 what you're based and what your connection to this world is like. So if anyone wants to share, once one person starts, we can get the ball rolling. That could help us sort of target the person. I can start. My name is Penelope Penney. I'm from the University of Utah. I run the Youth Theater Program at the University, which is under the Department of Theater at the University. Like most youth programs, we are like the bastard child of the hands of the Department of Theater. I also direct TYA productions in town at a couple of professional theaters in town. So my hope is to have new material to present to people because they're always asking me what can we do. Because we do have a lot of title and schools in Salt Lake City and those students are predominantly brown. I'm brown too. So I would love to be able to offer something that's not just pecalicious or non-cold. What's your role in the show? But I want to be here. We don't actively produce our own TYA from the Education Department. That's not just the subject that's like, you know, my favorite. And our elbows don't say very low. Education, but also really in the kind of work I've wanted to see, that Boston didn't really have. It has a very vibrant theme of community, but it's very diverse. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of theaters that are talking about that kind of work. And I realize that they don't know anything about Latinx, TYA work. And I would love to write in that form because acting, writing, and organizing is so... Thank you. I'm Jennifer. I'm a New Yorker that relocated to Memphis, Tennessee after the election to hopefully try and make a change through the arts. And I am very new to the TYA world. I'm a director and I've come off of my 14 years on the road to where I'm a dance company. And so I'm very new to the TYA world. And I'm interested in creating an inclusive TYA world and building types of partnerships that we just talked about in the last session. And we'll end what we're doing. We'll end. I'm not trying to be shy, but I talked about my work last night. But you were here. I'm a New Yorkese teaching in San Antonio, originally from South, South Texas on the border. I work at St. C. Union Device Theater with middle school students and high school students. And I'm also a former playwright. My theater is a very little company. And we're very small right now, and we're committed to very good producing bilingual work. As of right now, we've done bilingual English and Spanish shows. And in our TYA Arts practice, we work together with students with special needs and reference. Yes. My name is Gabya. I'm part of your initiative at the University of Texas in the big city of New York, South Texas. Of course, you're going to be working with young people as well. And then also until recently, my last job, I was theater conservatory director at an amazing organization in Alperby, Mexico, called Working Classroom. And they, for 30 years, have been working at the intersection of arts and social justice to really center the voices of young people in a professional contemporary way, where they're constantly challenging the assumptions of what young people can do and what content is appropriate for young people. And so that's something that I will always be very, very passionate about, regardless of where I go. It's a very interesting conversation to me to be able to have it behind me. Thank you. My name is Benito Vasquez. I'm from New York, Texas. I'm born and raised there. I am new to the Alley Theater. I'm an educator in the community engagement. I'm the manager of community partnerships. So I've been tasked to sort of look over the Latinx initiatives in engaging our community. As far as TYA, I've been acting and directing in TYA. Rarely have you owned my acting and directing career. I also just founded Tiantric, the Latinx theater company in Houston, and I am looking to now produce that TYA in Houston. Awesome. Soy Paula Cenedo, director of the theater, Guatemala PECA. I've worked for many years in programs of art and playful for personal development in Guatemala. And I mainly work in a theater laboratory or in theater technology with women and in creating more indigenous languages as a professional. And I'm very happy to be in this festival because I have been training a lot to know the Latinx theater on both sides of the community. All right. I think we will jump right in. Thank you all for introducing yourselves. And we will jump right in. So I guess I should say a little bit about who I am since I'm talking. My name is Shavon Coleman. I am here at UT. I am the theater for dialogue specialist. Which means that I use theater. My team uses theater to create dialogue around interpersonal violence, the prevention of interpersonal violence. And we use a lot of interactive theater, theater of the oppressed. Let's talk afterwards. And things of that nature. And I teach a class here that goes with that programming. I'm also currently a staff writer for TYA magazine. And last year I was part of the emerging leadership fellowship and all these wonderful and amazing things. I am here in Texas now, but I'm from Detroit. I'm from Southwest Detroit, which I am here because of friends, but also because of my experience in growing up in Southwest Detroit. I am African-American, but in Southwest Detroit there's these pockets of African-Americans and the Latinx community. And often, actually when I was younger, it was becoming popular and people would call people you don't know because that was fun. And so I say, I'm from Southwest Detroit. And they say, oh, you're Mexican. And I say, no. And they say, oh, you're mixed with Mexican. And I say, I'm mixed with black and black. So... But as I grew up, I really came together within school and at first I just thought we must be so different. We must be, right? As I grew, I learned that it really wasn't much that separated us. All of us were actually very much so connected. In some cases, so much so that it was just a different stop for the ship of our ancestors. So, that is why I am here. One thing that does separate some of us is language. I probably know Spanish as well as like a three-year-old. So, I know how to say really well. Como se dice, I know that really well. Everybody. So, charging to my not wonderful tongue and not my heart or my head if I mispronounce anything. And I am going to jump into introducing the wonderful playwrights who are joining us today. So, this session, Palabras del Cielo. An exploration of Latina Latino Theater for Young Audiences. It is a wonderful book which has not only plays in them but play anthology but also scholarly information and things that are wonderful that go with these plays. And we are going to dig into that a little bit deeper. So, I am just going to jump into who is on stage with us. Jose Casas, which many of you know as CeCe is a playwright and assistant professor who has the playwriting minor in the Department of Theater and Drama at the University of Michigan. As well as a member of the Dramatis Guild, his plays include La Rosa Bros. Beyond the Wall, All Brown, All Chagón. Did I say that right? Chagón, thank you. A Million Whispers All at Once, The Rhyme, La Afrinda, and Somebody's Children. His work has been included in a number of anthologies, such as The Bully Plays, Ethnodrama, and Anthology of Reality Theater and Theater for Youth II. His published work includes La Afrinda, 14, and Somebody's Children. He is currently working on the play Flint, an ethnographic piece exploring the Flint water crisis, which will premiere this spring at the University of Michigan and in the City of Flint. Next, we have Roxanne Schroeder-Arce. She is a teacher, a scholar, a playwright, and a director. She joined the faculty here at the University of Texas Department of Theater and Dance in 2010, where she works with various theater teachers. Her bilingual plays have been presented to