 to constituency, right, everything from former to designers to clear rights and such. And what we're trying to do, of course, is promote the rich, as I said earlier, and create a world-class contribution, thanks to our emails from the city of Dallas and North Texas. So we're really trying to make it a form of this particular area, or the focus on this area. And then, we just have a, we kind of have a living mission. We're a new group, so we're starting to be separate. So right now, we're trying to put together a particular initiative and what we're trying to work with is with the City Council. But the idea that we don't mind being a mission, so we just for right now, we have what I call a tennis mission. There's one that we can live with for right now. And the idea, the focus is the notion of dissemination of new works, by Latino artists, right. So the notion is, and you can read that, is to really enhance this ability, but also to garner a sense of recognition for the work that we do. So, and of course, those two go hand in hand. So we're trying to build a sense of presence in this particular area, because we're here and we're not going away. And then, hand in hand with that, of course, came up with a vision say that is all part of the organization try to do in terms of put out a particular vision with how they, in a sense, see the future in a sense, right. So the mission sort of gets into how we're living in the present, how we're trying to engage with the present, and then our vision sort of takes us to the future, right, or at least some kind of aspirational future. And so we're trying to procure the structural support within the city of Dallas and surrounding cities to fulfill this particular mission. And so what we're trying to do, as a lot of you know, I'm sure you're good at the same thing, we're really trying to key into or work into finding adequate resources, which means funding resources, right, and at the same time trying to find a workspace that we, the enduring workspace that we live in and breathe in and do our work. So those are, as I'm paraphrasing, the vision. So we're trying to engage the mechanism that's already in place that perhaps creates a new one along the way, in terms of how we might enhance our visibility and our recognition in the city of Dallas. All because we want to serve our particular communities. It's not just about us. It's about how we are serving our particular community. So that's the foundation. So I'm sure you have lots of wonderful stories yourself. From your particular words, and we'll get to Dallas in just a second, but we have a little agenda, so now I'll turn it over to Mike. Okay, and you're here. Mary, thank you for coming. Those of you who are ready for the TCT conference, thank you for coming to this meeting. And for those of you who drove from far and wide, we appreciate you being here. The issue of visibility came up a while ago. It was a TCT study a couple of years ago, talking about the relative invisibility of theater in general in Texas, in this area, in Dallas area. Not going to be going, probably, well, if Texas mainstream Dallas theaters were relatively invisible within the broader future, we're about Latinos. Well, we were really, really invisible. So that got me going, and I was able to publish an essay in a volume, Theater and Small Nations in England. Very interested in ethnic work. And that got me going to thinking about how many companies we are here and the work, the Latino work that we do here. So that got me thinking about visibility in terms of, because I'm a scholar, basically, primarily. So visibility happens when somebody writes about your work when your work is printed, when you are catalogued from the library. It's great to have performances. It's great to have unique reviews to validate your presence. But you also need to be in academia. Your work needs to be part of the canon, and it's not going to be part of the canon if it's not published. People can't find it. And most of the time, it's, oh, we love to hire Latinos or have Latino play, but we don't know where to find it. What we want to do is have an anthology of works created in Tejas, and we're calling the volume Made in Tejas, of works by people who live and work here from the piece that we are asking that the piece be produced between 2000, year 2000 to now, so it's relatively new work. And we're actually going into three different kinds of works that we are interested in producing. I mean, in publishing. One is regular plays, one-on-play, school plays, one-on-locks. It works by companies and or individual artists. The other is Theatre for Young Audiences, which is usually left out or done separately. And we're going to have a third component of devising work, work created collectively. So there's going to be an engagement between the critic, a scholar who writes about the process and the company. In all of the sections for all of the participants, there's going to be a Q&A so that the writer speaks or the artist speaks. We're all asking all artists to join us on certain issues, so there'll be the voice of the artist, and then at the end, Tommy's going to be talking about something that she's been working on, too, that we want to include in the end quality. So please spread the word. We have a deadline June. We want to work hard on this fast. We don't want this to be like, you know, for years, three years, whatever. We want to work hard and fast so we have a deadline of, is it June something? June 26, but we're willing to be flexible if we have work that's coming down the pipe. By the way, there are three curators to this. It's Lorenzo and Vanessa, where are you? Vanessa, Mancala Taylor's working with us and myself, Alfie, I'm also curating this. So that's for the plays and creative work. The other thing that I'm concerned about is you're locating, and if you can help us, locating scholars that are working in your particular areas, recording the history of the works that you do. Like, for instance, Jorge Huerta just came out here a couple of months ago, and he shared with us the activity of the LA Alliance, and they have three scholars working with them. It's Lorenzo and Jorge, Tiffany and Lopez, and Jean-Claude. They have three scholars working in the LA Southern California area to go to plays, to review plays, to see the state