 Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. Hello, good afternoon. So we're getting ready to start here, so if I can have folks take a seat, that'd be great. My name is Christopher Siebel. I'm the Associate Artistic Director here at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Welcome to this conversation, this discussion on No Holds Barrio, Latino theater into the future. I want to welcome all of you for being here this afternoon, as well as our virtual audience. We are live streaming live through HowlRoundTV this afternoon. So, yay, technology! So, Donya and I are going to be back there and looking at Twitter and if any questions come up, panelists. It's my great, great pleasure to introduce our moderator this afternoon. He is, well, he's a genius, and literally he hates it when we talk about these things. Yes, he's nodding, but he's also our first Mellon artist in residence here at OSF. So we're really thrilled to have him. We produced his brilliant play, Breakfast Lunch and Dinner in Bill Roush in my first season here at OSF. I'm very proud of that work and very proud to continue a relationship with Luis Alfaro. So please help me welcome Luis. Thank you, Chris. I am so happy to be here and thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to be intimate, we wanted to be happy, it's happy hour, so we're going to make a happy hour. And have a good time. At first, just before we start, I just want to say that it is joyous to be up here always, and none of this could happen without the vision and the leadership of Bill Roush and Chris Acebo, and of course without the mentorship, my muse, my 10th muse, Louis Doutet. So it's really, really great to be here with all of you this afternoon. We're going to be very loose and very fancy free and maybe I'll start it off with a few thoughts so we can get going, but before I introduce our panelists, I would like to say that we have a room full of artists. And so we're artists talking with artists and that's one of the most extraordinary things about being up here all the time, is just always feels like, even if you're walking down the street, there are artists on the street, right? And so I love it, but we do have that that I know is in our community and I don't mean like gangsters. I mean, well, maybe gangster playwrights, gangsta playwrights. And so I just want to know none of the panel today just to point out that one of our masters and the nicest guy in the American theater, Octavio Solis is here. So Octavio, say hello. And part of what's also extraordinary when you come to events like this is usually a weekend full of readings, but today we had a full-on, full-fledged Latino play, right? So not only did they commit to readings, but they've committed to a full, big, well, forgive my French, big ass production, right? And so I also want to acknowledge the wonderful artists who made this whole thing happen. So first of all, she's adorable, and she's the queen of Chicago, and that's Tanya Sriracha, the playwright of Ten Funerals, so with us. And a wonderful community activist from LA, director, she was up here doing a language archive and then this season, this place, so that's Lori Woolery. And because we're on hall round, I won't do everybody, but literally I could go through every row and be like, hey Alejandra Juan Carillo, you know. So I'm not going to do the Latino thing that we do at weddings, but instead to move right into our events. So luckily we all got this so we don't have to do everybody's bios, but I will introduce folks and they haven't come up because they are part of our community. So I thought just as our first gestural action, we come up and from the community we take our moments. Sara Guerrero is the founding artistic director of Breath of Life Theater in Santa Ana and this season she is director of engagement for South Coast Repertory. And I just wanted to say, Sara had the most amazing, amazing little theater above a pupusaria in Santa Ana. And not only that, because you could say, hey, she did that and then she did like, you know, Josephina Lopez plays. No, she did a Sharima Raga play about the killing of Selena and it was highly experimental and extraordinary and the language was amazing and she got all of us to go to Santa Ana and have pupusa. So this is truly somebody who is in the new realm. So Sara Guerrero, sit anywhere you want. Super happy because not only do we have playwrights on board and directors, but I also think it's important to recognize that there are artists in the academy. So doctor, doctor, don't you love this, Dr. Tiffany Ana Lopez from UC Riverside is here. Tiffany has the most amazing career as a dramaturg. She is essential to our life in the theater because through her writing she has been able to sort of create a context for the work that we do. And it's not only does she create the context, she digs really deep. So today we're going to have a little conversation about that too. Tiffany, this season is the director of the Tomas Rivera Institute and she just put the most amazing conference together that was so art driven and the expression was extraordinary. So Dr. Tiffany Ana Lopez from UC Riverside. I love it. I do feel like Oprah. I was aiming for a little Jerry Springer, but we're going to get to that. Marisa Chivas-Frestin is a performer. She's a writer. I know her as an academic because she was head of acting at Kell Arts and now she is head of