children and families in theaters around the United States. Her play, Senora Tortuga, Legend of Poincetta, Sangre de Un Angel, Marachi Girl, are published by Dramatic Publishing. Professor Schroeder-Arce has published articles and journals such as Youth Theater Journal, TYA Today, Hessos. She has taught workshops on issues of diversity in theater for young audiences and culturally responsive teaching artistry throughout the Americas and beyond. She was the U.S. representative to the NEXT program through TYA, USA, and Assatech. She is a cadre member of the Center for Education and the Arts and was on the committee that wrote the New Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Theater K-12. Next, we have Jose Cruz Gonzalez. The plays include Under a Baseball Sky, American Mariachi, Sunsets and Margaritas, the San Patricios, Among the Darkest Shadows, The Long Road Today, The Sunsurfing, Thomas and the Library Lady, American Mariachi, Mr. Gonzalez has written for past, am I saying that right? Thank you. The Emmy Award winning nominated television series produced by Discovery Kids for the Learning Channel. He was a 2016 Penn Center, USA Literary Award finalist. He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theater, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a collection of his plays, non-plays by Jose Cruz Gonzalez, Magical Realism and Mature Things in Theater for Young Audiences was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009. Mr. Gonzalez was a recipient of a 2004 TCG Pune National Theater residency grant. He is a professor at California State University Los Angeles and a member of the Dramatist Guild of America and TYA USA. Elaine Romero is an award-winning playwright. Her plays have been presented at the Alley Theater, the Working Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Kitchen Dolls Theater, the Kennedy Center and across the United States abroad. Recent commissions include Goodman Theater, Playwright Unit and Work of Art, NNPN Kitchen Dolls Theater, Ponzi, Egerton, New American Play Award, Interact Theater Company. Publishers include Samuel French, Play Scripts and Vintage Books, Graveyard of Empires in Chicago. Her Arizona-Mexican Border Trilogy includes Wet Bags and Mother of Exiles. Mother of Exiles was commissioned by and produced in the student production at Cornell University. Secret Things received its world premiere with Camino Real Productions... That's good. I appreciate it. And we're going to edit it and keep going. Raymond Escobar. That's a good shit. And that's it. Is a writer and teacher. That's enough right there, teacher. Born and raised and once again based in the Pacific Northwest. His first play, Dolce, was selected for the Bonderman Playwriting for Youth National Workshop in Indiana Repertory Theater. His second, Nocturnal, was developed at the New Vision of New Voices at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and then premiered at the Bloomington Playwrights Project. Nocturnal's companion play, Nasty, was presented at the new plays for young audiences at the Provincetown Theater New York University. Sha-ha-sorry? Sha-ha-sorry. Thank you. Society. Raymond's adaption of tales from One Thousand and One Nights was developed at NYU. Luna, Raymond's contribution to Palabra's Dell Seattle was commissioned and produced by Central Michigan University. Washington University. Oh, Washington University. Sorry, I went back to Michigan. Luna and Nasty are available through dramatic publishing and have been performed by theaters, universities, and schools. His play, Hero Twins, The Blood Race was selected as a finalist for the 2017 Competition and Workshop. Welcome all of us. I will start with asking Cece, tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the book and then a little bit about your process. You know, a lot of times people talk about their inspirations and it's very altruistic and mine wasn't. It was literally out of anger and anger that still hasn't succeeded. You know, I was like, yo, no one's doing my fucking work and no one is doing the work of my friends, no one is teaching in Latino you know, TYA, no one's producing it and I'm like, this isn't right. You know, our stories aren't being represented and I don't like consider myself a scholar. I'm just like, I'm just a writer and I needed to respond in some way and so I'm like, maybe I should collect some plays and I started collecting plays and I'm like, no I can't just collect plays then they're just a collection of plays in some ways. I wanted to create a resource so we have the 12 plays but we also have six chapters of scholarship to go with those plays and those scholarship chapters and they address a lot of the themes that are very prevalent in our storytelling. I joke around with one friend and I'm like, yo, why do we always have skeletons and butterflies in our plays? And he's like, don't you? I'm like, exactly. But we did that but we also have two chapters that deal with the lack of diversity and one of the things that I don't think we do enough of, is not exploring how bad that diversity is. It is bad. We're worse than adult theater and that should tell you something. If you see the discrepancy between male writers and female writers and writers of color at that level it's over 60%. So if we're saying it's worse and thinking of who our target audience is there's something not right there. And so this book was kind of like that call out and it was depressing kind of collecting some of this. In my chapter I interviewed people and someone said, well, why didn't you interview any Latina, Latino artistic vectors? I'm like, there's none. Why didn't you hire any or interview any professors who in TY programs of color of Latino, there are none. And it's just like, what do you want me to do? And even going through that process of realizing how deep that is just killed me. In one of the chapters Kelly Faye talks about how we're on stage not represented and if you do it based on a community's population in this country we're the lowest represented community on stage in TYA. It's Latinos. And so it's important for me to gather all this stuff and challenge people. I love that we're here and this is great and this is history but if we're here 5, 6, 7 years later in the same space and it's the same what good is history? You know? And even here one of my colleagues who I love, she's like we're teaching your book in a class. I'm like, that is great. Thank you but when does a Latino teacher get to teach that? Because that person who's teaching it, is she going to know the difference between a Puerto Rican, a Dominican, a Chicano, a Pocho? You know, we need all these people in these spaces and what's frustrating to me is when people ask, well, what do you do? The number one thing you do and it's the simplest is you hire people. And they're not hiring people. I hate to tell you that. At least, like I said, in this framework and when another position does open up and we're not you know, at least we're not looking that seriously. It's just like, how can you feed us this line that you care? And for a community that says they want to represent youth but you look like the Aryan nation, there's something wrong with that. And this isn't opinion, this is fact. You know, and so with a book like this in resource and getting the word out there is, you know, a lot of the people who want to be our allies or accomplices, they work in spaces that, you know, the academic for example, this has been historically just racialized and institutional racism. So then how do they fight that? They want to fight for us, but then how do they fight those establishments? And that's a big question. You know, how do we change dynamics? And I don't think a lot of people realize how important representation is. You know, like I said, I've never taken a Latino theater course in a theater program and I have like a million degrees. I shit you