 All right. All right. That's all. I am now in my light. Muy buenas tardes. Hello everybody. Bienvenidos and welcome to Town Hall number one. Igniting the spark. So to help us open the space and to open this session, it is my great pleasure to invite to the stage Dr. Manuel Morán, who is the founder of Teatro Cea, who is the CEO and artistic director of Teatro Cea. He's a very busy person. And is the board chair of the Clemente where we are now. So Dr. Morán. Thank you. Bienvenidos. Welcome. Welcome to the Clemente. Welcome to the Flamboyan Theater. We're very excited that you're here. This is where it's supposed to happen. This is where it's supposed to happen. This is a Puerto Rican Latino Multicultural Center in New York City. Four theaters. We have over 45 studios of artists in the building. Three galleries and 13 nonprofits. And we're very happy and very proud to host you here today. And when Rosalba told me about... Where is Rosalba? Is he here? Hola Rosalba. Vesa, when Rosalba told me about the group and how exciting... I mean, she's excited about all of you guys. And, you know, I say we want to be part of that. And we want that to happen in the Clemente. So I'm very, very happy that you guys are here. I know you're full of energy. We are making a lot of progress, especially now. We need to be together, guys, more than ever. More than ever. So I am very happy that this is happening here, that please count on us for future engagements and meetings and even regional meetings or how was it in mind? Teatro sea, doors always open. Our seats are comfortable. Oh, well, you can do it too. And I also want to invite you. First of all, I want you to know that Teatro sea is the only Latino children's theater in the city, in the state. And we believe that it's the only permanent place dedicated to Latino children's theater in the country. So we do more than 200 performances a year. We reach close to 100,000 kids and family, not only in the city, throughout the state and also nationwide. And we would like you to be in touch with us too if you're interested or come and see what we do. We also do adult theater. Well, theater for adults. No, adult theater. I would like to do something. No, kidding. Theater for adults too. We're going to be presenting this weekend La Gloria, a musical review who has been on stage for many months. We're very proud and very happy with that show. It's a collaboration with a group from Cuba, Teatro de las Estaciones. And it's about the life of Celia Cruz, about Celia Cruz, Mita Silva and Daniel Santos and La Sonora Matancera. It's a great cabaret. So tomorrow night and Sunday at four o'clock, it's part of your, you know, you have it in your program. So if you want to come, please come and check us out. So thank you again. Bienvenidos y que siga la fiesta. Muchísimas gracias. Thank you so much. So I'm going to give you a little rundown of what today looks like. We are, at first, we are going to be watching a special video. And after that, we have Dr. Maribel Alvarez, who is going to be sharing some thoughts with us. After that, we are going to invite some New York City theater artists to the stage. They know who they are, so it's not going to be a surprise. Don't worry, anybody. To speak about certain initiatives and thinking about igniting the spark. So part of the question and the thinking behind this is, what are the needs that we recognize in our community? What are the needs that we recognize in our work that we step up and do something about? Whether it is a big thing, such as a giant theater initiative, whether it is something small that might be, you know what, I'm going to cast differently. So thinking about initiatives, thinking about the spark, thinking about what needs do we individually see out there that we personally, with whatever capacity we have, could potentially help to address. So that's sort of our framework for today. So to get us going, I would love to invite Emilia Cachepero from the Theater Communications Group. She is the Director of Artistic and International Programs, and she's going to give us a little bit of information about this video, this very special video that we're going to be watching. Alright, Emilia. You can go around the site. Just a little mobility challenge right now. Hi, you all. Thank you so much for being so welcoming and just incredibly excited to share this sneak preview video with you. And on behalf of all of us at TCG, I'm not sure if Teresa Eyring is still here. She was in the morning session. Anamel Guevara is here somewhere also from TCG, Beto, otherwise known as JP also, is here. All of us feel especially, especially excited and proud to show this here. With great support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in 2014, we began this video project, partly because we looked at our landscape and the elders that are in our field and wanted to capture stories, capture the spark, capture the beginning. And these were particularly folks that founded our legacy theaters in the 60s and 70s. And we wanted to get that recorded. So that project has been completed. We're going to be launching the series in mid-December or so. I also wanted to give a shout out to another TCG colleague, Elena Chang, who's working with our equity diversity and inclusion six-point program. And she's really the point person for this video project. In mid-December, we're going to be beginning some community screenings showing these. It's especially, I can't even think of the word, innovating to show this here during the Latino Theater Commons, because there are so many of you that know Miriam, Cologne personally, and have felt her luminescence and her spark and her inspiration. I know Miriam also, but I wish that I knew her younger self. And through this project, we were able to get all of those stories. Because there's a series I also wanted to acknowledge the other leaders that we've got on the video project so you can get a sense of the scope. I just want to read their names, because I don't want to forget anybody. So the nine leaders featured in the videos are Lou Bellamy at Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, Tisa Chang, Pan Asian Repertory Theater here in New York, Frank Chin, the Asian American Theater Company San Francisco, of course Miriam Cologne, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York, Woody King, the New Federal Theater in New York, Muriel Miguel's Spider Woman Theater in New York, Jackie Taylor, the Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago, Luis Valdez, El Diato Campesino, San Juan, and Douglas Turner Ward, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. So please hope you enjoy this, and we would love it if you have ideas about community screenings, and Elena is right here with us. So enjoy. Thank you, Amelia. And here we go. I like the idea that the cultural vehicles are also taken to the people that are less affluent, to the people that cannot afford a $50 ticket or a $75 ticket or a $125 ticket to see a play on Broadway. The mission of the theater, I feel, is so important. It's so sacred. It is so powerful. It can do so many things to open the conscience and to open the awareness of ourselves, our community, our fellow being. The formation of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater had to do with a group of us. There was no Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Then there were not that many opportunities. There were not that many playwrights that were writing vehicles that could give opportunities to a person with my physical description. A group of us decided to put on a play of Broadway called The Ox Cart. I was flabbergasted at how it described the plight of that Puerto Rican family. And I said, this is fantastic. This would be wonderful for New York because it had not only the beauty of the play itself and the way it is structured, plus the fact that it represents one of the most distinguished playwrights, René Marquez. It really energized us to want to say if they reacted this way to this play about a Puerto Rican family, and this is a play about immigrants, and this is a play about people struggling to survive, and this is with people that need help, this will be seen by people that are not Puerto Ricans or Latin. And that