a program at Kell Arts, California Institute of the Arts in Valencia called the Wende Kell Arts, which deals with Latino art and development. And it might sound like a little skits in the cafeteria. Absolutely not. It's huge. It's really explosive. Marisa has been around for so long. She's a veteran too and came from New York, married to an amazing director, Travis Preston, who's the dean at Kell Arts, who just did an amazing Prometheus at the Getty. But the thing I want to say about Marisa as a solo performer, she's digging deep into history, but also what's kind of extraordinary about what's going on right now is that she's also been going into film and her students are having the most amazing professional career. So obviously she's doing something right, right? So Marisa Chivas-Frestin. Everyone is a veteran today. Olga Sanchez is the artistic director of Miracle Main State Theater in Portland, Oregon. And Olga just, we've known each other for maybe about 20-something years because Olga is the queen of conferences. And she is that, you know, and this is not to be taken lightly. I have to say every time you go to an art conference Olga comes up and brings the community together. And then she has caucus breakouts that were not planned. And she has things like that that happened that where she makes the community just come together and chat. So it's a major force and I really am grateful that we have somebody from Oregon too, and that she was in Seattle, made her way to Oregon, and now she's been at Miracle Theater for 10 years. So welcome. Great to have you. Olga, the producing artistic director of Theater Campesino is Quinan Valdez. And well, yeah, we could just scream because he's Quinan. But what Quinan is about to embark on, and I'm hoping he's going to talk a little bit about today, is next week a bunch of us are delegates to maybe the largest gathering of Latino theater professionals in the country at Emerson College, and we're having a Latino Encuentro. That should be pretty extraordinary. It's sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, Doris Duke, a bunch of other folks. And it's bringing together, you know, 100 of the craziest leading theater artists in the country to, like, hash it out, and to see I already got my fist going. So it's going to be an amazing weekend. And part of why it's amazing is it's been conceptualized, and it's been really organized with the most loving and gentle and clearly a hand of somebody who wants to bring people together rather than terrible park. And that is Quinan Valdez. And finally, I would like to introduce the playwright of today's reading, and I met a Chicago dramatist a few years ago with Snowing, and everybody kept saying, you've got to meet Martin. And I love what happens in the American theater. There is this kind of buzz when you hear somebody who is really working in their element and starting to write plays and getting good at it and really exploring gigantic, big ideas. And, you know, last summer and the summer before, I've spent in Chicago and everywhere I go on the red line, do you know Martin? And I'd say, yes, I met him. But now I've really got to meet him through his work. So please welcome Martin Mazimerman. I'm going to do last call, Freda. Okay, so we had this great idea that OSF should also be represented in some way, because part of what's going on here is really amazing in terms of audience development and what happens. So Freda's very shy, and I'm going to call her out, but you know what? She's looking so beautiful today. And you're going to be wonderful. So Freda Casillas. I owe her tacos. Did you hear that? Okay. So you want to move in? Because I have to be on the end. I'm the leader. Okay. So here's the deal. I've been thinking a lot about this and I'm wanting to keep it loose and just have a general discussion because it's going to go fast. But one of the things I've been thinking a lot about when we arrived yesterday to see Tanya's emotional play today was a lot about how this represents so much of the legacy of our community and that there's been so much work because these artists here have made the work. But today I was thinking that maybe it's not just about legacy, it's about consistency. And one of the ways that we, not unique to us, survive in the community is that we have multiple jobs. And I don't think it's necessarily that, and it would be great to hear what you think, that we wanted to have multiple jobs, but I think it's what naturally happens when you're evolving theater. And so many of the artists here have been people who do marketing, who do directing, who playwright, who do it all. And I think that's part of the extraordinary quality of how we develop ourselves in our community. We're not good at all of it, but I think it's essentially how we shape ourselves in community. So maybe as just throwing off point here, thinking about that as a kind of essence, where are you most passionate about in your work right now? There's a lot of stuff going on. You all represent so much of what's happening in the big theater. So just jumping off that point, the passion of your work and how it's having its effects with all the jobs that you do. Anybody want to go at it? Or do you want me to choose you? Look, Olga is so good at launching. This is her caucus moment. This is in the spirit of moving things forward. I'm actually really, well, I work at Milagro Theater up in