 Okay, one minute countdown here. Let's get everybody in their spaces, please. One minute countdown. Find your seats. Forty-five seconds, everybody. Forty-five seconds. Find your seats. Thirty seconds left to find your seats. Thirty seconds left to find your seats. Fifteen seconds. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. Conversation with interpreters, which is defined as directors, designers, artists, and actors. Interpreters. Before we start, and I welcome folks up here, just want to mention we've gotten some good feedback about how things are flowing, and we're going to be making slight transition, slight changes based on your responses. So what we're going to do is we're going to actually trim the two next listening circles a bit in time. They'll be a bit shorter than they were this than it was this morning before lunch. And we're going to add more time to the next conocimiento group. So when you go back into your circles with the folks you met this morning, that's going to be a larger amount of time because we just heard there's a lot of juicy stuff happening in those groups, and we want to give you more time to juice up. I just wanted to repeat the invitation. We're going to start with a group of folks in the center with our moderator, Karen Zacarias. Karen opens it up to come in, to say, to flow out. Folks who start out in the beginning, please feel free. Once Karen's opened it up, make some space for folks. So we have a real sense of flow, so people have a chance to come in and speak their mind. A lot of us, or interpreters, a lot of us work with interpreters, and so just opening up that invitation to you. All right, let's get started. So, Karen Zacarias, right on. Thank you. I'd like to invite Misha Espinosa. La Micha. Okay, Maika. Sandra Delgado. Thank you, Sandra. Christopher Acebo. Regina Garcia. Jerry Ruiz. Jose Carrasquillo. Lori Woolery. Mark David Pinate. I'm going to start this conversation here, but we're going to open it up to the family a little bit sooner, trying to keep it dynamic. I'm going to ask all our contestants to, I guess, in the sense of instead of length, fill for depth. So go to the heart of the manner. Say bold, brave things. You're in a safe place here. We're not going to say them here. Where will we say them? So, starting out from that point, I would like to know what's the one thing you never want to hear again in the American theater, and how would you go about that? Anybody? Is there a question there? One phrase, explanation. You never want to hear another critic compare a Latino play to a telenovela. How should we resolve that? Educating our critics. You know, I don't know. I mean, it's just racism. It's prejudice. It's ridiculous. I had no idea that middle-aged white critics were so well-versed in the genre of telenovela. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe someone else has an idea. Latino critics. You just don't want to hear again that there's not enough Latino talent out there by producing our work and by encouraging them to look deeper and writing roles and hiring our own people to tell those stories. Anybody else in the circle? I'll take the question. I really like this question, and I had so many, but I'm only going to say one, that I hear again and again play right. Me. Well, I don't think he's right. Well, I know he or she is not Latino, but he or she is really good as an actor. Anybody else? The one Latino in the production of Romeo and Juliet. I had some Spanish. Could you spice it up? Anybody out there in the sea of listeners that there's a phrase you just never want to hear again? There's just not a big enough audience for a Mexican-American play. Anybody else? Could you be more urban? It's great, but could you add more? Anything else? That's not a Latino. Fiery hot chili pepper timing. The only speaking audiences will feel left out. Came to see our last play and obviously didn't know anything about the community and said, like, Urban Theater Company performing in the impoverished humble park, which was like, where are you from? Because you don't know what's going on in the community, basically. So they researched before you went up right. Crap. One last round. Whoa, go! There are Latino directors who can direct at the Lord level. It doesn't look Latino. This is what I've heard many times that I... Latino actors, especially a couple years ago, are saying, they just don't have the training to play Hamlet. We can't give it to them yet. To be or not to be. I'm sorry. This comes from our audiences and it comes from everybody around. You know what you should do? And to double up, since she doubled up. There are Latinos in the south. And this one I hear over and over again and I don't want to hear it again. You can be gay or you can be Latino, but not both in the same class. Okay. Oh, well, there you go. Can you do that with an accent? This is so American. You're assuming America looks one certain way. Thank you very much. So though you're from that, from the phrases we just... Anybody else in here in the circle? I'm good. I heard this. I saw that play in the season, that Latino play in the season, and I was really concerned. But I came to see the play and I loved it. I was a wife of a very high executive in America. I... See you. Jerry, anybody else? Take care of him. From a foundation, but we already gave Stepable from Goodman to do their Latino play. Yeah. What? Why would you give it to Richie? No, I'm just saying. Anybody else? Last phrase? From the designer side, we're not doing a Latino play this year. Yeah, I have it. I love it a little bit Latino, but it's how they keep us out, because they go, if you're good enough, we'll hear about you. And you go, well, what's that? I don't know what good enough is. So you master your prep, go, what's that? So they don't become