happened. From the very beginning, we stated that we wanted to be a bilingual theater. Among the classes that we decided to offer was the playwriting class. You have to teach the youngsters, or not so much youngsters, the young men and women that you can write and that ideally that should be written by you that have lived and tested what it is to survive in a ghetto, an economically limited neighborhood because they talk with an authority and with a depth of knowledge that is basic for us to be able to convey the message. It is things like that that will make possible the survival of a real, real mixture of races and attitudes and points of views which I think the theater can serve. We have to continue the education of the community and of the individuals so that we have more people joined in the task of making the arts available to everybody. In school, I became involved in little production. Some teacher presented a play. No person in my family ever was in the theater. When he came to an end, I was brokenhearted. I said, no, no, we're going to do it again, no? And the teacher was called Marcos Colom. No relation to me, a wonderful man. I didn't know what to do yet and I was like so disappointed that it was over. And he said, why don't you write a letter to Mr. Lavandero? And I said, oh, can I? And he helped me to write a letter telling them that I would like to know if I could be given the permission to attend the acting classes. And I guess he was flabbergasted and the nerve of this little girl, you know. The University of Puerto Rico had a traveling theater and that's how I heard about the idea of a traveling theater. They gave me a role in it and therefore I started going to the country, to the little towns, to the little plazas, to sleepy little towns when I was old enough to enter the University as a full-time student. I had already gone through acting one, acting two, acting three, acting four without the benefit of the credit but with all the practice. Had it not been because of that, I don't know that I could have come to the United States. I had no idea the immensity or the city or all the things that you have to take into consideration to survive in New York. One of the earliest experiences in New York was actually it started in an off-pro-way play. Then there was a play called In the Summer House and there was the role of a Mexican family in it and I was submitted for the role of the girl in the family and I got it. It was just the first contact with really the real world of the professional theater in New York City and the level was staggering. You become scared to think that people can be that good. I didn't know what making the rounds was. I said, are you making the rounds? The girls would ask me, the rounds. Yeah, you go round and around to see the agents and you leave your picture. It was difficult, very competitive. I mean, I was a recent arrival to New York but also I did not know how to have an immersion in the theater scene to know, you know, what TDF is, what the Department of Cultural Affairs is, what Harvard School is, anything like that. But I would hear everybody in the school say, so-and-so audition for the after-studio and they got in and I am going to study. I am going to apply and I am going to do an audition. We were nervous about the possibility that they were going to be auditioning for the after-studio. So I saw such reverence, such nervousness. I said, what is the after-studio? What is that? And they explained to me that it was the most difficult place to enter that caliber of the students that were admitted was too much that almost nobody could get in. I got in. I got in on the basis of the first audition. So it was not the champagne and the reviews and the party afterwards or anything like that. It was mostly the joy of being with very serious, very determined performers. We are going to be merging with a group called Pregones. Pregones is a Puerto Rican group and all the Puerto Rican group, but they are in the Bronx. I know them for many years and I've seen them emerge and how they were courageous and they did not become afraid of the fact that they are in the South Bronx. They are a good example of a community-minded group a group with roots in the community and with a pride and identification. So many people come to Pregones and say, I was just at the Puerto Rican Travelling Theater. So we thought of creating a concept that would keep people connected in their experience between the two theaters, one in Manhattan and one in the Bronx. I guess it was the influence of the lovely things that I saw and that I participated in while I was a young actress and we would get into a little sleepy town and the dogs are barking and they don't know what's going on and all that noise coming over there and the little band playing and it was like a fiesta, like the town would wake up and the kids would come and they'd touch you. Why is it that they come and they touch? Many of them what they have been exposed to is the images on television and the image there. The idea of taking theater to the people who have paid taxes but they don't have the power to energize a company like that. It cannot all be television again and the car wreck, the car chase and the killing and the this and the that. There's too much emphasis on that in exhibiting and repeating and repeating and repeating the glory and man's inhumanity to man. Maybe we have to slow down a little bit. You cannot keep regurgitating that and exhibiting it and memorizing it. It's frightening. You have to bring them earlier and make them become acquainted and have the knowledge and the awareness of the arts, of the theater, of poetry, of songs, of music already part of their nature. See if you wait till they are 18 or 20 I think it is too late. Our companies are surrounded by young people and they're going to be doing this. So we can make that impact in across generations, race and class. I think that we're doing something important. Giving this to the children, presenting it to them for their examination and for their enjoyment, helping them discover the richness of their own culture, the richness of what our contribution is to society. When we are gone, that's all that stays. What you leave now, what you build now, what you do for those children now is the gift for them to continue and to have it and to learn to love it and to learn to respect it, etc. That's a lovely gift to live. What I'd invite everybody to do now is to turn to someone near you and just have a conversation for a few minutes about what in that video felt inspiring to you. So turn to a partner and about four or five minutes. I'm going to pause your conversations. I'm going to pause your conversations just for a little bit. And I'm going to pause your conversations. So next we have Dr. Maribel Alvarez. She is the Associate Professor of the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is the Executive Director of the Southwest Folklife Alliance based in Tucson, Arizona. So it is my extreme pleasure and honor to introduce Dr. Maribel Alvarez. Thank you very much. Such an honor. Such a joy to be here with all of you and you can see I brought my fan club. I've been asked by this wonderful group of friends and cultural workers to say a few things about demographics. And I was told to make some remarks to spark conversation and just leave some thoughts that will provoke the rest of your afternoon and the rest of your gathering. And it's great when friends ask you to offer provocations because then I don't feel the pressure to be coherent in my every single thing that I have to say. So yeah, I'll talk a little bit about demographics. That seems like an interesting topic. I'm not a demographer. I'm a social scientist, a folklorist. But I study the demographics theme quite a bit. I find a lot of illumination in some of the data that other wonderful scholars are producing, Latino scholars, many of them. So I want to offer today four phrases or four ideas and thoughts and riff off them a little bit. The next, the first one is Sunday will live in the future. For almost four decades, since the 1980s, we've been drowning in metaphors about Latinos. Latinos sleeping giant tectonic shift. I like that. Tipping point, tipping point, collision, we're in a