not. You know, and how much that kills me. You know, when I have students in Michigan in my office in tears I don't have to ask them what's wrong. I know what's wrong. You know, and so with this book, it was like I said, that process of creating this resource and getting it out there and hoping people not only enjoy the book, but really like, okay, what can we do? How do we change that paradigm? How do we plant the seeds? And so in the process when I was example talking in terms of the playwrights I want to get the best writers that we have represented us right now. And one of the goals was how do we get as many ethnic regions and race age groups subject matter. We really were trying to get as much of a little kind of pulpery as possible really to reflect this idea that Latinos are not this homilical, what's the word, homogenous group. You know, and there's this really funny meme and I put it on Facebook every once in a while and it says how Latinos view other Latinos and it says every flag from any Latino country and like how do Americans view Latinos and it's just the Mexican flag. And it's important to know that we are here, but we're all different shades, different backgrounds, different histories and hoping that this book somehow would inspire people to kind of start to think about it in that way and so when we did it we had the scholars as well and I wanted to be brown scholars I wanted to be Latino scholars and not because I appreciate everyone else's and in fact, you know, up to this point in the book, the person who inspired me the most in terms of how much they were writing for TYA is this woman right here and I would say easily that the person who was writing the most for us is this woman you know, and we have others like Lorenzo Garcia and other people but there are not a lot of scholars studying us you know, not even scholars that look like us so it's important to get that representation now and even with the playwrights initially it was supposed to be all Latino as well based on that and something happened at ATLA where someone like Lisa Loomer is in your book she's not Latina, I'm like oh shit and I talked to her and told her it was Latino playwrights she never identified as she never told me otherwise so I assumed when they asked me how you were going to keep her in there I'm like, yeah because it was my dad it was on me to know 100% you know, I came to her and she did come to me and I like to keep my word but then that opened it up so we included Roxanne and another African-American playwright Sigurd Gilmer and which for me was really that process, I'm still asking that question that was raised in the previous of what is Latino theater you know, if I write another play or Chicano theater, that's a really good question you know and is that the only way I'm going to be able to get my stuff done is if I do stories that aren't Latino or Chicano you know, so all these questions really played into like how can we challenge people to do this and I think there's a sense of accountability for the people say they want to help who are in those situations we have to make them accountable because if we don't, what is there to inspire them to change you know, so that for me was like that, like the inspiration process behind it and luckily when we talk about accomplices this was okay by Gail Sergo who used to be the president of dramatic publishing and dramatic publishing published was born TYA from people of underserved communities and any other publisher by far and so just for them to say hey and I didn't know where to go with the publishing I don't know how to publish a book and I was just telling them my ideas and we publish it so you know, if you're going to support any kind of publishers really look at what they do because they really do walk the walk and talk the talk and I'm just grateful that they allowed me to do this and we'll see what happens when we're whole people start to think of how we change but it has to be like say changes is a verb it's not a noun so yeah can I just mention something yeah this idea of accomplices my play Luna which is the play that's included in the anthology you know I had it had been produced at Central Washington University which is the organization that had commissioned it and then I was getting playwright I didn't know what to do with it and I submitted it to a playwriting contest and it didn't win but I got a call from Gail Sergo at dramatic publishing and it had been on the reading committee for this contest and said look I'm sorry that the play didn't win but I really love this play and I want to publish it and if it wasn't for that phone call to say hey I read this play and it really moved me that play would never become published and it wouldn't have found its way into other hands because I didn't know what I was doing and so I really appreciate what Gail and dramatic publishing did by recognizing this right and it also told me too it encouraged me to send my work out even if I don't win and even if it doesn't get picked up who knows who's going to find it who knows who's going to recommend it so I think that's my advice to all of you too it's like any kind of writer you have to send the work out knowing that the percentage of acceptance is going to be pretty low but you also don't know if you have different hands if you have before different eyes and you can actually lance in wonderful opportunities even if the initial one I'm just going to piggyback and Osiris you brought it up in the last I don't know if it was yesterday or another one about where are those plays and they're out there it's just like I said we need to form that network where are we like you said I can't do this play I'm going to send it to the theater but if we don't do that because like I said the white theaters aren't helping us that's effective and usually when it comes to that I don't know how many times a theater said hey can you find it what's a good Latino play it's not my job it's your job and if you're going to ask me that you better pay me I'm serious it's almost like free labor where they expect you because you're that brown person not knowing my history at all not assuming that we all know each other you know we have these problems and we brought it up was like the relationship between communities that are under service like oh every four years or every February we'll do the African American play instead of no let's build relationships where we don't have to like okay this you know and and I don't think a lot of companies take the time to build those permanent relationships not the just relationships that happen every five years so we need to work as a community to help each other know where those plays are and some might be good some might not be good but at least if we know they're out there we can at least try to get them to the forefront so people can see those stories so the other playwrights that are on sitting up here talk a little bit about your involvement in this project and your thoughts about the things that we're talking about and how those things connect I'll say this as you guys know I'm a playwright and I needed Christmas money and Zach Scott Theater contacted me and offered me this gig which was way lower than I would ever take to write a play but I was like but I want to see my parents so I wrote so I wrote my first team I play they said we want you to adapt Alice in Wonderland I said well you know there are some really good Latinx or I said Latino at the time probably adaptation oh we know those plays but we want to ask you to do it and so in a very short amount of time which was too short amount of time to write a play I wrote my first TYA play I came here to Austin it was the only other time I've been here until today and I wrote the play so it's you know and it's a bilingual play and it's got you know it's probably at this point becoming one of my most produced plays which I just