specific. They just make it a prep and that's how you get screwed about. So obviously we have some obstacles out there. So let me ask you this. What were some of the best advice anyone ever gave you in your career? Something that you'd like to share with us today? Hi, I'm Jose. There is a woman who founded a theater in Washington, D.C. A lot of you know her. Her name is Joyce Inamon. I think in the late 70s, I was told to go there that she could kind of help me and I just had a great conversation with her and eventually I took a directing class with her and I remember the night of my final project there because it really made me who I am today. She basically told me, listen, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just a theater director. She said, I really don't give a shit about that. What I care about is what are you going to do to make that happen? And I have spent the last 33 years of my life doing exactly that. So that was the best because somebody recognized why I could never sit still in a room. Why I always had to kind of determine how are we going to tell a story in this room? How are we going to do it? Who's going to speak? Who's going to project? Who's going to make an entrance? Who's going to cry? Who's not? So that was really the best and she's been my guiding light and force ever since. So there. Best advice. This is some advice that I got from Opavio about a few months before I went to start my graduate program. He was helping us work on this new script we were working on. We had been playing around for a couple of years with Mixing Ceremony with theater performance and we were doing that in this play. Opavio was like, you really should keep at that. Keep trying to bring in your indigenous spirituality into the work that you're doing and mixing those two because it's not a lot of people doing that right now. I took that and I just really made that the thing I was going to investigate all through my three years of graduate school and it was very, very helpful. I don't think if he had said that I wouldn't have kept pursuing that. Thank you. Thank you. This was advice that was given to me and the person doesn't realize that they gave me this life-changing advice. I was doing Cadence, Mariela in the desert at the Goodman and I was at a point in my life where I wasn't sure if I could be a mother and still be an artist and I kind of walked in there first day of rehearsal with her young toddler. That was a breastfeeding. Yes, you were breastfeeding. She walked in with a toddler and a newborn. We all sat around the table and did our table read and had a discussion and she had her baby the whole time and it was so incredibly inspiring and I felt like that question was answered for me in that moment that I could do it and now I have a six-year-old. And I'm here. Thank you. I was a starving actor in New York City and there was a free talk about Latinos in theater given by Raul Julia and I went there and I went out to him afterwards all starstruck. What do I do? I wrote it down. He said get training. If you go to the best place you can go and get training, diamond, take pride in your culture and don't be afraid to learn about it. Hi, I'm Jerry. A few years ago I was in a collaboration class at the public that Oscar used as his teaching and sort of by way of one of his very colorful stories he told us life in the theater is too hard to do it by yourself. You cannot do this alone. You won't. You'll go crazy basically is what he said and I really took that to heart because I feel like in the early part of my career starting out I really was trying to do it on my own and it was really only when I found my community my circle of close collaborators that I was able to start kind of doing the work that I wanted to do and the way I wanted to do it and really I think it just I mean it's so obvious you can't do theater alone. You need other people and there was just something about that that made me realize I had to open up. I had to let other people in and trust and risk and you know have that community really. One of my early mentors is Jose Cruz Gonzalez and he I feel was kind of the first person who saw me with the name Lori Woolery it gets confusing and looking the way I do and not being owned by either side he said embrace your hybridity and you struggle to cracks and that's your power so working there. The quality isn't justice you know I learned that from the very beginning how to focus my work and what I wanted to do and just recently I started seeing some sort of posting somewhere about Alex Beach Headed and it kind of I'll describe it a little bit there were three kids looking over a fence a baseball fence and there were different sizes and there were three equal sized boxes so equality meant everybody got a box and everybody still on the box but because the kids were in different sizes some could not see still so and then justice is the next picture I think where the tallest kid gives the box to the shortest kid and now all three can see so when I saw that it kind of threw me back at when I started all of this it was a long, long, long time and why I wanted to do this and reach out to the communities that I do while it is not justice. Hi my name is Regina Garcia I studied painting when I was in college when I graduated Pregones Theater was the only theater that answered my letter and said come over we need ushers and get involved in whichever way you can and I love that because they were the only ones that replied out of 22 Pregones replied so I started ushering for them then a year and a half later they gave me an opportunity to design which I put up there in the timeline and but after I think it was four or five years Alvan Colón de Espierre the production manager and one of the directors said let's have a drink, we met midtown and