collision demographic, the tsunami that is coming. And this, more recently, the firewall. Latinos were supposed to provide the demographic firewall in American elections forever. And scholars like Juan Flores, for example, has been warning us for some time that there was something a little dangerous about this discourse. That there was perhaps, in his words, a false quantitative objectivity attached to this fact of the demographic explosion of Latinos. And that perhaps that objectivity so quantifiable was hiding some other elements that were more important for our project as a community which had to do with imaginary the interpretation of those facts to really help us construct a sense of utopia in this nation. Scholar and colleague at Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz, Gersten Silva-Gretz wrote a few years ago an essay, she's a literary scholar, but had sort of an observation that she found disturbing the persistent discourse of futurity in demographic discussions about Latinos, suggesting that there's always a different moment than this one, that something is going to come in the future, that it's not now, but it's going to come, it's going to be really good for us. And she spoke about how for a long time a lot of our scholarship, our cultural works, has been leading us to scrutinize what she called the arcane signs of the present in hopes that they might reveal themselves as crucial turning points. Gregor Rodriguez, a journalist, also began to anticipate some of what 2016 would be all about when he said that the real radical change that he observed in America was the changing what he called the white incipient minority status, that that probably was not going to be very good and of course other people joining that conversation, this is not of the last two months or two weeks, this has been going on for some time talking about white fragility or the sense of white victimhood and so a lot of people watching the debates on Latino demographics have been for some time a little concerned that we may be missing something by celebrating so much the great explosion of our population while at the same time we knew that that represented in some other ways some sort of currency for the presence and the abundance of Latino but frankly the people who mostly benefited from that currency were the companies, the advertisers the markets, a place which began to then identify Latinos as a consumer group primarily and that discourse of futurity led us as we now know to some false comforts not so much us but a lot of people in the Democratic Party there was a sense of complacency and in some instances even gloating that in that gesture of the demographic triumphalism there would be somehow some inherent protection that Latinos will provide to the evils that were lurking around the nation and in doing that we miss and there was a big miss some essential authentic truth about the fact of Latinos and how we came to be who we are because the fact is that even in that demographic see our safety was never saved and our sense of belonging in the nation was never comfortably accepted so you know Diaz as you know may have read Rowdy the New Yorker a little bit after the Trump election and he said it in some of the amazing legendary eloquent prose that won him the Pulitzer Prize he wrote we always knew this shit wasn't going to be easy and that was perhaps the statement that then jolted us back to recognize that yes someday we'll live in the future but the future is now here it wasn't all that smooth right there was no firewall because other things were happening simultaneously and then Diaz also jolted back us back in that same essay to another more poetic realization when he said that only radical hope is what will save us because only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence to begin with so that's my first phrase El primer refrán number two this demography is not destiny so recognizing that Latino demographics is not a pill that you take and go to sleep despite the shock of the moment that we're living after the election the Latino firewall effectively not stopping Trump and I'll explain why some facts are still worth considering but they are nuanced facts and as I was talking earlier with Chantel and Paul Flores it's a time not exactly a time when nuance is highly valued but our our story has always been very nuanced if you think about it so there were a lot of positive things that actually did happen in this election as far as the Latino vote is concerned one of the things that we cannot help to notice as we look at these facts or fact toys is to think what are we going to do with this kind of information now let's focus for a moment just on youth the Latinos in the United States are still the youngest major racial and ethnic group in the United States of all the groups that are counted by the sense that Latinos are the youngest six in ten Latinos are millennials or younger that is younger than 33 years old of all the millennials in the United States Latinos represent 21% of all the millennials the median age of Latino median meaning 50% can in any way the median age is 28 years old so the median age is 28 for the white population the median age is 43 for Asian Americans 36 for African Americans is 33 so we are the youngest and 44% of the Latinos eligible to vote in 2016 were millennials 44% were millennials is a greater share of young voters than any other racial group has ever had ever but here's the thing the nuance where it comes 64% of those millennials Latinos that were interviewed said that they back Hillary Clinton less as a support for her than a vote against Trump and that's where it gets starts to get complicated right because we have the numbers and we have the possibility of changing that but it wasn't only that there were Latinos voting it was who they were voting for and under what conditions and that gets nuanced because we have been taken for granted as a voting block we were taken for granted that the fact is since 1980 Latinos have always voted Democrat in the majority this has never been challenged and this wasn't challenged in this election either so that's where the complacency and the taker for granted happened are Latinos to blame then some people are writing blocks and things about with this headline I rolled my eyes because obviously that's sort of silly first of all because for us as Latinos to talk about social change to be agents of social change we would first have to remember that electoral politics is only one venue out of through which we express our identity and our power so for us to even put all of our eggs on the basket of the election as the measure of Latino power and Latino contribution to this country is a little bit silly because that's never been the only vehicle of change for us and there is a lot of finger pointing going around about what happens in who to blame and believe me people are choosing the pulpit that feels more comfortable to them but I started to compile from my friends on Facebook and readings a list of factors that could account for the success of Donald Trump in this election and I'm up to 33 points now that people have given me 33 different factors all of which could have come together in some way to have an impact the fact is a lot was done Latinos did turn out to vote there was a veritable Latino search Latinos voted early that was not a mistake in fact in states like Colorado and Nevada the Latino vote is being credited for keeping those states blue and not only that but sending senators that could oppose the president elect in Texas something interesting happened Trump won Texas by nine points only Obama by the way lost it by 16 so there was a little bit of a narrowing there and is also credited to Latino voting so 20% of the 2016 Latino voters were first time voters 20% and even though there's a lot of voter activity among many critics is to blame the Cubans in Miami for losing for causing being not good Latinos and causing Trump to win Florida the fact of the matter is that the Cuban vote for Trump was 52% and 47% was not for Trump so I feel you can imagine how that 47% feels and has to deal with their own families so it wasn't just this overwhelming that change and in fact Cubans in Miami the county had voted