 Is it there? Oh, there we go. There we go. Welcome, my God! Look at you all with your balloons! I can't believe you're all here. Just look at you. I can't even describe the feeling I have looking around this theater right now. Thank you so much for joining us, for joining the Latino and Latina Theater Commons and our partners in crime, the Chicago Alliance of Theater Artists, Theater Artists, or HALTA, Teatro Vista, and the theater school at DePaul University for the LTC Carnaval 2015! Theater Commons is a movement. We are a network of passionate, committed Latina and Latino theater makers from around the country who donate our time, resources, attention, and experience to forward Latino and Latina theater as central to the health and vitality of the American theater. We are so thrilled that you have come from 30 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico to join us in celebrating these 12 new Latino and Latina plays and their 12 mind-bogglingly talented authors. One of the LTC's core missions is to promote the full aesthetic plurality of Latino theater. We intend to blow open your idea of what a Latino and Latina play is, because Latino, as you all know, is not one thing. We come from many cultures. The writers whose work you will see this weekend alone claim their roots in Mexico, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Salvador. The directors are Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican, and Mexican, and the nearly four dozen Chicago Latino and Latina actors claim roots in well nearly every country in Latin America. Aesthetically, you will experience everything from straight-ahead realism, to magical realism, to a deeply personal bilingual performance piece, to an adult fairy tale, to an explosion of Fellini's satiricon, to a spoken-word romance, a docu-drama, a theatrical graphic novel, a musical and historic drama, and a riff on the future fallout of The Grapes of Wrath. And these 12 pieces are just the tip of the iceberg. We receive just under 100 submissions from some of the very best writers in the nation for this festival. And if you count, you will find over 200 playwrights' names out in that lobby. And if you know even three of them, you will recognize the aesthetic, genre-bending diversity of the work. We believe that the breadth, depth, and vitality of Latino and Latino work comes directly from the embedded plurality of our experience. Latino and Latina theater artists are bi or tri or many cultural, and we seek to find narrative structures that articulate the complexity, the lack of linearity, the explosive poetry of living in that dynamic space between cultures. In that way, Latino and Latina theater signals the dramaturgy of the theater to come. As our nation becomes more and more mixed, as we are less and less able to check boxes on the census, we will want stories whose structures and range mirror the multiplicity of this great nation. When you watch the work this weekend, you are experiencing a harbinger. Because make no mistake, the Latino theater commons believes that Latino theater is right now, before your very eyes, giving birth to the new American theater. I have some folks we need to thank before I pass on the mic. First, Godnaval 2015 is made possible by the generosity and support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. Additional support, let's give them a shout out. The award has been provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. Second, the commons is not an institution nor an organization. It is a nationwide collective of participants guided by a steering committee of volunteers. Volunteers. Will the members of the LTC steering committee who are in the house please stand up. 2015 Task Force, please stay standing. No marketing person or development person or literary manager, any of that. This event was produced by a small army of volunteers that include the LTC Carnival Task Force. We're standing, stay standing. Along with our producing partners, the Chicago Alliance of Latino Theater Artists, or ALTA, and D'Altrovista, who serve as the host committee for this event. The host committee and or an ALTA volunteer, will you please stand. Join the Pal University and its incredibly generous faculty and staff and its passionate student body. I am a proud, proud member of this institution. If you are faculty or staff at the theater school or theater school student volunteer, will you please stand. But we really wouldn't be here without the support of one person. In May 2012, when the LTC was founded by a small group of Latino and Latino theater artists, we laid out five dreams. One of which was to host a biannual festival of new Latino and Latino plays. At the time we didn't know where we'd do it. But I knew that back in Chicago, we had broken ground on this new building and would open it in 2013. So I was like, well, I think, I think we can host it. And as the LTC was raising awareness and money for its upcoming activities, we just kind of started saying that we were hosting a festival of new Latino plays at the theater school upon university. And we started saying it a lot. It showed up in the LA Times and on HowlRound and even a small show on the paper too. And I got this email from our dean saying, um, what do we do? I'm profoundly grateful to Dean John Colbert for jumping aboard this crazy train and putting the full support of the theater school at DePaul University behind Carnival 2015. An internationally renowned lighting and set designer, a humble but nonetheless visionary leader and my mentor, ladies and gentlemen, the dean of the theater school, John Colbert. Thank you for holding me for the theater school, but also for your passion and leadership as a driving force that made it possible for us to welcome everyone here for Carnival. We are proud to call you one of our own, ladies