he said actually I just want you to know that I used to take very long lunches up to the Bronx to be able to help set up productions and all that because I used to work in advertising at the time in the city and so I used to take three, four hour lunches I mean my boss was very supportive because I used to work very hard and that was fine and so I met Alvan one evening and he said you know I think it's time for this not to be a hobby anymore it's not another job this is going to be a life and I think it's time to go to school so I applied to grad school and that's how it all changed but it's not a hobby it's not a job it's a life which we had in Korea so this is something that I read Marie Irene Fornes she says the life in the theater doesn't pay enough and it's too hard so only take projects that challenge you to learn something new about yourself anybody out there have a piece of advice that you really want to give the room yes when I was a young writer and I used to talk about all these great things somebody over a few dreams told me a writer writes a bullshit or talks about writing and then asks me which one was I this is the advice that changed my life while I was in my PhD in New York I had a European center professor who told me I think read one of my favorite you would never make it change your profession I always remembered that yes I'd like to honor and say good-bye to you because I was an academic at UC Irvine at the time he got me out of academia and said come on back and look at theater from theater so I'm going to not be at casa me don't stop and the other person was Irene and I didn't get to do the last workshop it wasn't my thing I would call her but she did a workshop at HLA in 1994 and I participated in that and actually I got permission to be more than a scholar for these two people I got permission from this is really being in theater and from Irene to write creatively and not just be stuck in the scholar so it's cool to be more than just one thing and most of us are in the same yes when I was young probably late teens I was talking to my dad saying I'm not sure what I want to do with my life and my dad said you should you know you should do something that you love because people are difficult to work with and wherever you go there's going to be politics and there's going to be stuff going on so no matter what you decide to do just make sure you love it so a couple of years later when I told him I wanted to be a theater artist I could see the look on his face and I said oh god everybody made that I recently heard this one but I wish I'd heard it a long time ago that stop trying to impress the people who don't get it who don't understand you and just focus on the people who do get it who do understand you I'd like to thank the police for this statement that really helped me the time the application was going through a very very difficult time we didn't know if we were going to be able to continue and he said everything has its life cycle everything you know that's life you know that's life and I just kind of like you know I didn't feel like a personal failure or you know it's just there's a life span you have a life cycle to what you do and lo and behold we're reborn in a very exciting world thank you but that was at a time when I was the path my career was taking seemed to be spiraling downward I had I was crying in my beer with Mark Lagos and saying where's my career going to where's my career and he said don't worry about your career your career is what you've done already just do your work just focus on your work on a similar experience I was in DC having coffee with a certain playwright from Mexico that's Karen and I was going through she may not remember this but it made a big impact on there my Lowe's as well and she listens very carefully very attentively and oh she says Picasso had a blue period could you stand up I'm sorry for William Martinez when he let her his bed of clearance lava at any time to dominate he said submit everywhere because everywhere someone will read your play and you might find a person here and there that gets it and even though that person might not be in power the way our industry works you know they'll some of my rise and then you'll have someone that likes your work in that system so you just never know so he said send it everywhere and with email you can actually do that without one person talking about sending it everywhere through the service that we talked about there was a big desire from everybody not only to take the helm of Latino theme work but also to have opportunities to do work that wasn't Latino theme and so one of the questions why why do we want plays that don't talk about the Latino experience or Shakespeare plays do certain mainstream plays offer opportunities respect or audiences not found in the Latino canon or is it something else so I'm a storyteller that's the reason why I have to tell the stories that touch my heart I have a little story for all of you you know for 20 years I wanted to do a play by Arthur Miller called After the Fall when I first read it which was pretty much out of high school I was just so blown away by what this man had done I thought the play was actually unproducible it was so kind of experimental it happened all in someone's head and for 20 years in every city that I went I tried to convince some of the regional theaters to let me do this and I knew that they were passing judgment it's like you're not an American director you're not you know there's no way you could do an Arthur Miller play interestingly enough I had the good fortune that two years ago I had a place very crazy place in DC called Theater J somebody by the name of Harry Roth said you know you have so much passion for this you live with it for 20 something years do it and I go one step