on a majority for Obama before so that but a lot of those things were so tenuous and they were just so sort of a signal in the demographic sort of discourse that it was really hard to place them in what permanence these things will have as a matter of fact Latinos favor Hillary Clinton better than two to one in their voting and the accepted numbers I say accepted now because Latino decisions the group run by two Latino academics are challenging that because these are based on exit polls is that Hillary secure 66% of the Latino vote and Trump 28% but compare that with African-Americans that voted for Hillary Clinton 88% and 66% for Latino so there was a gap there in our community but the vote that Trump got from Latinos is very much equivalent to the same one he received McCain received and Romney Romney 27% and McCain had received 31% of Latinos but it was very different from Obama Obama had received 71% so the 71% that voted for Obama 66 could have made a difference but here's the thing the difference would have been tenuous because Latinos overall represent 11% of the registered voters in the United States and 52% of all the Latino eligible voters live in non-battle ground states in other words in the electoral college system it wouldn't have made any difference in a popular vote it would for example a search of Latino voters in California sure went up but it was already a blue state and it's in the electoral college that wouldn't have made a big difference in all the other battleground states Latinos account for less than 5% of the eligible voters in some instances in the US belt from 1% to 2% so there was very little that the sleeping giant could have done in some of those places even if Hillary Clinton had won Arizona and Florida which were the two states in play that could have had Latino make a difference she still would have been short of the votes in the electoral college even winning Florida and Arizona but a lot of things still have been churning at the base for example what we ended up knowing is that Trump gained more by mobilizing white voters than he lost by alienating Latinos that's the other that's the truth that's the reality we're facing so really the search on white voters anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism and then blaming of minorities and hatred that cocktail toxic as it was provided a search against which even with the great demographics of Latinos and the participation could not have quite tipped the other way now let's talk about complexity our complexity will grow more complex you have to get a PhD sometime to think these deep thoughts part of the complexity has to do with the fact that whether it was whites or Latinos everybody underestimated the depth of the pain the anger and the rejection of the policies of neoliberalism that had been embodied and represented by Hillary Clinton and that had been carried on with I say this with great pain in my heart by Obama this populist danger precisely has always sort of hinged on the ability to turn against the elites and against the minorities so it's a rejection that goes upwards and downwards right blames the minorities and also rejects the elites and you know what happens with that because it leaves that center of civic society in the middle completely without oxygen right because that's where the danger zone is it's a game of a populist demagogue and it works it works complexity also gets more complex when we sort of turn off the cameras and talk among ourselves as Latinos and now say yes now do the family secret sort of session yes we all know that Latino is not a monolith but we also have to recognize that there was a lot of the satisfaction among Latinos with the way that the Obama administration have been carrying out politics regarding immigration and other things now we can argue forever about whether that was President Obama's fault or not or whether he was handicapped I was fine with those discourses but the fact is that there was a lot of indication that people were not happy for example an NBC exit poll again this goes into the category called family secrets don't tell anybody this but NBC exit poll revealed that 68% of Latino voters oppose building a wall with Mexico 68% of Latino voters oppose it only 46% of whites oppose it you think oh of course the majority of whites favor building the wall the majority of Latinos oppose building the wall but guess what 82% of blacks oppose building the wall yeah right 82% of blacks oppose building the walls 68% of Latinos oppose it so our communities are always been fractured by issues of race, color, class status immigration status and these things you know I'm from Arizona I know this very well in today's New Yorker edition online Shimamanda Adichie reminds us of something that becomes helpful she says now is the time to innovate the art of questioning is the only valid resentment in America that of white males are we going to be conformist are we going to be okay with saying that the only resentment of people who are hurting, who are in pain who didn't have a solution who didn't see white males who turn to their racist to do this that would be too simple if we accept the premise she says that economic anxiety afflicted the white voter in rural America then we must accept that economic anxiety is also affecting our communities there was a survey that said that before the election 63% of US born Latinos expressed that they were very dissatisfied when the country was going and the reason for that is because of the growing levels of inequality that people were really hurting was not just something that manifested itself in the racial narrative that we are given through the media and the social media so as Latinos grow and become this demographic group of power there are tendencies that crisscross, race, class, gender sexuality that we're going to have to be speaking and checking and monitoring and these tendencies and divisions in our own internal communities will grow more complex and will intensify Latino identity as a fixed positionality against oppression is a shaky proposition in so far as the demographic captures only one very fraught element of who we are which is just the box that we check in our identity for things to change we will have to do more than just abide by that sort of fictive sense of kinship that makes us feel like we are Latinos and we are changing even more for example 26% of all second generation Latinos marry someone of a different ethnicity and you know that right that we are the group that marries the most outside of Latino ethnicity so putting our hope in this tsunami, in this firewall was always very misleading now that doesn't mean that the information is not important we study, we meditate I was having dinner last night here we go to the fourth phrase last one I was having dinner last night with my good friend Arnaldo Lopez Pregones and as we were sitting for dinner he pulls out of his bag something and he says I have a gift for you I have a gift and then he pulled a little notebook a little book that he had gone to a book fair and had some folks here in Brooklyn have their own independent press and had just published this chap book and has a story and he started to tell me about the writer and why he thought this would be such a you know and I grabbed the book and I said oh my god this is what it is about it reminded me about the stories about Alurista before there were PhDs in Chicano studies how he would just write and circulate poems in pieces of paper that were mimeographed and they would just people start sharing and there were no publishing houses and there were no jobs for Chicano Latin academics there were circulation of small gifts of poetry and I think that in the moments that we are given the monumentality of the demographic tsunami and the firewalls that fail and the monumentality of the challenges ahead perhaps it is time to get back to basics you know Diaz also in that awesome piece said we should avail ourselves of the old formats or the old formations he called it that have seen us through darkness before and what that means for me is to organize, to form solidarity with other people is to form study groups to go back to some of the basic texts that gives us a basis to understand our reality a