have to laugh you know how the way life goes that you know you do something for Christmas money but what I found in this little moment of you know being confronted with writing this play and I was just you know finding the person in me the little person in me who was precocious who was always invited to be involved in conversations at the dinner table that table that were very adult and one of the commitments I made and maybe this is why my TYA plays are not done more often is that I'm not going to ever in my work talk down from the perspective of you know to a child or in a play that this is a fully fledged human being with all the complexities of what it is to be human and reflecting on my own little girlness of just being like this little morose child who was just very philosophical from that day to this day and that's been a consistent human and so you know that I think you know just knowing you know it sounds weird but I think in being playwrights you know some of it is just like knowing ourselves what is it to know who we are and who we are in the world and the negotiation of two worlds which appears in you know later other people asked me to write TYA plays and I reflected a lot on what it is to be of two worlds you know the world of my grandparents which was very comforting to me and the world of where I was going to school and the way those two worlds always felt like they were in conflict and what it is for a child to jumble two cultures in their head and what does that feel like so for me it's been like in a way I would admit very personal work also just the idea that we can be saved by storytelling I believe playwriting can save your life and I don't mean that darkly I just believe that to get what's in here and put it out there to get that thing out in the world it is the self that the soul needs otherwise it will eat you it will devour you what you're writing and so for me you know I just I have such obviously clear passion for writing and you know there's a little picture of me when I'm three and there's I have a little notebook and I'm very lucky to be the daughter of a teacher because my mother taught me to read when I was too little to learn to read and the result of that was I started writing when I was too little to write and I think those things have really helped create me in a way that's useful for every aspect of my life but particularly when I walk into these waters and do my work because you know it's when I don't even know what the word should be trying to write that's who I was as a little child and I think that's maybe that's a good place of coming from like I don't know I mean I think all good art comes from I don't know and once I know I'm going to be so screwed so let's just so those are just some reflections I'm going to be here and you know the universe didn't want me to come I sort of defied nature to get her today so I kind of feel like I snuck away because I'm going to be reunited with you guys and I knew that like if I could figure out something I could be with you guys and it's perfect for me well so I came into this project this anthology knowing so I knew that CC was working on this book the anthology and I knew that I wasn't going to be in it and that was fine and good and it just that wasn't what it was and then so then when I got the call I'm like okay and this is the first time I've heard that it was about Issa Loomer I didn't know that that's funny but so for me it's like I wrote this play Mariachi Girl several like seven, eight years ago and and that's the piece that CC asked to put in the anthology but not initially it was another play Sangre de Amanjel that CC was interested in and I was like sure yeah that'd be great and for me it's I think maybe in TYA and specifically in representing people who are underrepresented there's something driving us I would say that is perhaps unique but that is that having young people see it is what's most critical not because it's your words but because of what is being represented and what that might mean to young people in the audience that's I think what perhaps I don't know because you could speak for yourselves but that we might where we might really be similar and so so I'm just delighted to have stories that young people identify with and that's what's important to me so and I'm lucky I have another job I'm not a full-time professional playwright so that enables me to say I don't have to take commission or other things which I know lots of my colleagues don't have that luxury so I would never want to ask anyone to do that and so it was just I was just honored to be asked to be part of that and then it was an interesting process to then there was going to be writing about some of the work and then also pulling things together contextualizing the work and so I got really excited about what are the pieces that are going to be together as a collective and then what are the contextualization that's going to happen and so and I think because the play changed I got to hear a lot about that and then I got to read some of the scholarship before because I don't know because you let me it was really cool and I agree that dramatic publishing they're just so supportive and for Cici to take on this incredible amount of labor that isn't his own work I mean what right I mean so that's huge and just because it's critical that there's work to be had because to echo what you said because it's important I think there has been a narrative that the work doesn't exist and we could go back some time and I remember when I was teaching in Laredo, Texas and I was like okay where's the work and I'm trying to find the work, I need resources and finally I found Jose Cruz Gonzales and started directing the work to bring it to young people and also I had actors next actors who were this is an educational theater where it's not a matter of you know go out and find the actors and who's there so finally I found some really great amazing work but that narrative is no longer true but it keeps being said the work doesn't exist we're not doing the work where's the quality literature and that's just not true and even more so as we move forward there will be next this anthology that doesn't have any non Latinx folks which is I know where you wanted to be already because more and more work is being written which will mean that there's no longer a need for others to represent because there are those that's my perspective on it and I think what you wrote about too in the the piece for HowlRound just absolutely true so anyhow that was my end point into the anthology and it's just incredible and it's just amazing that we can go here here here and I'm also I'm sad too that people I don't know how many are being sold but not enough and I just need to make even though we're talking like my book as I was going through this process towards the end of it I invited someone to help me edit it and she's written a chapter and it's Christina Marin she's the head of theater at Venus College she's my home girl but when we talk about representation I want to use her example I think it's a beautiful example she was tenure track at NYU at Emerson and she hated it being a brown being a Latina a professor in a white male dominated world and she just hated it she hated she'd be in tears like I'm dying inside I'm not you know my culture doesn't matter in this and eventually she came back to Phoenix and she's the head of the theater department at Phoenix College which serves basically or a lot of her students are underserved students from poor communities who've never acted I've never seen her happier in my life so you can throw all these big names about I was like no I'm working with this community I don't care what that title or her name is I'm doing that so I could not even have done this without her because her imprint is also in this anthology and I want I definitely need that if she's watching hey girl