further the woman who played Maggie was actually a Latina and that was quite unbelievable that a theater that I found a theater that could support this vision I think Gabriella Fernandez Coffey is an astonishing actor and you all will hear about her as her career progresses and furthermore it was really amazing because I've heard some of the things that we hate hearing it's like well she's Latina she can't play Marilyn Monroe and I'm like this play is not about Marilyn Monroe this is a play about a character named Maggie and Gabby can actually do it well we should put her on a blunt wig why? she's gonna play it from the heart let us see what she can do and I tell you the people who sold that play to this day in DC walk into the street and tell me they've never seen a production of this play done this way including some of the people that worked on it originally with Arthur Miller of Broadway Gabby was magnificent and the show was great and you know we as artists just need to keep knocking on those doors because eventually somebody will be crazy enough to hire us because they'll recognize the passion it's a very it's a complicated question basically just because we want access that's it you know I am going to reach further and since you guys are listening to me I'm more upset with Latina playwrights that don't give up opportunity to Latino directors and Latino actors because they want to go move the next step you know I've been in several situations where that happens and I totally understand you know but when do you cross that line when do you become an activist when do you take care of the community when do you make us grow and when do you not grow I do not get upset if somebody and not a Latino is working on a Latino play but there has to be a reason I believe that there's if I have to cast a Latino actor in a Latino role I'd rather do that because they bring the passion that I don't need to train to get but I am I know that all of us in the arts Latino not Latino we are we have that special sensibility that and train to really be vulnerable so I think anybody can play any role if you really work on it but to be honest it's easier if you're working on a Latino play casted Latino I wonder but I think anybody else I've had some really wonderful opportunities in directing non-Latino plays and I'm about to try to go right in the hands for the play and I'm so excited about that and you know I think we are storytellers and we we want to live and breathe and you know taste and smell all different worlds all kinds of worlds and it's it's a great opportunity to to live that to live an art and art world and a very hands-free world I mean you know to just be inside of that reality and so yeah if anybody would like to come in to the circle at any time it's a terrible problem so my designer had very clearly I think of myself as an interpreter of of writer's words a visual interpreter of writer's words and and so as an interpreter you want to interpret everything not just the things that are closest to to yourself but think a lot about think a lot about it being like a solar system and certainly the plays that speak to my cultural identity or my sexual identity or my place in the world it feels like I get closer to the sun when I'm designing those plays and as I move away I love Shakespeare as well but I do feel like it's more kind of towards Jupiter and so but I love that I have that I orbit all of it interesting because first you have to say well what is a Latino play you know and to me a Latino play is a play by a Latino playwright period end of sentence it's a play written by a Latino playwright that's number one and I love directing plays by a Latino playwright but I also think of myself as a director you know I didn't kind of set out to say like I'm going to direct plays by women of color I didn't set out to do that but those are the plays I'm attracted to and so you know my play is a place by a director that you know have played and he's been written by Japanese American writer Middle Eastern American writer Armenian Dominican writer do you know what I mean I just think you know as an artist you have to go wherever your heart goes and closer to your you know closer to your solar system or further from your solar system but I think you know when I think of myself as a Latina director I feel like I want a Latino writer to write about whatever the hell they want to write about Latino or Latina and I wanted a director a Latina director to direct whatever the hell I want to direct when I was getting my working on my MFA when I was in school there's all this wonderful stuff that you're exposed to of course none of it was Latino but you're exposed to all this great stuff the canon and it's just so weird to be there and studying and doing it and thinking you're doing such a kick ass job and having people say you're really good at that and then getting out into the real world and only being called in for something that is Latino or it's just so frustrating and it's really a mind fuck because you you go you train you get all these muscles worked up and then you get out and you don't get to do it and I I describe it like I wanted to be a furniture maker I'm a craftsman and I go and I learn how to make these fancy headboards and then I get out and I'm only allowed to make drawer pulls and it's so it was so frustrating but more than any of this I'm a human being and a universal story is going to touch my heart and it doesn't matter the color and that's what I'm here to do and I I happen to be a Latina and I'm very invested in my culture but before that I'm a human being so let me tell the fucking human being stories I want to go back to what you were saying about directors now that I'm getting into the bigger spaces it's really hard to pitch the Latino director I have