lot of the movimiento artistas where people who were creating art but also studying next right the texts trying to get into this sort of space where we really invade the intellectual discourse of the country so it's time to go back to study groups, conversation formats open-ended kind of art works that let people sort of express and talk back we are going to have to listen a lot more we are going to have to restructure and more than anything like that gesture that touched me so deeply last night in conversation with a friend we are going to need to be more generous with each other in sharing that information and how we support it and I think these are the four provocations I hope that they inspire you to talk a lot about what do we do how do we parse the information that is given even about us as a group, as Latinos what do we do with that and it's not that we are going to now disown the demographers among us but we do need to say what does that mean for my work if that is true because other people are using that information and very effectively so thank you very much for having me I want to give you a few minutes to parse that so we got a little call like how do we parse that how do we as sitting here in this room living today in this country how do we what can we do with this information that we got so I would like to give everyone turn to a partner let's take five minutes and just chat it out I'm going to pause your conversations again okay one more minute and 30 seconds 30 seconds to wrap up conversations just pause them yeah okay we're going to pause your conversations thank you so much everyone thank you so thinking we heard impact from the Latinx Latina Latino Latinx community impact in a very different in a different lens and thinking about impact thinking about need thinking about what is a step that we take to address a need and where is that the choices that we make what sparks us what is it that is the initial spark or catalyst that causes us to act so we have some New York theater New York Latinx theater folk here and I'm going to just I'm just going to pass down the mic and you got one down on your end too and just go ahead and just for right now just introduce yourself and any affiliations you have hello my name is Oscar Cabrera and I am part of ENTAR's Unit 52 I am Lou Moreno I'm the artistic director of ENTAR theater hi I'm Stephanie Fadul and I'm here to talk about the Van Leer Fellowship at Repetorio Español Allison Astor Vargas Special Projects Manager and Education at Repetorio Español hi I'm Beto I am the co-founder of Radical Evolution Producing Collective and a co-founding coordinating team member of La Cooperativa of New York City Latinx Theater Artist and I'm Kristen Yves Cato also a member of Unit 52 at ENTAR Theater also a founding member of La Coa and an independent artist and I just founded my own production company Capeline Productions thank you thank you Lou we're going to start with you I would love for you just to tell us a little bit about Unit 52 like how it came about what was the need, what sparked it and just a little bit of just about the program itself for those of you that don't know Unit 52 is a 12 week training program at ENTAR Theater we bring 12 12 new to New York we call them new to New York because we're not trying to be agist whether you're 18 or 58 or 48 you should be able to apply to the unit it is for free so what we do is we bring artists young artists or New York artists into the theater to work with historical ENTAR artists such as Daniel Huckes who began the program with me four years ago our teaching artists have been Daniel Elisari Julianne Messery who I see in the back myself and of course David Nanzuelo Maggie Bofill Mariana Carreño thank you the idea okay the idea came when I took over the theater in 2010 I would host the equity EPA auditions the equity principal actor auditions which was really fantastic we'd put out you know we need these Latino actors to come and audition for us and we would give them we would ask them to prepare auditions by Mcdalia Cruz Kharidasvich Jose Rivera Irene Fornes and they were then told well they'll never find these writers tell them to go to the fucking library anyway so what would happen was all of these very fine actors would show up at ENTAR and I would say a vast majority of them were not Latino but they looked enough at our theater which was interesting and they would wind up clogging up the halls so that none of the Latinos that were members of the union could get in they couldn't you know so we'd only get to see a few of them and then there would be this really amazing group of non-union members that were standing in the background and I'm like I don't know those guys they were really kind of crazy they had very few of them had real acting training they hadn't really gone to school or gone to a conservatory acting school and they hadn't joined the union yet but they knew about ENTAR and they wanted to find out what they could do to get into the show so we had a secondary audition the next day and we said all the non-union people please come back tomorrow and it was big and we tried to figure out what the hell we were going to do with them and there was like various iterations of what eventually became the unit earlier on and then I sat down with Daniel, I feel like Daniel was right here is he not here anymore? there he is, Daniel Huckas and I said so how do we do this and he said well we'll do a 12 week course and we went back and forth on what it was going to be and we spent four hours one day a week the first time we break it up I'm going to very briefly say what it is the first hour is sort of a warm up get rid of the week kind of an hour the second two to two and a half hours is dedicated on performance or depending on the artist that we bring in for that week if it's a writing workshop like we brought in Stephen Geregas to do a writing workshop one time and then the end of the evening is usually a check back in where you kind of like look at your fellow unit 52 and you're like I had this really great audition this week did you guys hear about it did you guys check it out I know they're casting this thing do you guys hear about it we try to keep the information passing it's not a bitch session it's more of a like it's just a place to kind of check in what's going on in the world hey I hear the LTC is coming to New York that kind of thing make sure everybody is a part of it that's it is that enough oh actually I do have one more question and can you talk about the relation between yeah we have what we call the New Works Lab a very quick definition of what the New Works Lab is it's basically in Tars second stage it's a place where we can look at a play over a short but rather intensive period of time and not expose the artist to any kind of critical form so we basically give the artist the keys to the theater and say come out in three weeks and see what you got it's been really successful it was started over 16 or 17 years ago by Michael John Garces who happens to be a very good friend of mine and sits on our board as well and what we decided to do was take that program excuse me that second stage and dedicate one of those a year to the unit so one of the things you do while you get to come to the unit and get trained we also then dedicate a small stipend performance to you as well we've done thank you we I mean the New Works Lab it's Daniel Daniel Hock has ran the New Works Lab for a brief moment am I wrong? three years Michael John Garces was also run by Alex Lopez and Angel David um um did I answer the question? okay now I'm going to turn to Oscar member of Unit 52 can you just talk a little bit about there he is there he is getting his entire muscles going can you just talk a little bit about thinking of like here is a need there was a need that was seen we don't know who these actors are let's bring them in so you are one of those actors just what has been a part of that done for you well for me I was sold on the idea like this you mean I get to work with a Latino Latina playwright director working on new work that would be something that I could have my voice in and I would get paid for it sign me up I was ready I found out about Unit 52 by doing the one minute play festival at