of, to report back to the major alliance that we're all forming nationally. So it would be really cool to have the data in your particular areas, often in San Antonio, in the valley, to locate and identify scholars who are working on the history of your work. What's going on there? So we have another volume on the history of Texas Theater. There's really a lot of interest in that. Publishers are there. There's no history of Texas Theater, right? It doesn't exist. And if you read the books that were published by after Google Press back in the days, when Nicolás Canelo was publishing a lot about Catholic history, it stops, sorry, folks, it usually stops in San Antonio and maybe Austin. It doesn't go anywhere in the world. So basically, there's just a partial, very fragmented history of Hispanic Latino, Chicano Theater in Texas. And so we're working to build that. So if you can help us with that, that would be really great. Does everybody have a call for submissions? We'd love to hear from you. Spread the word. Thank you. Probably one of the questions. I didn't do that at the beginning. I thought about it. Introduction. Who is that guy? We don't know. And I'm usually a little bit of a performer, so I usually do a little of something. But yeah, I just jumped in. So I'm going to go to Garcia, an department chair in English with North Texans, right up the street, right in Guine, Texas. And I'm going to sit back and I'll leave. To Nicolás Canelo. And I'm actually in the department world, in Spanish, so I teach Latin American and Latin and theater in Spanish, but I read it in English. And for those of you, this is thanks to Cora-Benguin on the door of places like Theater Jones for a long time. Theater Jones is an online performance review venue. Theater with a TR, Theater Jones. And they just hire me. Hire me. Nothing. I'm a first Latina or Latino by Latinos and Latinas. So they also are interested in interviews, question and answer, you know, articles. So if you ever have any work that you're interested in coming up with, we end up doing some kind of collaborative thing. You know, there's a venue to promote that online. So that's really kind of a cool thing. And maybe we can start off by just having the people who are in Tanto who are here today, Tanto members. Stay up. Are you the only one? No. So can you introduce yourself quickly? Dave Lozano, kind of me a theater company. Rod Betts and Diploris, also kind of me a Lozano. No, Lozano. Lozano is called the Taylor director and a company member of the kind. And the other part of the service is actually Florida. And my name is Florida. So maybe we can go around really quickly and maybe you can decide who you are and then if you're an individual artist or a company that you're interested in, we'll start here. Yes, please. Good afternoon, everybody. Yes, Lozano is a producer and also they've done a workshop at Texas. We've been around five years and we've been doing this with Loretta and Loretta for a really long time. I'm Loretta, I'm just a director of the Afro people. I've lost to Texas. And what are the founders of the company? I'm Joanna. And you are the I don't know anything that is behind the curtain. I'm Molly Ortiz. I am an actor, playwright and spoken word poet. I am working at my master's at UT Phan Am in the lower Rio Grande Valley. I'm a playwright and actor, musician, recording artist. And I just founded the Apropato Lito multi-cultural theater company because we don't have a professional theater company. So a freelance actor a former soloist a former writer of commercials and also a workstout from San Antonio. Latina Latina Theater. Hello, I'm a theater artist, director, playwright, producer, cultural worker and oh my god. I'm Joelle. Settles for the theater arts program director at SASE I lost to a theater company and a southbound member as well and an actor and a Japanese show I'm Roxanne Sugar-Aque and I'm a professor at UT Austin but I'm also still in my water. I'm a playwright and a scholar and a proud member of SASE My name is Marcy McBan and I'm a Latino literature specialized in theater and trying to get more theater performance, Latino theater performance in our community I'm Latina My name is Jack Hargis I'm a student and I'm an intern and a director I'm Rafael de Maia I'm an actor a pop artist I work with a theater company and I work with Deftal Dallas and to create networks communication so, Megan she'd like to talk to you all about it and then we'd like to ask Rupert to share a song with me as we talked about a couple weeks ago when I was down in Austin so it was like a great opportunity so maybe it was that time I just proposed and indeed I created this volume and we have already discussed whether it's going to be volume one of a series of Latino and Chicano produced works from Texas based artists I thought well in order to get the word out to the people who need to see this call for submissions we need to come up with a mailing list to email this and then I thought well where is that document you know it's nowhere it's not on the internet, it doesn't exist yet and I thought well I'm trying to live as an elder by that idea that we are the ones that we have been waiting for so I'm the one that's doing that creating that list, that searchable database that will be shared publicly and reciprocally with anybody who wants to see it and so volunteering to just step up and create this spreadsheet with just your names and if you're at Texas based playwright Roxanne you're on the list there were people who came to mind immediately Rodney because I know your work today that we're the reason why Texas the Chicano Latino theater alliance seemed to be already moving very quickly and getting on the road on the path according to our mission and agendas, it's because we already know each other, we're migrant art workers a lot of us have traveled to and fro and my name is Celana based in San Antonio previously recited and worked here and I lived in Austin for ten years which is where I met Rodney Rodney is now in debt and so we're migrant art workers and so we already know each other we're already networked in but in terms of this document that's playwrights, Texas based previously produced works I haven't seen that document yet I'm happy to be creating it because it gives me reason to get in touch with all of you