come and there's an approved list you're on that list Lisa's on that list but my two main collaborators are sitting here Laurie Woolery and Jerry Ruiz and sometimes they're like well they don't have the whatever and it's been it's been a challenge because I only if it's a Latino play want to especially if I'm talking about the first production I only want to work with a Latino shorthand the cultural shorthand but it's really difficult it's not as easy as just like you don't know what those playwrights have been through because there's a list and if you don't get those people on the list they're like well just let's get the best person for the job and sometimes it's not I mean I'm saying someone that demands it all the time but I know that these two that I've been like what about Jerry Ruiz and you know maybe in a few years I was like well I'm going to keep it like spaces but I'm never going to stop pitching Jerry because that's my dude you know so like the same thing with Wolverine like now we're like married a little bit right but you know but it's really difficult because there's a list you know anyway just wanted to say that just wanted to say that yeah that unfortunately it's that reality that we all face because you know they are levels and you know I continue to believe the first question you pose to all of us is in a larger sense we our responsibility is also to educate some of these people that make very stupid offensive statements it's also once we go into the regional theater system to really educate some of the artistic directors and some of the people that make the decisions and and it's also I mean you know we have people of Tavio and you know level here and Luis and you know they can actually go into a regional theater and Karen and say you know I would like for you to try this or this director you know it just again we're just beginning to make inroads it is very difficult because I know the the regionals view a lot of these questions as financial liabilities you know and we're having to deal with that you know it's just a reality but on the other hand I just put pressure you know I started a conversation with the critics in the DC area they don't know what the fuck they're babbling about half of the time and now I write them and just say you know you have no clue what it is that you're talking about you know a couple of years ago there was a production of what should do about nothing and the director had a concept that it was going to be set in a Cuban sugarcane plantation and it had absolutely you know there was a guy named Larry Redman who happens to be have Cuban but he just played a very minor role and you know it was just interesting what happened because you know I had to educate the critics I mean they had no clue with that they were actually putting on stage something that was really offensive and pageantry like supposed to really understanding what the sugarcane industry did to the Caribbean islands you know so we just have to continue to educate people so that we never are in a room where we're here people say things like what I was told once oh you're Puerto Rican you're one of the people who like love music you know and that was told to me by somebody who has a PhD you know so it's just like we just need to continue to fight and to educate people and to be part of the conversation I also wanted to talk about two levels in response to this question two levels that I know that I have the desire to take the helm of Latino think work and then also wanted to be considered to work outside the Latino experience and I think that for myself I've done a lot of satisfaction or done a lot of my work in our community so I'm from San Antonio so there is no kind of professional theater of life and we do theater in backyards and rehearse in my living room and back yard and all these things and that's great and we go to the plays and we do them and you know nooks in the city because we can't find a space in a city of 65% you know Mexican-Americans and some of our institutions are actually failing us I have to say some of that Latino institutions is very gendered we will invite San Antonio we'll invite Korean artists before it'll like nurture the people from San Antonio so there's a big problem there Julia is that I also have experimentation that I want to do that I don't really my community doesn't need to go on that journey with me so like I had a chance to work with Lee Brewer it was great because all of a sudden it was like I could experiment and play and there's that level 2 which I find more it's about my own professionalism and the fact and I'm also a person who is bicultural versus some artists who never have to kind of dipping into what we've learned about Latino culture before I direct this play it's like I live in these worlds I live in an African-American world I live in a Latino world I live in a white world so there's not the translation for me has been my whole life bilingual bicultural looking at my whole life this way so of course I know Shakespeare I've met him since I was a child in grade school have you met my Latino player I don't know I just picked up that play a couple of weeks ago and it's like that's where I start to become very discomforted by someone touring in my culture in my cultural world so I just wanted to enunciate those two levels between professional and then kind of the community work or different kind of modes of making for theater that's what I'm personally said many years it's not necessarily the greatest thing in the world because I'm listening like the A is how can we get hired to be at these theaters I feel kind of strange because I left regional theaters in 1995 because I didn't feel that the art working was better necessarily you know what I mean so I like the conversation to figure out are we