Intar that's actually about to go on this weekend um yeah check it out um it's a really crazy story how I even got to it I did a short film that turned into a feature film that was ridiculous my co-actor tried to get me to do a casting director thing to assist with it and I met actors that was going to be in the one minute play festival and he was like yo you would be perfect for the one minute play festival for Intar and I gave him my email and the week later I was rehearsing and practicing and we went up and then Lou came out and said we're going to do this thing called Unit 52 where we're going to give voice to young not so established artists to grow and for me over the past four years four years we're going into our fifth year um I feel like I've gotten a chance to blossom as an artist in many different ways I've really strengthened my voice as an activist something I'm really really passionate about and only a few of my friends really know the like some that are like my brothers about how argumentative I am and it comes out of just this sense of wanting to be heard and wanting to make a difference and Intar has really Unit 52 has really given me that through multiple ways through the New Works lab where I've been able to develop my own characters in these plays where we use ensemble and devised work with directors that I had probably only met at that point in time with playwrights that even though I went to a four year university maybe hadn't heard of yet um and establishing those relationships and connecting me to them so that as the years go by I get to see them and go hey remember that show we did yeah you know or you know um uh just one really cool thing was uh one of my dear friends Octavio Solis who uh has a connection to the school I went to um I got to work on a couple of his plays and what a cool feeling for me to be in New York and to be sitting at a bar looking over next to him and having a conversation and then you know that's that kind of moment is the thing I'm going to cherish uh uh the most Intar has has definitely given me that I'm going to ask you a question about that because during well I don't know I'm guessing somewhere in the timeline of your career with Unit 52 or you're part of Unit 52 who wrote a play this play was in a festival in Texas you and Lou went there to work on it we won't like we won't get into details what's in Texas stays in Texas we all know that but uh just I'm curious um just to hear like we've heard about you as an actor and this is like you as a as a as a person as a fuller artist in in the in the larger sense as well uh again as strengthening my voice as an artist I had a play inside of me I had something I wanted to say and I just needed the nudge to to get out and and do it and complete it and this play is something very near and dear to me uh my brother is autistic and I am from Texas and he also suffers uh he he has medical complications and Texas really isn't that great on taking care of people with disabilities uh something I'm very passionate about about telling so I wrote a play um about autism uh where as a viewer you could look at it and see these aspects these autistic tendencies and you go oh I've kind of felt like that before and suddenly the bridge between being normal and having a disability is a little bit shortened um as a playwright for unit uh and the opportunities that I've had I've been able to voice that a lot more efficiently uh and yeah we went down to uh Texas State for the black and Latino playwrights festival which has been going on for I believe 17 years 18 years this year um uh yeah and it's it's been going on giving voice to people of color people um and uh yeah it's it's something very special to me thank you now we're going to turn to Repetorio Español and maybe we can pass a mic to Allison. Allison just tell us a little bit about Nuestras Voces and about the Van Leer Directing Fellowship that is happening there okay I'll start with Nuestras Voces our national playwriting competition it's going into its 18th year funded by MetLife um it actually started from another program that we had uh three productions called Voces Nuevas very similar but it was three plays uh New Eurekin plays by New Eurekin writers they were La Gringa from Carmen Rivera which had just celebrated its 20th anniversary La Barbería by Candido Tirado and Elcano from Luis Delgado and it was wildly successful and it was uh the first time they did work contemporary work that had a specific theme New Eurekin plays so we thought how can we expand this at the time we were talking to MetLife about who we were and what we did and they wanted to fund a playwriting competition so there that was our end and we decided it's a national initiative it has to be specific to the Hispanic Latino experience in the United States we're looking for Latino playwrights but it is open to anyone who's writing authentic stories authentic characters um themes and subjects that are interest to the Latino community um I can't tell you over the years how many phone calls I've had from playwrights who say I can change the names to Maria or Jose that's not what we're looking for so uh the first first winners were in the year 2000 um we usually receive about 75 to 100, 110 squareups a year from all over the country and at first it was really hard because we didn't have email in those days I had to fax all the information to everywhere universities, other theater companies that had uh Latino slash Hispanic uh missions now it's a lot easier everything's electronic and I'm so glad that uh you know we're seeing so many plays not just from New York, the tri-state area not just Florida, Texas California but we're seeing plays come in from Latinos in Washington state, Wisconsin uh Arkansas which was a little bit of a surprise but you know it's expanded and I think over the course of the 18 years we've had 18 productions because we gave two full productions to plays that didn't win that's the grand prize a full production and $3,000 but there were two plays that the executive producer felt really embodied uh Latino experience one was called San Juan Shakespeare Company by Eugene Rodriguez and it was about a Latino theater company and all the uh during the course of the play they all auditioned for law and order as you know prostitutes, drug dealers but they had a theater company and they can do Shakespeare so we were proud to do that play but anyway the point is we've had over 100 readings there's cash prizes which we thought was very important because we wanted to expose these plays to mainstream theater and also we had a stage readings for the finalists so they get to work on it and develop it as well thank you, thank you and Stefania oh I'm sorry tell us about the Van Leer Directing Fellowship okay um yes Van Leer it's an initiative through the New York Community Trust and we were at a point where we needed to look at the future of the company and find directors who can work in the Spanish language so in the early 2000s we had a couple of grants that were accepted and we were able to put together a fellowship program and what it was is we would give the first professional credit to Latino directors working in Spanish and uh we were crazy because we gave it to 10 directors which is great but we were doing like a play a week in the summer like five this summer and then five next summer and we found you know a lot of great artists a lot of great work but that was just crazy um from that generation of directors we found Jose Sias who is now our in the spring I believe um as we went on we figured out I think we evolved and we figured out how to do it real well it is now a two year fellowship we give it to three directors or four because we always want to give that opportunity the first year they direct a contemporary play it could be um a translation of an American play or a play from Latin America or Spain the second year they have to do a siglo de oro play which is really hard each director gets a very small budget and uh they have to be the producer as well not fun but very useful um um and uh they've introduced a lot of great work to us that maybe Repetorio as a company itself would not go out and produce um and also we just wanted to give uh young people an opportunity young