and gentlemen, Professor Lisa Portos. Hello and welcome to our artistic home. While it's new, we're not. We were happy to say that we've been around for a while, training the next generations of theater artists in all disciplines since our founding as a Goodman School of Drama in 1925. And I've been the dean, no, not since 1925. Since 2001, and one might assume that during my tenure, I've had occasion to reflect, sometimes acutely, on the challenges that come with supporting and training the next generation of theater artists. We didn't always need a smartphone policy in the classroom or deal with helicopter parents, but some challenges that we face are most likely the same ones that were faced in 1925. Challenges inherent in the delicate art of teaching artistry and knowing when to take the training wheels off. We have always been dedicated to training our conservatory students so they know how to make theater, how to collaborate, how to create a vision, and translate it to a reality. We empower them to value the importance of bringing people into the theater as a place of community, of exchange, of vision, and imagination. We train them to be professionals who believe that the theater can inform and transform us about the human condition. Today our students deserve and demand from us a new set of tools. Today we are challenged and compelled to help them make a theater that is inherently inclusive of diverse ideas, people, and voices. Today we invite them to celebrate and generate new work that reflects new social realities and untold histories. In other words, we train them in hopes that one day they will become just like you. You are here to share and experience new plays from Latina and Latino playwrights to celebrate these voices in great works so that you can share them in your own communities. You are here because you are dedicated to coming together in dialogue, artistry, scholarship, and in celebration. You are making the new American theater. And that is why we are so grateful to have you here at the theater school, because you are role models, because your mission aligned so closely with our values, and because the theater that our students will create will be built upon yours. We are privileged to be able to share our new artistic home with you for these few days. So on behalf of the entire theater school community, thank you for being here, for being in Chicago, and for doing what you do. Thank you for your commitment to the national dialogue surrounding Latina and Latino work in our theaters, and new work in our theaters, and underrepresented voices in our theaters. Thank you for being collaborators, and movers, and shakers, and all around awesome people. Have a great carnival. I would like to introduce Maria Elena Morales, the audience development manager for the League of Chicago theaters. She also oversees in that role marketing for hot ticks, all important ticketing program, and works with over 100 companies a year with their cooperative advertising program. Maria Elena. Good morning. This is the happiest conference room I've ever seen. You figured it out. It is my sincere privilege to welcome you all to Carnival on behalf of the League of Chicago theaters, and its 240 plus member theaters. From Hyde Park to Jefferson Park to Rogers Park, and even theater in the parks, our city's industry has an impressive breadth and depth. Like I tell anyone who will listen, no matter your interest or your preference, we have something for you. Chicago is home to companies representing, among others, African American, Latin American, and Asian American communities, Southeast Asians, Irish Heritage, and Polish culture, LGBT issues, and even Scandinavian playwrights. We have companies dedicated to musicals, comedy, burlesque, cabaret, dance, physical theater, circus, magic, performance art, classical music, Shakespeare, new works, literary adaptations, devised work, and a number of children and family theaters, hard at work cultivating the next generation of theatergoers and theater makers. We have itinerant theaters, storefront theaters, commercial theaters, and Tony winning regional theaters. One of which dedicate valuable staff, energy, and time, funding festivals, developing and showcasing works by voices that are often unheard or underrepresented. With the scope of work across our stages and the diverse town pool calling Chicago home, I can't think of a better city to hold Carnival. Thank you to Teatro Vista, Victory Gardens, Goodman, Alta, and DePaul for serving as local hosts and representatives of this beautiful city. To those of you from out of town, a special welcome. I hope you find my colleagues in my city to be a uniquely collaborative community ready to listen, to share, and to learn. And while it is my job to get as many people to go see theater as possible, and I definitely invite you to catch as much theater as you can in your copious amount of free time during this conference. I will also point out that Chicago has much else to offer. We have world-class dining and drinking. We, too. Lumonade's up the street, fantastic. A storied sports legacy, including a Cubs team that is legitimately not bad this year. So if you catch a game, you might actually be taking in a part of history to serve. Renowned cultural institutions, the Chicago History Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry are my personal favorites. Architecture tours, food tours, a bevy of street festivals this weekend, by the way, is the Chicago Hot Sauce Festival and the Chicago Margarita Festival. There is much to do here on any given day of the week. Like I said, the city does have something for everyone, and it welcomes you with open arms. From a meeting at Hellround, to convenings at Emerson College and now here to this playwright festival in Chicago, we are so glad to have