talking about the work are we talking about surviving and getting money and becoming famous or something like that I made my career in Europe more than in the United States and it's so rewarding you're really going to direct and work really as an artist trying to sell and do the antique and do really great work now you want to make money and survive but I think the conversation should be different because we try to get an analyst or be part of the club to do better work or just to be something I think that's important for these conversations that we are having you know which is not a conversation here about you know I wanted it to be about work but I don't understand that we're trying to assess the field but I also want to do a relevant check regional theaters are not at this work in the country and it's interesting to me because we're talking about Latino theater is not as good right now the United American theater is in a crisis in general and we have to do it or so as part of that crisis you know if I district what you have to A is what we see in regional theaters with so I didn't say that Hi I'm Enrique with that I felt compelled to take a seat because of what you said Daniel and this isn't this isn't a battle or a challenge and I just want to clarify up front that this isn't about you or any one person any one director or anything but I think it goes a little bit both ways in the sense that when I was starting out I was I reached out to Latino theater artists in the field and was completely shut down by and felt completely shut down by a lot of people because they were like oh well you're not in my circle you're not like I have my people that I work with or or there was this like this standoff this standoffishness and so it forced me to just find the people that were willing to to believe in me and so I feel and like I had this and then I was taking a look at at the people who were there who they were working with and I had this I had this sense of like oh I bet if I go to a fancy school and get a fancy MFA that that that some of these people will will suddenly take an interest in me and so I went to Brown and then that happened and then it was like oh I bet if I get oh if I leave San Francisco and get this national award then people will start taking me seriously as an artist as opposed to just a San Francisco artist and so I took this drum fellowship and then and then like all of these things proved to become true and I don't and I'm not saying this as an attack on any one person or anyone but there are people there are people present in this room who I felt like shut me out but it also like gave me the courage to like to to push forward and work even harder so and I also have to think Karen because Karen was the first person outside of San Francisco that took the time like the first person was huge I applied for this I think it was a drum fellowship back in 2005 and you were on the committee and you took the time after after everything to just say I really love your work I really believe in your work and that meant so much to me that there was someone not just like in the field of nationally but a Latino in the field of nationally who who like took the time to say that when I had when I tried to like reach out and see that out beforehand so ultimately what this is getting at is I feel like we need to find a way to build build back up this mentor this mentorship and this embracing of the next generation I suppose to well I've already gotten here when you get here we'll talk if that makes any sort of sense Thank you My name is Elisa Marina Alvarado I'm the artistic director of the Atrovision and I've been listening to our discussion of our work and the knocking and the knocking on the doors of the regional theaters and I can't help but feel like there's this lusting after the regional theater companies and I just asked for acknowledgement of the Latino theater companies that for many many years have been fully committed to doing your work and a professional main stage quality work and that it's been our companies that have done the world premieres of many of the plays with all the production values and wonderful professional AT&T cast so I just want you to also put in your your eyesight our companies that have also been there for you and will continue to be there for you Back in but it was often said in Venezuela and actually often what you just said you know I know what Lord SDC contract pays me and there is a reality of money for every actor for every designer for every director for every writer I know the commissions, I'm married to a writer I know the difference in the commissioning funding and that doesn't mean we need to lust after the regional theaters it goes back to Olga's point which is that we have to raise more money for our theaters to fund us at the level that we need to fund to do that Okay and then I have a big question sorry just does the playwrights to continue to navigate look, Campos Santos a storefront theater in a bar room space the ACT costume department you know to be able to go there and by the way Sean San Jose directing the river was an accomplishment and then just two things one it's not a lust for the regional theater but you know I have to tell you that for American Night to be the first out of the American Revolution cycle at OSF was a big risk for Bill and Chris and OSF and I needed that gig as a writer it started out as a culture class gig but I had to take it because I wasn't seen as collectively being able to meet the demands of the deadlines so I just kind of ran with it and so you know I know when or I'm hoping that we'll go back and and cross the street many, many times and something at the regionals too and I'm not the apologist I'm not, I'm looking I'm getting gigs where I can but we talk about the aesthetic