again and reify and update my knowledge my information about you what you're working on now and every time because we're sharing caring group of people in our community that we act like familia as soon as we meet each other any time I reach out to Rupert and he was in the middle of your festival you knew play festival and right away he said here's names of some playwrights and then mere days after the end of the festival he had the emails to email addresses of these people that's how we work that's how we care and thank you Rupert for that and so the list is growing we have over 65 names and there's more coming through I'm very very happy about that and the added bonus of this is this document is going to be included in the form that we're producing so it will be a nice appendix to what Vanessa and Lodance are going to put together very exciting so please get in touch with me if you have anybody to suggest I will do the digging and contacting I will reach out to these folks if you can just give me the contact information be it a phone number, email address is preferable I'd rather not do everything through Facebook there's been way too much time on that but a private email is preferable and the sooner the better of course because I want to be sure that we get the call for submissions out to as many folks as soon as possible and TamicoMexican.com is one of my email addresses that's permanent Tamico is a cool pool where you can just playwrights designers, directors, or who-all is the base of this is already turning into a part-time job that I'm not going to take just to do the playwright because I want to do it right I'm too old and I don't want to do things you know, have you know, cocked or whatever the two of you have so I want to be sure to be as thorough as possible with this and I'm a playwright as well so I want to know who my homies are so that's right and as far as the information aspect of what I feel part of my agenda, my mission is the member of Tanto and any Latino-oriented theater group in the US is that we are all living breathing archivists of our work and so we may not have yet the publication that y'all are going to create we may not have yet this database that I'm working to create but we all have information all living breathing archivists so I challenge you to keep those up wherever your notes are in the shoebox or in a data file or in a junk drive and because we're getting so activated we're probably going to need that material in some form or fashion be it with a blog or a searchable databases on a website that we create who knows the sky's the limit as they say B.V. Olguin, Ben Olguin is a scholar who's writing about the work of great bodies and Devo Paredes and E.T. Austin is also one of the best I would mention Thank you Ways of networking and sharing talent and ideas within the different alliances and we even started a conversation with this about people who love to tour and we would love to bring other groups in that or touring and one of the things that we run into is not knowing who's out there and also not knowing who to contact we do get asked a lot to go tour our shows are not designed that way we design shows for running for three weeks in the theater and they're too big to move and if we knew we were going to be moving we could design for another space and we could also then take that theater that same show and move it off to another city now that's the big that's I mean so obviously whenever I start touring tomorrow we're going to have collaborations and working together we're going to have marriages and you don't start a relationship by starting a production you know you have to get to know each other what are the best ways that your company can help my company and your company can help out but one of the things that we've talked about a lot and maybe I should call it the Rodney Bars Initiative because he's already doing it to some extent and that is we find that a lot of our players and a lot of our directors have really not gone off and learned they've basically been doing the same thing for us for 12 years and so it's sort of like how do you get new talent new blood so we talk about maybe just bringing in a director and I know the director Houston, Centennial Fort Worth, Dallas, I don't know where else probably but just again I've seen this work in almost every one of those cities so the idea is how do we network so that we can bring that new blood into Austin State and there's a wonderful thing in Austin called Viewspot Festival I don't think you've heard of that festival or not if you get a chance to participate or see some of that it's really wonderful because they bring talent from all over the world from South America to Amsterdam just coming in I think to the next where they're trying to get all the eases and stuff but you'd be amazed at the information or the things that people are doing in theater like in Europe and stuff that we don't see here and I just wonder what's going on in Dallas it's going on in San Antonio it's going in Houston up in North Texas and all ended in and maybe by exchanging like just the directors we could do something similar to they bring a play that they've already progressed the idea that they've already directed they've already worked so they're making a big introduction to Austin or Austin going to San Antonio so you're not reinventing that whole production it's already been done in one place to bring it it actually kind of cuts down on the time and design and again these are just all fantasies these are all ideas we're just going out and stuff I'd love that we're getting a list of playwrights because we get asked to a lot and we do a playwright festival we get submissions of scripts and so we get quite a lot of playwrights they go through a process of being read and produced almost every one of the plays that we've done are writing on paper including Money Action Girl which we just finished up a great successful run for that which is coming into Dallas so one of the things that we would like to do though I've learned that I've known Kodak for a long time that I've never seen one of your play I've never been to Dallas in play you know I mean it's yes, we actually did it commercially years and years ago and I know you've come to Austin years and years ago you've been to Austin you've been to Austin