Latinos uh to direct to bump up their artistry um an opportunity you know maybe a lot of them had just graduated from college or they were a few years out of college um and we wanted to be the catalyst for that to make that happen thank you so much alright Estefania tell us as a Van Leer directing fellow tell us a little bit about um how that has helped you as a develop as an artist yeah so I was a Van Leer fellow from 2014 to 2015 um which meant that in the summer of 2014 I was doing the contemporary play like Allison said and in the summer of 2015 I did a siglo de oro golden age classical Spanish play um I think I applied in 2014 and I was very intimidated by the fact that so you had to propose the two plays that you wanted to direct and proposing a golden age play in Spanish was incredibly intimidating to me um and I just want to say to anyone out there who might think of applying don't let it intimidate you um we all all three directors who were in the program we all got through it um it was I think the language part of it was was scary at first to tackle something that was that old one way we didn't feel so confident in the language but it was an amazing experience to to tackle something totally different um so the first play I did was the Spanish translation of Soco the Ghost of Mexico Part 1 by Matthew Paul Olmos directed by I mean translated by Bernardo Cudia and that was an amazing opportunity to just I mean the great thing about the fellowship is that you can really propose anything you want to direct as long as it fits within the the era that it needs to be in um so I got to work with some incredible actors I really hadn't worked within the Latinx community theater community before so this was kind of my first um introduction to this amazing community that I'm so lucky to be part of um actually a lot of our actors came from Unit 52 which was an incredible resource um and also for my second year a lot of them also came out of there um and the second year I did the Aurel de Apolo which was a Sarsuela musical by Pedro Calderón de la Barca um and that was something I never directed a musical before and I was scared about the golden age part of it and this was just a great opportunity to do it in my own way and work with a composer for the first time work with a choreographer for the first time and really as a director I get to try things that I hadn't been given a platform to try before and I think even out of all the directing fellowships I know this is the only one I've been part of where they literally give you money give you a venue give you rehearsal space and just say like go do it do whatever you want and so that's as a director that was an amazing opportunity to grow Thank you, thank you so much so let's pass the mic to Beto and can you just give us a little context on La Co-op Sure First thing I want to do is just see all I see a bunch of the coordinating team here in the crowd and so if you're on the coordinating team for La Co-op could you stand up really quickly could you stand up so Daniela so like past members like Keong and Claudia here too Yadira and Kristen myself so that's not really to recognize us but I think the most important thing for me to do is because we're a non-hierarchical group we don't really have a leadership leader we like lead together as a group and so we were asked to be kind of on behalf of La Co-op I just wanted to recognize there's others also another thing that's important to know is if you ask individual members of the coordinating team what La Co-op is they're probably going to give you slightly different answers to that question so I'm going to give you how I perceive it and how I use it and kind of give you some context and then Kristen will give you some context too so La Co-op really came out of and really started right around the time of the LA Encuentro and a group of us who are individual artists here living in New York and the LA Encuentro was in 2014 the fall of 2014 really started thinking about like that moment in time and that moment in time is really a catalyst for our field and our community and wanting wanting New York to step into that arena and we really started thinking about it and now I'm just thinking back to what Maribel was saying I think that that at the end like looking back to basics the idea of gathering is really at the heart of like what La Co-op does the first thing we did was really started thinking about like who all is in our community and those kind of original like six to seven to eight members of us just like started a google doc of like names and emails and within I think it was just like a couple of days we had like over 350 names of individual artists who live here in New York and that was a really powerful moment for us to just like see those names and like recognize how many of us there are here but also to recognize like how very seldomly those people come together and really wanting to say like that is something that La Co-op wants to do we want to organize ourselves we want to organize our community bring us together it's kind of often thought of as like like different individual artists kind of operate outside of different institutions and want to kind of break down that idea too and also to be able to say that like artists who maybe find their artistic home at certain organizations should also be going to these other organizations and supporting that work as well and so like that's another kind of element of what La Co-op is we just recently kind of put together our new like action plan and I'm not going to bore you all with all of it but I'm just going to read you just a couple of we have like basically three main points that we're attempting to achieve here in the future and the first one is community organizing La Co-op is going to host events that will facilitate community building networking and unification of the Latinx theater community in New York City in the spirit of our celebrity event which some of you may have come to in the winter of 2014 event social gatherings with community building components these events serve as a critical component to one of our most pressing needs to interact network and come together as one unified Latinx theater community the second is arts journalism we want to really explore the possibilities developing a pool of journalists that will work with La Co-op to provide quality journalism for Latinx works particularly those that are underrepresented misrepresented by larger institutions and greater access to our work both here in the city and across the country and that was a need that came out of a lot of conversations with individual artists in the community really feeling like arts journalism is not hitting our community well not just in reviews but in access and just knowledge of what we do and also how we do it and I think all of us can probably give plenty of examples of when that's happened the third one is just straight up activism we partner both with arts allies across the country and support their work and not arts allies to end systemic white supremacy in the field of arts and culture primarily within the field of the greater New York City theater community and we've done a little bit of work towards that already we stood in Allyship with the Latino theater community in Chicago this last year when Porsche Light Music Theater had that moment in time if we can say that but La Co-op really felt compelled to like stand in that moment and really say something and you know we drafted a letter we sent it to Porsche Light, we published it we showed it to our community to attempt to create accountability so those are our main three platforms there's about six members of the coordinating team right now our goal in the next like three months is to go from six coordinating team members to 15 coordinating members we just happen to have a cafecito coming up right after this if you're very interested in joining us it's going to be really exciting and it's a really fun thing and I really think that when we gather we're powerful and we can sell out houses like I think that's a really exciting thing to think about is our community going and just like taking over a house and that's really cool Kristin do you want to add anything? You said a lot of things but I think