but you know there are resources at the regionals and I don't know if that elevates our aesthetic or not but you're going to get a much different show and sometimes the stripped down storefront version is you know you see God again you know you have the baptism on the frustration I hear about directors I often look at a director they're a lesbian director are they planning a flag in that direction and for me Elisa Peterson is a strong woman director who plants many flags and she challenges the hell out of culture class they can be a boys club at times and she's that fourth member when we're lucky enough to work with her and she's the woman in the group at that time and same goes with Takoni you know these aren't exactly Gomez and Sanchez but you know Shon San Jose and just looking for the future to collaborate and as a strategy how do we strengthen ourselves so Diane Rodriguez is directing our next show and Diane and I have gone down that road sometimes the success sometimes not but you know she has to direct this play there well guess what we're not doing your play you know and Diane is more she's beyond capable of directing so that list and fighting for each other and strategizing but if you can get Bill Roush to direct your play piece at the Getty Villa I say do it but you also have at the same time we can fight for some of the directors in this room we're also talking about visibility here we're talking about infiltrating the mainstream so although yes I agree that sometimes regional theater can start making choices that have to do with pleasing pleasing the administration or pleasing the audiences and diminish the quality of the work in the end really we want to be seen and heard on some level and it's the beginning of something you know and I think you know as someone who's had the opportunity to work with directors I've been given some incredible opportunities that have allowed me to take risks on each production I take a bigger risk I take a bigger risk I take a bigger risk and it's allowed me to grow I don't feel at this point that I'm compromising at all by working in the regional theater and I feel like I well I feel honored to represent the community you know directing on the right has great play I feel honored to represent the community and I'd love to do more theater vistas it also is a financial issue for me I'm fairly surviving as a regional theater director and I'm a report stone you know and that's like giving me juice too but you know it is a financial issue also you know it's like how do we how do we raise the money I don't know I'm my destiny I'm an educator and the visibility is important because most of the time when I meet my 18 year old Latino student they they see it they're really smart and they see how Latino theater is marginalized in the academy how it's marginalized financially professionally and they want to rely their roots they want to somehow be so far away from themselves it breaks my heart I'm glad that you brought up the academy I wonder earlier when we're saying about American theater is in crisis the way we also teach American theater perhaps learn how to teach it in a different way and there's some resistance there I will say that because I have been involved in new play development for many years I wonder how can I find myself kind of waiting waiting for these spaces to be available where you can actually take a bit of a larger risk take a little bit of a longer time to explore and shape a piece I just wonder and I'm waiting to see where and I don't know this is one of the things I don't know where the space is going to be the play selection committee for my department of theater and it's incredibly difficult I got a little lecture the other day about not putting forth certain Latino plays but I wonder I wonder where that space is and where we can find it and how we can support it I don't know and maybe Chris can speak to this I know for example that when I'm playing a new play with my colleagues Latinos or not but a Latino play for example I know Candido's here and Matt is here I personally I am a mess here in my studio it's just full of papers I seal the layers there's some drinking involved you know I need to get to to the bottom of it and I want to unload it I want to be prepared I don't want to be informed and I see those opportunities to be a mess and be crazy and silly and have the courage to take those bigger risks kind of shrinking and I need it I need it for my growth I need it because that's why I'm in theater in the first place we have about 9 minutes left so one of the questions I'm going to ask you may go back to another one but I'm just going to put that out there so you can be thinking about it is what is your dream project because I think saying it out loud in this room and all these people I don't know maybe something magical will happen so as you're answering and thinking these last 10 minutes as we're talking about how can we make the the interest of the Latino theater comments how can we make the future brighter think about that maybe you're working on it already maybe it's a thought in your head but this is the moment to let the universe know and we can always go back to any other question that was brought up just in terms of making the future brighter and it's supporting the the young generation of Latino actors and Latino directors be a small theater companies like Hintar which I'm an artistic associate from and we basically found there was a need for us to populate the plays of our mission or our playwrights so we wanted to train these people to get to know you guys and then there's an interest of young directors working with the young Latino actors so they can know the community and all of a sudden the world went on to see the Latino directors that are interested in working with us