecito

Duking it out with a Southwest Troupe

30 September 2014

Albuquerque, New Mexico: We have a varied company, and we’re always looking to put on kick ass plays. It’s pretty cool that we have a company where any of our actresses could play Hamlet. And not like, “Female Hamlet”, but you know, Hamlet. Or where people of different races play siblings, without comment or explanation, and our audiences don’t bat an eye.

Setting the table.
Dreaming in Cuban
Essay

Dreaming in Cuban

Affect in the Performance of Misa Espirituales

16 September 2014

Whether it is race, place, ethnicity, or personhood, Cuban and Cuban diasporic performances push the boundaries of linear logics of the body towards a tapestry of experiential becoming. Here, I would like to offer my experiences and reflections of this kind of world-making practice from my fieldwork with Cuban spirit mediums, or espiritistas.

Photo from Cascarones.
A Huge Epic in a Small Package
Essay

A Huge Epic in a Small Package

11 September 2014

Georgina Escobar writes about traveling from New York to New Mexico to see Cascarones at Teatro Paraguas, and the affirmation this production brought after she waited to see it staged.

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.

The Mathematical Constant Grief (g!) as a By-Product of (Time)(Work) + Lorca
Essay

The Mathematical Constant Grief (g!) as a By-Product of (Time)(Work) + Lorca

9 September 2014

I wrote this summer, but all channeled through the Lorca lens. Translating when you are sad, I can say, is a very good thing to do. You can experience wild creativity within very safe margins. It’s Lorca’s play. But I get to stand in his skin, and pretend. I get to leave the sad couch of my mind, and go somewhere else. Lorca is my Virgil.

Dreaming in Cuban
Essay

Dreaming in Cuban

Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams

8 September 2014

While "Hortensia's" sibling protagonists remain displaced, frozen in time, their limbo is markedly different than is typical for exiles. The characters share a peculiar “aging disorder;” like Peter Pan, they never grew up. The script calls for actors much younger than the characters they are portraying, a visual metaphor for the exiles’s lost years, to concretize the feeling of subtracted youth. Exile manifests psycho-physiologically, from the mind to the flesh, as displacement is visibly dramatized.

Poster for The Panza Monologues.
My Own Panza Girl Manifesto
Essay

My Own Panza Girl Manifesto

6 September 2014

The book as a whole is a deeply moving, authentic, and relatable piece of writing. It begins by relating "The Panza Monologues" authors’ personal and social history, and then shifts gears into practical application, even including a DIY (do it yourself) production manual. "The Panza Monologues" illustrate the inherent value of theater and performance of and from a specific community and culture.

Interview with Michael Garcés
Essay

Interview with Michael Garcés

3 September 2014

P. Carl interviews Michael Garcés, Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater, about their touring production California: The Tempest, which revisits ten California communities that were part of ten year’s of Institute Summer Residencies.

Photo from International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami (HITF).
Theater as Necessity
Essay

Theater as Necessity

The 29th International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami

2 September 2014

Teresa Marrero writes about the 2014 International Hispanic Theater Festival in Miami and how/why Latin American theater and American theatre are embedded differently in culture

Dreaming the Body in Exile
Essay

Dreaming the Body in Exile

Reinaldo Arenas’ Persecución

1 September 2014

“Dreaming in Cuban” is dedicated to performance as a way to evoke, remember, feel, create, long for, and traverse Cuba. The discussion in the blog series that follows on Cuban theater and performance includes new research on contemporary, historical, ritual, and experimental performance based in Havana and Miami.

Collage of theatre artists gathering and speaking at the From Scarcity to Abundance convening.
The Inaugural Latina/o Studies Conference
Essay

The Inaugural Latina/o Studies Conference

Reflections on the Long Table & Good Company

26 August 2014

I walk away, reflection upon reflection, moved and inspired. Even now, the questions that came up at the long table stay with me: What is your fire? What is it that you are here to uniquely do? As many of us prepare to meet again in Los Angeles this fall, we will keep these questions in mind. I can’t help but to think back to the idea of a spherical journey, which is the unstoppable future of the LTC and Latina/o theater in this the US.