but you know the thing is with this with this book and she reminds me we need more you know Latinx actors directors playwrights we need more scholars we need more critics we need more artistic directors so whatever you are whatever space you are in the theater world we need more of us I'm just too I remember as a graduate student I was at what was I at Arizona no UC San Diego no UC Irvine sorry this is the grade okay I was doing an internship with Gatua Campesino I've been stuck in California and I went to a board meeting and you know there was the board and Luis Valdez the founder and artistic director of Gatua Campesino and something stuck with me what he had said he says you know we need a body of work so this is the 19 early 1980s maybe yeah late 70s and that really stuck with me the importance that we need literature because I know as a student going to the library and to go look for anthologies there was nothing you know and so to stand at the circle at the opening event here at the convening and to see so many new scholars and artists you know there and students sharing that circle I thought that's really wonderful to see that there's a mass that is emerging and that's really important and it's a mass of many many people with coming from different places and different agendas and different needs and I think that's really a fantastic thing and so to see the publication that you put together CC and reached out to all of us I think is really important I think about for me once a play has been created and say we've had a production or productions of it it's then trying to understand what's the need of the field for our teachers in particular because I think a lot of times these pieces are going to live in schools and you know in the TYA world often times you know we're having to deal with you know two or three four character plays that tour so they have to be compact and have to think in those kinds of ways but as I've learned through working with schools you've got tons of kids and you need everybody needs to have a role everybody needs to have a part in that and I think that that's something that has been great for me to learn to be thinking to rethink when I'm writing something how can this be expanded to meet the needs of those educators trying to bring those stories to these young people and I think that's really important but ultimately I think in terms of the play that CC included in the anthologies The Highest Heaven a play that I did in 1996 that was developed at the Kennedy Center and that was my first entrance into the world of TYA I was coming from the adult world into this and I knew nobody so when they would say oh that's so and so from that level you know theater I don't care I don't know who they are I don't know but it was a world different from what I had experienced in the adult world there was more generosity there was more spirit and so it's a place that I love coming back to because we see there's a lot of effort trying to change the world and I think that's why I think we do it so my response when I was initially invited to have Luna be part of this anthology at first it was to be honest starstruck that my work was going to be included along with people like who I'm sharing on stage and I was just like oh my gosh that's amazing alongside all this place I studied this is amazing and then when the beautiful anthology came out do we have a copy of that? sitting on a space on the floor you know in reading through the scholarship and seeing somebody look at my work in relation to other works and in the scale of theater and mysticism and Athena culture I cried and I learned about myself through the scholarship I didn't even realize I was doing that I feel like my work is elevated because people are studying it you know I've for better or worse I've invested a lot of my identity in my education and you know to be accepted in that particular field by having people talk about it I need to be guest artists at UT and things like that it's very satisfying and I know too especially when I see other Latino students they're not having the experience that I did where I never saw anybody like me you know I feel honored that they are seeing me in this position as a playwright and as an academic and it can they have a model to say if I did want to do this they can be done and that's really moving for me and now that I had this weird journey where I went from teaching middle school which is actually why I started teaching writing TYA because I wanted to write plays that my kids would really love and had a really good sensibility for how they talked and these kids are wonderful and once I got into the field I saw just how well could be an inclusive the people who traffic in this circle really are and it feels very different I get nice people in the greater theater world but in TYA there's just this generosity of spirit I think there's always this teaching part of us mentorship is just very generous in TYA and for Latinx TYA it's such a close-knit community that we're always just we're trying to find each other and for me that desire to mentor young writers is automatic I have the opportunity this quarter to teach a Latinx theater course at Central Washington University because again I never had a chance to do this myself and one of the required texts is Palabras del Cienzo it's a general theater we're talking about all different kinds of Latinx theater but because we happen to have a number of teachers in training at Central Washington University I really wanted to talk basically I spent the last few weeks of the quarter talking about Latinx TYA and then this is this beautiful artifact see this is where the field is now this is where we're coming from and this is where we're going but also and I told all the students I hope if you're leading a drama program yourself if you are an English teacher if you go into academics somebody says well there's no TYA there's going to be more and more Latino kids in this country as we go they say hey you have this book on your shelf and you can tell them here's ten you can choose from right so yeah and I kind of get a sense of the wonderful access that I have now because I can say I can put this on a reading list and I can say this is a model of excellent work and it's up there with with Zuzu it's like yeah we should read this work with the same critical thinking and the same artistry as we do with that landmark I mean every anthology is a break to stand up for the whole community and I could think of a couple anthologies that were out when I was first starting and they're still on my shelf I remember them because they told me there was a path and there was a way so you created something really unique and beautiful and then you've elevated everything with what you created because you said these plays aren't just worth publishing they're worth thinking about they're worth us bringing our minds to and that elevates the TYA absolutely well said can people look at this? sure so right down to ask you all to talk a little bit about your personal experience getting involved with left next TYA and I know some of you talked a little bit about it already I didn't reverse my order that's okay so just take this time and talk a little bit about that yeah so I was at a regional theater company I was asked to go teach a really creative drama to young people in the community and I'll talk a little bit about that I think on Saturday not a community based project it was my first introduction into a community an underserved community and so we put out flyers I went out there and did my work my due diligence we ended up having 200 children show up and I had recruited a woman named Lori Woolery and Lori is at the public theater doing public works and I said okay let me think about this she just reminded me about this last week and so she said I said okay this is how we're going to break it down so we broke it down