if I'm going to add anything it's really I mean what to go back to that original question like what ignited the spark right you know just I'm from New York City born and raised and when I started becoming more just involved in the theater community it I mean there's not there's something happening in New York within Latinos that it's always happening there's always a sense of like competition we're all competing we all want to bite of the apple we're all the actors are competing for the only like five roles for us out there playwrights are competing so they can be like that Latino plane someone season theaters are competing for audience in their seats and like companies and organizations are competing for resources and so it's like how do we stop competing and that's by pooling our resources that's by working together that's by going to each other's shows that's why I'm promoting each other's shows writing those letters when we see a white actor you know play Usnavi in the Heights you know it's you know like writing that letter and saying hey that's not fair and like you know reclaiming our power back and also not just reclaim reclaiming our power but also protecting ourselves and protecting our work and protecting our identities and finding out what that is because I mean like so many things in our history has I mean we've been so detached and then reattached and then broken and then re-sewn and so it's like the only way we're really gonna find that identity again is by joining together by forming together by having these conversations but then not just having the conversations actually doing it and so that activism aspect that we drafted is important so everyone who wants to be involved everyone who wants to join come because our arms are open and we need to revolutionize we need to become autonomous we need like the Latino theater community is a little segregated right now and that needs to stop and that's why you know we got a lot going on so everybody's welcome thank you thank you let's give a hand to to all of our folks here so once again I'm going to ask you to turn to somebody near you it can be the same person and you can continue a conversation having it can be a totally new person and a totally new conversation but there's a couple of things I want you to think about one anything out of any of these initiatives that felt like oh yeah that's resonating with me number two thinking of a very specific time when you as a maker or a friend of theater have had an impact an impact can be big impact can be small however you define impact I would love you to think about that moment and share that moment with somebody so we're going to give everyone about about five minutes five minutes to chat there you go and one more minute one more minute and 30 seconds and I'm going to ask you to pause your conversations again and to pause your conversations and I want to bring these smaller conversations into the larger group so now it's going to be a little bit of hearing just little snapshots of those conversations okay so I'm going to ask for if there is someone that can share out a word that stood out to them a word or thought or just really brief but a word that stood out to you from any conversation that you had or anything that you heard so give me a word generosity passion legacy joy hope persistence united complexity back to basics youth study group sorry sorry medium colon and there was one over here cultural fusion autonomy something that stood out to you that's resonating you from either something that you heard or something that you feel about the day single words or radical hope will save us radical hope will save us schooling resources I got in I got in 88% sharing and giving up power there was something over here millennials back to basics more pie revolution our arms are open join us know your power and your privilege we are segregated we are segregated experience our culture experience our culture the percentage of the percentage of the you got it you got it any other thoughts drowning in metaphors nuance more pie more pie not just pie more pie say one more time working in isolation isn't sustainable over here power to the people protecting our sacred spaces make more pie we always knew this shit wasn't going to be easy we cannot stay complacent create the informal authority for change more than ever more than ever can I ever retire a lot of weight in that one any other thoughts we can have our thoughts to ourselves thank you demography is not a destination and with that I want to thank you all I'm going to bring up Rockstar producer Abigail Vega who is going to give us some stuff done a lot of really hard beautiful work we've heard your feedback from previous convenings and we're giving you the night off so I just want you all to take a moment together breathe together because a lot of really great work has happened those of you who are in identity can share out with some friends maybe over dinner tonight same with leadership, same with aesthetics because we all missed some things we got a kit caught up so just a couple of things that I want to do before we go first off thank you to all of you who filled out the survey last night I'm going to send it around another one again tonight please do that we hear you and we're definitely like seeing we're trying to use it to make the convening better so things like oh my god where's the water hear you second up why is it so hot in this room those things are really helpful if you don't have anything to say you don't need to fill it out don't worry but if you have something to say please do it because I want to use that to make it better okay so tonight where do we go from here some of you are going to have the night off some of you are going to go into your cafe dinner that you signed up for you all head out into the art gallery and disperse among yourselves and not do that in here on the ground team I need you to stick around for like five minutes we need to talk about something before we leave and then you're going to go on to see your shows who's seeing Alligator tonight whoa party people anybody going to Puerto Rican traveling theater okay one okay who else what else is going where else we have I like it like that that is Puerto Rican traveling theater okay cool okay and then tomorrow starting at 10 am you'll head into your three sessions we've got Puerto Rican traveling theater we've got Intar, we've got Repertoria Español be there at 10 if you want coffee and pastries be there at like 9 40 you cannot bring food into the theaters into any of the theaters you must eat it in the lobby so right no yep okay so please come early to do that after that we're going to have either a break excuse me give me two minutes y'all then we can go sorry we're going to either break into the optional conversation at the lark around translation international work or you can go see a show then we're going to come back here at five o'clock for a town hall it's going to be amazing there may be some surprises on store you'll then go away for a dinner break or stay here for your dinner break and then starting at 9 pm tomorrow is our Salvador Gigante late night party now let me we are retaking the term Salvador Gigante we're taking it back okay so this we're so excited you guys the party is going to be here it will not be as hot or maybe it'll be hotter I don't know um but it's going to be really fun we're going to have um we're going to have a baby of you from New York no Flaco Navaja and the razor blades they're going to be performing they're going to be performing we're also going to have our own comedian or Marga Gomez as our emcee comedian or Marga Gomez and we're going to have a couple of other performers here in New York performer it's going to be really amazing um that's pretty much all I have you guys thank you so much I just want to also just take one moment before you all leave to thank the on the ground team they did a fucking incredible job thank you awesome awesome work okay if you're going to go to a cafe go outside oh there's also if you have checked in yet check in with me before you leave at the check in table but if you're going to go to a cafe go outside if you're an on the ground team person stay here thank you all have a wonderful night