you. We are so intrigued by where the work goes from here. Good luck. Thank you for being here, and welcome. This is Holly Carl from Hellround. This is so exciting. We've come so far, everyone. So I want to just say one of the great organizers and the farm worker, Cesar Chavez, he has this wonderful quote that I wanted to start with this morning. From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength. In 1988, I wish I had graduated in 1998, but it was actually 1988, the year I graduated from college, I went on a hunger strike in Solidarity with Cesar Chavez, who fasted that year for 36 days in the middle of what was the third call for a strike on California table grapes that had first begun in 1965. I was living in a Catholic worker house in Los Angeles, and our community each took a day or two to join the fast. We spent a lot of time protesting in support of the boycott, standing in front of local grocery stores, handing out flyers, and talking to the FBI guys who were following us around. It was in part the work of Chavez that inspired me to think about a life devoted to justice. And I think about his spirit in this room, his work of his community birthing the work of El Teatro Confesino and the leadership of Luis Valdez, and of course, Kenan Valdez. How many of us in this room have been touched by Chavez's call for the necessity of people working together to organize themselves, to solve their own problems, and fill their own needs. Chavez's words describe perfectly the work of the Latino Theater Commons, a group of artists actively joining together, using every resource at their disposal to change the circumstances of their reality in the American Theater. When HowlRound helped convene a group of eight Latino artists at the inspiration of Karen Zacharias four years ago, the desire for change, for visibility, for an American Theater to be more American was a necessity that needed a plan for action. In a 36-hour stretch, the Latino Theater Commons was formed and a plan was hatched. And today marks an end, and a beginning. When we all met in that room four years ago, we talked about a big convening in Boston. Check. We talked about an online presence for conversation in Caffeonda. Check. We talked about an inquentro for full productions made possible by the work of the Los Angeles Theater Center. Check. And we talked about a carnival of new plays that was, by the way, always going to happen at DePaul. And here we are. Check. So as we enter these next few days together, we celebrate so many voices past and present who make this moment possible. I am thinking of those eight people in that room that first day. Karen, Jose Luis Valenzuela, Lisa Portez, Ann Garcia Romero, Salah Grivas, Antonio Senera, Enrique Yurita, and Christopher Diaz. And the original steering committee that put together the first convening. And the scholars who have been tracking the history and the timeline. And Brian Herrera writing up that convening in Boston into a beautiful book that will be forever with us. And the incredible work of commons producer Abigail Vega. And Hal Rom, producer James LaBea. And the mentors who are with us in spirit like Irene Fonez. And I'm not naming enough names, of course, because a commons is always all of the names. It's everyone who is here today. Everyone who has written for Caffeonda. Everyone who has lifted this movement to this moment. We must however only celebrate for a little while. The work is still massive. The numbers don't add up. Our stages, our theaters, our institutions still don't look right. They do not represent who we are as a country of rapidly shifting demographics. They are not a reflection of the complexity of the American story. And the racism that greets us every single morning in our news feed is our responsibility. We must find ways to bring the power of our art into the suffering, the opportunity, and the hope before us. So let's love each other all weekend. Let's embrace these beautiful artists in our midst and celebrate their stories. And then Monday, for God's sake, let's sleep in. And then Tuesday, let's get back to work. To introduce my friend and actually my mentor over these last few years, the wonderful Jose Luis Valenzuela. We came to fruition through a common goal. That was born out of a conversation in Washington, DC. I'm sorry if I'm different. In 2012, Karen Zacarias invited us all to a blind date. Which lead a fire under us all. And I'm here to pass the torch from the city of Los Angeles to the city of Chicago. In 2013, Howard Brown stepped up a three-day date in session for us. And after we recognized as a national community, we emerged as a commons. In 2014, the Latino Theatre Company brought us together for a month-long illicit love affair with artists and fellows at the Encuentro at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. And now here we are at our engagement party. Where we will intoxicate ourselves with La Palabra, the written words. As we read these new words, we celebrate their contribution to the New American Theatre. Historically, playwrights have illuminated our histories, our stories, our struggles, our beauty, and our flaws. Our dreams and our triumphs. Over the ages, all that will remain is the word. May the word we hear over the next three years inspire us and inspire us in future generations, making them true believers of our theater. I'm so proud to know that the work of the Latino Theatre Commons and Howard Brown have sparked a flame for the continuation of our quest and for our own self-determination as an artistic community. Now I would like to invite Lisa Portes to please join me on the stage. She said she said she'll do whatever it wants. Okay, I'm doing this little exercise here. So I want you to close your eyes. Watch out for me. If anyone of you wants to close your eyes, you're welcome