Directing Diverse Worlds
Essay

Directing Diverse Worlds

An Interview with Tlaloc Rivas

22 August 2014

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.

In Dialogue with José Luis Valenzuela
Essay

In Dialogue with José Luis Valenzuela

13 August 2014

Jamie Gahlon interviews José Luis Valenzuela on the LATC and the upcoming Encuentro 2014: A National Latina/o Theatre Festival.

Calling Future American Theater Leaders
Essay

Calling Future American Theater Leaders

We Want You!

8 August 2014

The Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC) in downtown Los Angeles is looking for ten arts leaders of various backgrounds who represent the future leadership of the American theater to apply to our newly minted Artistic Leaders Fellowship. The Fellowship will take place from October 1 through November 21, 2014 at The LATC, and run concurrently with the 2014 LATC Encuentro—the largest National Latina/o theater festival in over twenty-five years. // El Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC), localizado en el centro de Los Ángeles, busca a 10 diversos líderes en las artes que representan el futuro liderato del Teatro Americano para que soliciten la nueva beca llamada Artistic Leaders Fellowship. Este programa se llevará a cabo del 1 de octubre al 21 de noviembre en el LATC en paralelo con el Encuentro LATC 2014—el festival nacional latino más grande en la nación en los pasados veinticinco años.

Dreams of Resistance, Action, and Empowerment at ATHE 2014
Essay

Dreams of Resistance, Action, and Empowerment at ATHE 2014

7 August 2014

Association for Theatre in Higher Education pre-conference attendees made their way to Scottsdale, Arizona via bus, through a carefully planned route that covered important sites connected to SB 1070, labor history, and immigration. Through this tour, participants acquired a richer understanding of contemporary Arizona immigration policy and its implementation.

Collage of theatre artists gathering and speaking at the From Scarcity to Abundance convening.
We Want You at the 2014 LTC National Convening!
Essay

We Want You at the 2014 LTC National Convening!

6 August 2014

To understand the deep impact Latina/o artists have had in our collective history, it is crucial to discuss the varied artistic expressions that exist within the polycultural Latina/o theater landscape. The Encuentro seeks to understand how and why we arrive to each form—be it community-based, avant-garde, ensemble-based, playwright-driven, devised, or experimental work. // Para poder entender el impacto que han tenido varios artistas Latinos/as en nuestra historia colectiva, es necesario discutir las varias formas de expresión artística existentes en nuestro territorio multi-cultural mediante el teatro Latino. Este Encuentro busca entender el como y el porque de cada proyecto escénico—sea teatro de la comunidad, avant-garde, colectivo, basado en material original y en el dramaturgo, teatro ideado, o experimental.

Photo from ATLA in Georgia.
ALTA Chicago
Essay

ALTA Chicago

Unlocking the Dream Box

2 August 2014

The ALTA Unified General Auditions reminded us, and the theater community at large, of the breadth of Latina/o theater talent that is multiplying and thriving in our beloved windy city. The goal of the Unified General Auditions was to serve as a resource for the participants and also to anchor them in the broader Chicago Latina/o theater community. In doing so, ALTA fulfilled one of the most important aspects of our organization’s purpose: to give Latina/o actors, both new and old, a sense of community and the warmth of a home effectively achieved through alliance and advocacy.

A Millennial Crossing Generational Borders
Essay

A Millennial Crossing Generational Borders

24 July 2014

In this installment, Maya Malan-Gonzalez details her experience attending the 2014 TCG Conference as a millenial and coming to terms with her mixed racial identity.

A More Equal Theater
Essay

A More Equal Theater

23 July 2014

In this last installment, Armando Huipe shares his observations about the identity affinity groups at the 2014 TCG Conference.

Cultivating Artistic Curiosity
Essay

Cultivating Artistic Curiosity

22 July 2014

In this installment, Lisa Portes reflects on her experience at the TCG Conference and ponders how artistic curiosity can influence a "polycultural American theatre."