and I said okay now you're going to take those classes and I'm going to take these classes and she said something like well I've never taught kids before and and I'm glad she reminded me of it because I'd forgotten but what we realized both Lori and I were that the children were hungry for stories but there weren't any stories for them and so both Lori and I had to work with those young people to create the piece that they would perform and so that really sort of started that that journey of writing work for young people and so I would say that's my start I'm going to ask the answer to the first question because I'm a little bit out of order sometimes I write nonlinear plays what I would say is when I first talked to this day about this I thought he wanted an unpublished place so I didn't give him at least the one that was produced my most produced Latinx TYA play because I thought he doesn't want that so I gave him and I had two plays and I hid one from him because it was produced here at Houston at the alley but I really love this other little play called Sochi and it was unpublished and I gave it to him anyway because you're not supposed to do that that's like breaking all the rules but I felt very close to this play I felt like it was this expression of me and so I thought well maybe I should just give it to him so that's the secret I didn't give you the other one so but in doing this and you know it was a commission play that was unpublished it happens guys in fact when Tatlana came out with this book I realized I had a pretty good record of having commissioned plays produced so I was always feeling sorry for myself so no actually that's something to know if you're coming up with a play right but I had you know I had worked really hard on the play and I had really believed in it and I do think that you know in writing the play I think a lot of other things have come out other plays have come out since that probably create more of a groundwork for people to understand the play and why it exists and why it is what it is but I think at the time that I I always feel like I'm I have a play opening today in California and that play I wrote a play in which an immigrant is murdered in a hate crime and when I read the play everybody said that wouldn't happen that just wouldn't happen and so today we sit where we sit and how I would love to be wrong how I would love to have been totally like having bad thoughts and putting them on the page so I think that that's the same as true of this play so gee that it was a little bit just ahead of its time in terms of what it was attempting to do and I think that and I don't mean that in a bragging way I think that as artists because I know we're in a room of artists that sometimes we don't know where we are in our own timelines and we can get discouraged this play was a very discouraging experience for me actually and you know you really healed a wound for me for my writing by publishing this play so I think that you know I want to share that too because you know it's easy to come up here and realize that everything sounds perfect and you know we've all been through these you know the peaks and valleys of being an artist and this was definitely a valley this play and so I feel like you know hey you guys there's a world premiere open for this play well I would say you know my honestly my first experience with Latinx TYA was most likely in my backyard where I was outside playing and inventing you know you know like the space station that was back there and you know I was just constantly inventing right and I love to write I like to write stories and I used to write stories in church on like the church program you know my church had a little area for like notes on the sermon I would be like like stories and draw speciates and things like that and it wasn't really until I kind of stopped writing in my 20s because I was teaching full time and I just kind of I didn't think of myself as a writer right and like no like writers have to do it that's the only thing they can do or they can do they're everyone else but me right so I never thought of myself as a writer and I went to New York University's program in educational theater originally because I wanted to open up a a youth theater and I wanted to be like become a director and I took my first TYA class theater for young audiences because I was one of those people who was like oh it's all like adaptations and things like that you know and really it's a lot of adaptations but there's also these beautiful original stories and those ones that I really grabbed and my teacher Lloyd Brooks who was also a playwright she encouraged me she's like hey you've ever written a play yourself right little things right just like have you thought about writing a play right and I sort of needed that outside voice and she personally had some authority in my professor to say you should think about this so I took her playwriting course the next semester and I wrote this play called Dulce which you know had the reading yesterday and this play is about this little boy named Memo who returns home from this trip he had been traveling by himself the first time first time on an airplane and when he comes home he learns his amulita his grandmother has passed away and the rest of the family has sort of gone through the grieving process on their own and you know mom and dad wanted to you know protect their youngest son so he doesn't need to be around the pain of these last hundred days right and that's very that happened to me with my my great grandmother when I was nine years old and so I started writing this play and it ended up becoming the story of this little boy who sees his grandmother she comes in there's magical realism there and in trying to find this hidden candy that he's not supposed to have that grandma's left for him he actually ends up finding so much more you know that she wanted to communicate with him right and the first play I ever wrote and it was actually I submitted it to this thing called The Bonderman which has now become this thing called Right Now so shout out to The Bonderman Dory Hill or Dory Lee and again Lloyd Brooks encouraged me to submit my play who's going to want to read this it's so much about me and my family but again it's one of those things where people took a chance it was my only play and the people at The Bonderman said we want to bring this play because I think people should hear it I actually remember working with music for this console which again I'd say is plays but one of the practices at The Bonderman was the playwrights on the first night would read our own work right and that freaked a lot of people out and I think they've stopped doing that because it freaked a lot of people out so here I'm reading the play that I wrote about when I was a boy reading for my great grandmother and I could not and I realized that writing this play had helped me process feelings that I had suppressed for about 20 years you know and and again because it was getting at identity and it was getting at a child's community with parents there was just a lot of things I could say to my grandmother that I didn't have a chance to say it when I was a little boy and so once I sort of felt that oh my gosh this is what I should be doing that's when I started telling stories because I had a lot more to say and that's also why a person of color says yeah, I'm thinking about writing a play it takes so much courage in this world that's trying to silence us even voice that out loud or even if they don't want to play no I can't write a play but they're smart and they're interesting and they're funny I'm like what should I consider it because who knows my little voice to say have you considered writing a play can have the same effects that Lori Brooks like start crying well so my story gotta be brief I grew up in the northeast and in a pretty homogenous white community