and I don't know where we everybody's volunteering everybody's doing it for the love and so that's where we're getting the opportunity for our artists not necessarily in the big training academies or regional theaters we have to create them ourselves my big dream is I've had this idea of starting a theater ashram and I actually think this is kind of happening in places like I guess 0101 where you have this space where people you have like the monks these are the practitioners that are offering there was an ashram in the mission where I used to work by Gabriela Alasa in other classes, meditation classes for young and old so you're offering these different classes in the arts the arts of conjuring like of using our voices to cast the spells of spectacle of puppeteering and acrobatics for old and young and then that these people these sort of stewards of this go out like the monks and preach or beg or whatever for alms you go out in the street and you do the street theater you do the ceremonia slash theater dance prayer throughout the week and the special times in the year the solstices those special times that you note then you have the more skilled people and the community folks that are taking the class for bigger events I had this idea for a festival of Dionysus you call it festival of Guadalupe where you're going to commission three tragedies very a la Luisa Fidal about the bacterial tragedies that happen and then also visiting mystics just come in from other ashrams from other places and stay there and live there for a while and share their skills and their expertise so that's okay it's very quickly I'm just reflecting on this is a marvelous statement just reflecting on the expansiveness of the conversation like the voices the value of wanting to aspire to be a director that works internationally or aspire to work in a regional theater or aspire to create street theater that all of it has great value and we are we are this amazing diverse group of people that can have all of that yeah I have the privilege here being one of the oldest participants here so I have perhaps the advantage of perspective and the first time in New York was in 1967 we were in the middle of the gate one performance one night 2,000 people 500 striking social workers in the balcony but the village gate had been the old British theater in New York and that was a wonderful experience I went back years later with Zutsu to Wintergarden I think that the truth about Zutsu in 1979 is that we were 30 years soon but we broke the ice with our heads but we broke the ice you know, again we all have roles to play and my mother used to call me Lave de Camino you know, Yemaga I don't know the set of potencias but you know, some people have to open roads and paths and another road that recently opened up for me and I have to open up we hear a lot of talk about Latino here and I don't think they were entirely clear yet on that theme it's much too vague much too general to be ultimately of any use to anybody first and foremost it's an adjective but we're using it as a noun Latino Hispanic, those are adjectives the noun is American American okay? we're in New England no one talks about New Spain anymore but New Spain was a hell of a lot bigger than New England and what we're seeing now is the merger of New Spain and New England and these are the so called Latinos now we invite Anglos to come and join the midst there's no one keeping people from becoming Latino Latinos by their nature have to become Anglos I'm not speaking well I'm not a Spaniard well I'm not a Spaniard because I'm Latino but I'm also bilingual so I speak English but one of the bilingual experiences I went in the other direction a couple of years ago thanks to Alma Martinez I was invited to direct the Spanish world premiere of Xuzu in Mexico City and that was an astounding experience for me now I was not the first Chicano Latino playwright to be translated to be performed Oliver Meyer late to the heat, you know Carlos Morton had that stuff done but I was the first one to be produced by the National Theater of Mexico Queatro Nacional en Español entre chilagos you know and my baptism was to go there as the Chicano as an expocho expocho and to direct my play in America Pinocha and to teach Mexicanos how to be Chicano that was interesting they took they have a system we have 60 days to rehearse Lupo and I were in Coyoacan for 60 days 5 minutes away from the company I said and it was a wonderful process and they were very receptive and I didn't know what the audience was going to do kept saying don't expect that late people are much more reserved here and so I went into it professional top notch designers built costumes from the ground up neon signs coming in they spent some bucks on this you know what I mean and you know what I got paid I got paid royalties and I got paid for directing I was almost ashamed I didn't have to cross the desert I flew in to Mexico and I was paid for my eco de campesinos that came over 100 years ago in the opposite direction but they are back in Mexico and the thing is that it was a wonderful experience and it verified everything they loved Zuzu it's been produced still in rep they took me to Colombia they took me to Juarez they revived it this year back in Mexico and it's very popular Mexicans love it which proves that what we have to say about ourselves here can play across the border can play in America and Latina and so that speaks to the future and I suggest to you who are playwrights think of your work in terms of the international scope get translated into Spanish they will do you there you know it isn't just a question of relating to the United States it's a question of relating to America America so we're going to take a 15 minute break we need everybody back in the room by 250 250 15 minute break