Portland, Oregon. As a company. Hey, right? And right on. Thank you so much. And the company's been around for 30, do I need this? Yeah, because we're on Hall round. Oh, sorry. Hello, Hall round. And we've been around for 30 years. The company's been around for 30 years. Sharing Latino theater in the Pacific Northwest, which you can imagine is kind of nuts. Because people think about theater, oh, well Latino theater should be for the community, the community, right? But it's a small percentage in Portland, Oregon and has been for many years. So the fact that the leadership there, because I've only been with the company for 10 years, has found a way to connect and find those works of Latino theater. We'll get to this, that are universal. And not only speak to the community, but speak to the whole, our whole community, our whole humanity is really powerful for me. It's a powerful experience. And the ability to move forward doing that, because as our country is changing, as all of our communities are changing, that work becomes even more and more important. That we can speak from our experience, our aesthetic, our truth, what we're passionate about, in our voices, in our bilingual voices, or even our Spanish language voices with interpretation, which is amazing. And communicate so powerfully to all of us in the room that everyone feels part of that to me is where we're headed, where we're continuing to play. And just so distinctly then, what we're looking at now is how do we make our work stronger? How do we build the support so that we can feed from all of the talent that's in this country and bring it to Portland? Feed, nourish ourselves with the work that's now going to be done here in Ashland and share that in Portland. And just extend the excellence that's available around the country in Portland. We're so excited and I'm really thrilled. The second thing that I'm really excited about is this Latino theater commons convening that's happening next weekend among, as you said, 80 Latino theater makers, because it's artists, it's scholars, it's supporters, it's administrators, it's everybody who supports and makes the things all happen in its various ways. So, I'm Jeff. Well, you know, Olga was saying something earlier that that was very interesting. 11% of Portland's community is Latino? Oregon. Oregon. Yes, 11% of Portland's population is Latino and that's about what it is in the state, 10-point-something in the state. And that's because it's grown by leaps and bounds. I think it grew in the 1990s, the decade of the 1990s, the Latino community grew by 166%. And in the first decade of the 21st century, the odds, the Latino community grew by another like 68%. So, you can imagine that back in 1990, I guess, I was trying to do the math, I think it would have been like 5% or 6% and now it's, well, doubled, right? More than doubled, probably less than that. So, you can imagine 10 years prior to that when José Gonzalez and Daniel Molán founded the Milagro. And I remember he was telling the story about when he first got there, because he got there in high school and then came back, there was one Mexican restaurant in all of Portland, unthinkable now, you know. And so, to do that and launch into that, I have all kudos for them to do that experiment and I think it's an experiment that's that's yielding for all of us and that we're all engaged in in that risk. What I love about what you're talking about is if you're going to diversify, it's not just to your own community. Oh! I mean, diversity starts to mean something else, diversity of work, diversity of idea, but also the diverse audience is also welcoming the audience that is going to subscribe, that's going to show up, that's going to be there, and that's theater trained and all of what all of those things mean, right? And forgive me for making one more small point. One of the things that has been part of the development of the company is that given that there's such a small percentage of Latinos, you can imagine there's also a small percentage of Latino actors. And so a lot of the work that we've had to do over the years has been diverse cast. And it's been people coming in and going, oh right, I resonate with that, I can do that. I can do that work. Oh, I'm learning from this. Oh, I didn't know that. And so it becomes not only a shared experience among the audience and the theater, but among the artists who are generating together. What I have called Novo Latino, which is sort of this fusion, if you will, of Northwest culture because we are where we're planted. I mean, we are in the Northwest. We can't pretend to be someplace else. And the Latino influences that come into that. And what that creates, there's things, there's elements that we cannot recreate because we don't have them on hand. And so we do our best to learn, to present as authentically as we can, but sometimes we have to use the materials that are on hand. That's fabulous. Well, speaking of this diversity idea, right now, Martin is celebrating the world premiere of the play that you heard this morning is being done at Cincinnati in the park. Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that audience is and what the experience is of you're now in a big regional theater, right? And how is that working? Well, I would say that in terms of, I guess I really was incredibly excited that Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park was taking on the world premiere of this play because I feel like a lot of times when theaters are doing a play that has many Latino characters or is considered a Latino story, that they're doing it towards the end of, well, we're doing this to increase our subscriber base or open up that pool in a way. And Cincinnati has, I think the figure they quoted at us, the Latino portion of the population is like 2.5% of the city's population. So in a way, I felt that I was grateful because I felt that it was an incredibly audacious choice. They were like, we are doing this because we feel like this is a story that should be told and that we believe that theater is something that creates a bridge between cultures. It can create empathy and that you don't just have to be creating plays so they can be viewed only by the people that are in those stories. Right. That's beautiful. And so did anything change just in the way you were thinking of the play or how people viewed the play or have you had any sort of like moments of inspiration around that? I don't know that anything specifically in terms of just because the play had been workshopped quite a bit in front of incredibly diverse audiences, I had had readings and workshops of the play in Seattle and in Leavenworth, Washington at Icicle Creek Theater Festival and that is almost exclusively white audience. So I feel like I had just by virtue of the structure of a lot of theaters had to be, I had been thinking about the play in terms of not necessarily playing in front of a Latino audience. So I don't know that anything in that rehearsal process but it was, I felt like the knowledge that Cincinnati Playhouse in the park did the world premiere. It kind of armed me. It made me audacious in a good way but I was like, no. If a theater says we are only going to do plays by Latino writers because we want to bring in a Latino audience and that's the only reason to do it and if there's not a Latino audience we're not going to do it. I felt like I could say, no this theater is doing the thing because they believe that these stories need to be told and that's why you do these plays. Well also inside of that theater they just recently announced there's a new resident artist KJ Sanchez who directed Martin's Play and somebody, you know, if you think of KJ's work really experimental, you know, city company member. So I think what's exciting too is that you've got to diversify inside the company, right, which is kind of amazing and maybe that's a good jump for, I think, what Sarah was doing in Santa Ana because we had all thought that Santa Ana was kind of the, I don't know, what do we think, the Pupusa capital of the world but not the theatrical capital but Sarah's had an interesting journey which I'm really interested in finding out about which is running a smallish company and then jumping to maybe one of the largest regional theaters in the country, South Coast Repertory and creating their community engagement program. What is that about? I've actually been with South Coast Repertory for seven years and, you know, I've been a faculty member in their conservatory and I'm from Santa Ana. So, you know, having the opportunity to create a body of work with your community is really wonderful and, you know, through Breath of Fire was, you know, it's still a company that's still, you know, near and dear to me and we're still, you know, we're still visible, we're still in our community but to have the opportunity to also work with a company that was an influence to me growing up like HPP, I would attend HPP and I remember Armando Durán. Where are you? There you are and then also, like, being influenced by Jesus Cruz Gonzales and Roy Convoy and even St. Bore where, you know, that's Santa Ana College so, like, those influences were there and recognizing with that didn't really realize what that meant until I taught at Plaza de la Raza and saw what I, when I saw the kids and the community, I saw myself and I wanted that for my community. So, you know, I know, like, I, you know, a lot of the artists that we grew in our community often moved to LA, you know or would go off to New York and it was, you know, and that was something we just kind of understood, like, okay but, again, having the opportunity to head a program that means a lot to me and my community has been awesome and then also to be a part of the shaping and the tailoring and knowing that they get it too. Santa Ana is near 90% Latino and is one of the larger cities with the Latino community and, but there's been, I mean, there's generations of Latinos. I mean, we've got, as we've done this project and this project is really about creating a play with and by the community and we've done, and the playwright that I'm working with who's been commissioned to do this project is Jose Cruz Gonzalez and he's awesome, I mean, he's amazing and, again, knowing that he was he was, who helped create the HVB, Hispanic Playwrights Festival if you're not familiar with it and at some point it came to an end and with my company we launched a new works festival and was able to reach out to many playwrights and including Cherie Moraga who hadn't done her work in over 10 years until we produced it and she came out from Stanford with Adelina Anthony and took her risk and said, hey, let's do this and that was amazing and a lot of work and so we were invited by South Coast Repertory to do a play with them through their students