I moved to Laredo Texas after I studied at Emerson College and when I got to Laredo my students the other night Mario Ramirez was in my living room which he is often lately and he was making a joke about how in the valley from what he was from they did production of Tartu and I was like and he's like can you believe it so when I was in Laredo the first play that I directed with my students mostly Latino, Hispanic indigenous young people was Tartu so we went in the found pictures and it was and I really was lacking knowledge looking for resources and then was finding Jose Rivera finding I was not taught this in school which and then it's also to do with these young people in Laredo so we were and I hadn't yet found even Bogol and certainly not yet Jose so I so I was writing with my students those plays I have never produced never published they were plays that we wrote together and they will always own them as I'm writing a play with young people right now in Ohio about human trafficking that play is not mine that they are writing with me for the last few hours I am shepherding and shaping I'm writing play with my daughter right now who's Latina Mexican-American, Hispanic Native American white and that is not going to be my play that she helps me write so just to be clear that's important and then when I came to UT to study and I met Latina artist here in Austin she was directing Bogol and asked me to be her assistant I had become bilingual pretty quickly living in Laredo so she asked me to do that and I was honored to do it and then I started working with Teatro Manidad which is a company that some of those folks became part of Teatro Vivo some folks became part of Teatro Manidad and that's when I was also working with Plano Repertory Theater wanted someone to write a bilingual play they didn't identify as a Latina they said a bilingual play so one of my colleagues was like hey consider this and I called them and talked about my identity and what that would mean and I wrote Senora Torzuga they were looking for something that would be in Repertory with Charlotte's web so it needed to be in a barn so I was like okay so that's where Senora Torzuga was born and for me it's really what are the stories that come to me and say I don't walk around looking for the story they just come to me and then I'm like okay who else wants to is there someone standing in line to do this to write this to tell this story and certainly be incredibly mindful of that and you know Mariachi Girl's story literally lived inside of me and it was busting me open so I don't quite know how that happened I still explore that and try to understand and for me too it's like I want my daughter to see stories and so I try to produce them and share them and read them and direct as much as I can so that young people will see the work but that's how I came into Latinx TYA you know it's funny I can tell you when I discovered TYA like I said I told the story about my thesis play and that young man who was part of it I'm always going to Mariachi I'm always going to Mariachi but it was such a great experience it was hip hop, it was multicultural at that point I didn't necessarily see a Latino TYA Latinx TYA and then at the first day I think Emily brought it up what was your first Latinx TYA play and I've lost sleep over it the last couple of days I really wanted to answer that question and I don't remember and I just finally realized I can't remember what my first exposure to Latinx TYA was it doesn't matter all that matters is that I discovered it it doesn't matter when it comes to your body in a sense it's not me it's my community that's what it is I don't write for me, I write for us and I love that because TYA is a community and our youth our most important audience and not only should we be creating art that engages but also empowers our students so when we talk about our youth being involved in Rising Youth Theater a lot of you are here and I've worked with them for it and I love this organization because they're going to be the leaders and the change that I think we really want honestly we're not going to see in our lifetime I honestly believe that so it's you guys and those generations before and I think our art should also inspire students and youth and just everyone to say something and one of my biggest issues is the diversity issue and so many students of color crying in my office even freshmen who just got in there a semester ago you know and I tell them that you all are paying a lot of money don't ever feel like you have to ask for permission you take it if something is bothering you tell your story or you tell people to tell our stories and take that power and I think Chicanismo and what I can say is I think Chicanismo is getting lost people don't use the word anymore and I know I'm Chicano until I fucking die but that represents me also kind of a loss of our history and not only are we artists we're also historians and so we need those stories to continue and also need the stories to just go crazy too go and reach as many different issues and topics instead of the other one like what happens when stories expire I don't think they ever expire and my friends are like why are we writing about race I'm like well when there's no racism I'll stop and it's not about not writing that it's like how do you as an artist how can you engage audiences to see that through a different perspective but we're always going to be writing about the human condition what we'd see so that's why I love I put Chicanismo with Latinx TYA and it's just that hour of community and being Trascuachi and that's how we do it so we have a few minutes left friends so do you all have any questions I saw ahead yes I don't have a question but I do have comments my name is Osiris I am a Latine actor and poet and but in playwright under the mentorship of Ramon Esquivel and I just wanted to say that it's because of people like Rockfan and Lisa Lumer that I was even introduced to anything ASU decided to do a Bocon and it's a Lisa Lumer play and Lisa Lumer is a white woman and it's because of that that I was actually introduced to the world of TYA and then introduced to Child's Play and then I did Bocon but then I went on to do José Cruz Gonzalez play Super Cowgirl and Mighty Miracle and it was like a beautiful entry point and I just wanted to give you my thank you for having this anthology so now as a budding playwright I have something to look forward to something that I could potentially be in and I just wanted to thank you all for creating the work that you do for people like me thank you back in the back kind of it the middle TV Mexico when I was with my bachelor's here during the whole conference I have been wondering because of all these questions that you have like when was the first time you actually watched Latino theater play and I was like well I was sold and it was in Mexico but it wasn't a Latino it was a Mexican but I used to so I think my question is not based on the United States when does it come Latino work does it have to be just about the situation and when do you feel that you break that boundaries do you think that there is a chance that we actually do work yes, Latinx but not necessarily you know giving that like difference between just people I mean I think if I could just say quickly I judge a contest annually and I get all these plays and most Latinx plays are not on what you would imagine the subjects of Latinx plays would be they're just about all of life just like you're saying so I think that you know what I'm going to tell you is like just for me to you and I don't know anybody else but just you write your work and it's from you and it's Latinx because you are who you are and that's all it is, it's very simple it doesn't have to be you trying to shape yourself into some kind of thing that you think you need to be to fit you already fit, you are you there are spaces in the world