so some of these things have happened but they've been lost and forgotten we did a little bit of a collaboration we were at their space basically the same production we had in Austin we took it to your space the same set, the same costumes I'm not saying for life and design but we brought the base of the same play with all the same cast and worked up it under the auspices of adagro productions which is in San Antonio too I've seen people have heard so what I would like to propose and we do have a great adagro the first step might be to see other shows and at that moment we have to travel to Dallas and they need to care about it and come see a play and then stay another day to actually kind of talk at coffee talk about production talk about what they should be in the future just a very formal conversation San Antonio is so close to Austin it's an hour by car now we can make 80 miles an hour until we get the shows so these are the kind of things we would like that Austin and Seattle View was interested in giving this informal context the vision of talent exchanges new plays maybe even a touring circuit that's why I'm trying to see a touring circuit in Austin that goes from Dallas to Austin and San Marcos and now it has some programs that are happening in San Marcos San Antonio Vallejo it's going to be far away but when you hit San Antonio right in the middle of the valley the old valley filled with the town and our engine and ground building up through Kingsville and Corpus so there is a circuit that exists that we don't have to travel real far but that's a real place a big fantasy might always be able to take off and do that kind of thing and knowing that there's a group there that's already going and helping promote because that's what we don't need to tour all the promotion and everything we've gone to a gallery and had two different experiences one we had a great promotion and did a show another one we had a terrible promotion we had 10 people in the audience for two shows so that's the kind of thing you don't like happening so the conversation that I think is really important I don't think we have a very good group and then do some other things there's certainly a website that's our idea idea I want to see what's happening and think about it we have a very good group we have a very good group we're all welcome to join TANTO but we have talked about the idea of creating a central website with links to works by other so yeah that's definitely on our to-do list absolutely I want to share with you the resources we have in order to help jumpstart these types of collaborations and as I told you we have an event called Limonadia which is one night one each night at night it's always the second Saturday in March it's an open call that we have I've started out in the theater and recording committee for three, two years and it's going to be my third which is some massive explosion of theatrical proposals there was one proposal that was a solo artist from Spain he was oh let's take him it's a locally produced performance that we have over 300,000 people in 10 and there's one thing there already in place that's supported through an infrastructure that's supported through the mayor's office so the open calls have been very good so there's artists that are staying so the thing about planning the proposal it was like he asked for like $1500 we're like he's in and then so at that point he had to revise his proposal he said oh I forgot I have to bring my tech person and then he's like well you said $1500 and that's what we need to keep you can't come with $1500 I mean that's like isn't that like being wonderful to travel with like somewhere in Texas you can just come on down after the performance so the open call for that is going to continue to happen in December so not only I think a local theater you at least need to apply right now it's not that you can go to and then you apply online it's really easy you ask for the money that you need and then you don't ask for more labor you know artists we have to cut ourselves you know this type of thing is like a good way to like if you have a project that could travel that sort of might work in an open space so we have paid as well but just like for one night we have resources and you're guaranteed an audience like we're guaranteed you know 300,000 people so let's use that resource to like freak out like San Antonio like you know mainstream theater and say oh my god you know we got like 40 the after-applicants that would freak them out you know this how about that how about this it's creative as soon as the information is out I will forward that information and that is one way continuously like you know we have funding for that you can be considered through a jury curated thing but that's what needs to get you to San Antonio okay is there like a time limit on this because I know in the past it's like 20 minutes for performances that's still like one act depends but you need to think of like this particular event is primarily outdoor there's more theaters as well but more like public space if you have something specific outside that might work or if you want to come in maybe it's an excerpt the thing about it needs to be new work so it can't be anything that you know we want like that you know work that's in a site you know San Antonio I don't think San Antonio is any more about I think like since it's curated that probably goes into their decision right because they can't have one act can we do this can we have many not piece of paper over there like the website or the website or whatever you know resources and websites that we already have we do so that we don't have to worry about Johnny downing it that place would be the place to post and if you want to break out smaller groups we've got but it seems like we're kind of working how would you like break out into smaller groups by interest by what you do of playwrights which is after which is company or by geography area based on maybe talking what do we most say in collaboration collaboration is great so we have great cooperation we have are there others who are a new center yeah we have a new center let's do the same let's reverse the name individual artist okay so we have three and then we put up identify what is important to you right on the sheet over there and here we have also