to. I want you to imagine a small, tiny flame in the middle of your chest. Just imagine it and let it burst all over your body. And any time you have doubts or fear, let this flame burst and you feel the warmth and it will ignite your own strength, your security and your power. And always keep it with you and always, but then pass it along to the next generation of Latino parties. Recuerda que no se vive fácilmente en esta tierra. Pero no olvides que primeramente tú provienes de alguien, que tú desciendes de alguien, que tú naciste por la gracia de alguien, que tú a la vez eres la espina y el retorno de nuestros antepasados, de aquellos que vinieron antes que nosotros y de aquellos y aquellas que se han ido a vivir al más allá. Remember that one does not live easily upon this earth, but do not forget that about all, you have come from someone, that you descend from someone, that you were born by the grace of someone, that you are both the spine and the offspring of our ancestors, of those who came before us and those who have gone on to live in the great beyond. Keep that flame bringing it back up to the mirrors. And this is my gift to you. You can take it for the rest of any time you have got it. Nothing would happen. I want to take a quick minute and just like allow everyone to really, and you know Lisa and everyone here who's been working so hard on the cotton of all, we're so focused on making sure this thing happens that because over there being like, you've got to hurry up, I've got your girl to worry. But it's going to take a quick minute to just allow everyone to just take a collective breath together. We are all in this space together for the weekend. It is exciting. It is empowering. It is rejuvenating. So just carry that with you for the next few days. Thank you, Isaac. So I want to tell you guys a little bit about Alta Chicago. It's very exciting for us to know that as we speak a little bit about our history and why we started and how that resonates with this movement as a whole, this is going to be the first time I think since Boston, that there are all kinds of regional alliances in the house right now. Something we're really excited about. If you're part of one of those regional alliances, can we please see you shake your balloon? I feel like at some point someone had to say shake your balloon. So how did, why did Alta start? Alta started because we wanted to make sure that the American narrative, theater and artistic spaces captured the diversity of the country. I think I see a lot of head nodding because in essence that's what's bringing all of us here today. We were lucky to have two forces here in Chicago that helped the people that wanted to join that cause come together over a conversation and then get to work on that vision. These people being Tania Saracho, who was just making things happen for Latinos in Hollywood as we speak. If this is being, you know, if it's being, what am I trying to say? Livestream, we're sending her a big hug and her spirit is with us. And also Ricardo Lucia Resuino, Ricardo, shake your balloon for us. I know you're a nurse there. They partnered on us for vision and then we got to work, a la chamba, right? And that chamba has brought us to where we are today right now. We're a service organization housed at Victory Gardens Theater. We have subsidiary programming that includes unified auditions, inviting large and small theater companies to see only Latino talent in Chicago. We have a semi-hero playwriting circle which also housed at Victory Gardens Theater and culminates in a nine-month writing process with stage readings. We already had our first of two installments of that. So these are all major accomplishments that we've been able to celebrate this year alone. Isaac, am I missing anything else? We do socials because we always got to lure them with a little bit of drinking and we have time for us so after we get them to drink, we got to get to the hard discussions, right? I want to thank you guys so much for being here. In so many ways, many of you are driven here by the same desire that started ASDA. The motivation to change the landscape of the stories that are being told, have an active agency in how those stories are being told. We're going to see all kinds of palabras just as Jose Luis mentioned earlier today. We're going to be celebrating those. And I know many of you are sitting there right now wondering, why do we have the balloon? Whose birthday is it? Is it Santa Levella's birthday? She will take me later when everyone keeps saying, Happy Birthday, not to Victoria. So I'm going to pass the torch off right now to Isaac who will now tell us what are these for and what are we doing? So before we get into it actually, there are so many beautiful faces in the house tonight. Can we get some house lights on for a minute please? And Michael, our beloved photographer who is going to be very busy is going to give us a big round of applause. So I know everyone with their balloons will smile big and turn me on. So happy to be here. So in just a minute, I want you to stand up because this wouldn't be a Latino convening without some interactive exercises. Am I right? And so if you have a balloon, I need you to find, don't move yet, hear my instructions first and then we'll do the thing. If you have a blue balloon, I need you to find someone with an orange balloon. If you have a red balloon, I need you to find someone with a yellow balloon. And if you have a purple balloon, I need you to find someone with a green balloon. Now, once you partner up with someone, you're going to ask very few very basic very quick questions. What is your name? Where are you from? How do you identify as a theater maker and what was the last play by a Latino writer that you saw that really turns you on? Let's keep this very short and very quick and go!