that need to be filled and it's up to those folks who long to fill that space with whatever it is whether it's a piece of music whether it's words you know whatever it is they're there and they're willing they're waiting to be filled and it just takes that courage to say I want to do this yep so I think this is the second little bit in different panels there's something I've been thinking about as an educator which is really important and wondering how to break through it I find that when you talk to a lot of people of color working arts or who are training in the arts that conversation about scarcity is scary I think early on you were sort of talking about this about the fact that there wasn't a lot of other resources and that there continues to sometimes not be a lot of resources and I'm challenged trying to come to young people and say keep up with it when all these other people are still fighting just to get heard right how do we keep the hope and optimism for young people to maintain their life in this field I'm an advisor at my for young people favorites and directors and I find so many of them at this cusp in their college career I was like well I guess I'm just going to go into finance because there's no way I can get a work here my parents would already do this point if I didn't even put it on there's no work they've ever seen and I'm challenged to give them positivity and I want to I think by the very fact that you're there your presence is important because you're not the normal fit and that's the beauty of you and they say they see you then you are a model to them they say that there is a pathway here a potential for me if he can do it well I can't I can't I can't I can't if he can do it well I can't I do it and there's hope in that and I think that you know for many of us we have to figure out what that path is and it's not safe to be an artist you know most of our I think most of our families and I deal with students at University 65% Latino and when a parent comes and a student who is in the arts dance theater and they come to a performance or something an event at the university the first thing I do is I go to that parent or parents and say thank you thank you for being here thank you for supporting your son or your daughter I just want you to know when they leave here they haven't been playing they haven't been messing around and partying they've been actually here working very, very hard and I want to thank you for teaching them that ethic of working hard of being here because the parents don't know this is a foreign world this is a doors that they don't they don't feel they're loud or they don't feel safe going into so that's what I would say to you is and those that are hungry enough and crazy enough to follow it will find their way and the other part of it is I also see students who come back many years later who did what they parents asked them to do but they weren't happy here and they find their path so that's my two cents and what I want to add some stuff I love everything you said it was so important and what I would add is that you know we don't ask for permission to be artists we don't wait for somebody to choose us or pick us you know we're not some kind of wall flower and a dance we are artists so the way I see it is we create our work I think what I've been doing because I do ethical questions about raising students I'm a professor also and I think about hey you know if there isn't work that's going to be given to them I need to turn them into theater makers and they learn every aspect of the theater so every time they take a class from me all of a sudden they're putting plays together they're doing evenings and they're publicizing and they're doing everything because I want them to know when they leave how to put their work out into the world and I think that's something that we can give that doesn't require somebody else but I also think it's super important for us to realize that our worth is not in the validation of others so I think the earliest we can learn to self validate creating something that's beautiful from our own soul is a self validation that we all have to learn because otherwise we will get discouraged and quit and we have to know that it has inherent if that play, even if you didn't take that play that play had inherent worth because it was created even if it didn't ever see the light of day and I think we can find that inside of ourselves and if we can do it for ourselves and then be able to mirror that to students for one we can help them to have a really important issue right now and we can help them understand that being an artist isn't about somebody saying hey you're good because some day somebody will say you're good and the next day they will say you're bad and your self-esteem cannot be based on that I think we have time for one more question I thought this hand go up first I'm just curious this has been such a great weekend so far but it's also made me really angry and here's why I'm angry where is the directory of all of that I'm discovering so many new theater companies I've never heard about you know the list of who are the artistic directors or the professors who are teaching a lot and that's like I want your syllabus you know like where is that list where is the warehouse so that we know who our allies our accomplices are if we need help breaking down some of the barriers at our maybe like at our white institutions I just I where is that you're going to make it you're going to create you're going to create you're going to start it and they're already groundwork and thank you for volunteering and done like I said but we do need those directories very much but we have to make them and it's the structures that hold these generations of racism aren't going to do it you know like I said I think there's been a couple years so I don't know if it's changed but we have like seven or eight a formal TYA program not theater education for TYA and I don't think there is one tenured or tenured type professor of color not just Latino you know so we can fight with them but at some time we can't depend on them either so we have to be self-empowering because they're not going to give it to us they haven't so far I know this someone came to apply for a job at Michigan and I forgot his name and he was African-American the way these institutions and white people see time and change is different than ours for them it's a walk in the park for us it's like this is your change for us it's like no but one of the things we've always told change takes time and I keep hearing that and even in my own program change takes time how long does this country take before change takes time so we need to create that time for ourselves and not based on what they think time should be so well thank you all so much for your time we okay we were trying to but it didn't happen but if you go to the website for dramatic publishing it's available but also too Christina and I are working on a second volume and we want to get even more diverse with like I said age groups, subject matter everything so if you have work let me know and send it to me if you know people like I said we need to work as a community if you know people who are telling these stories let me know because we want to throw them out there very much so and I know one of the things with this next volume what we're going to do whatever plays we select we're going to select but we're going to put a appendix with that many Latino T-white plays we can possibly put in the appendix so even if they don't make the book we want to find that book and there are some great things around some plays and so definitely check that out if you want to know some resources contact any of us an incredibly generous group here there are a lot of existing things for sure and also again dramatic publishing dramatic publishing and Palabras da Celo or just look up Jose Casas or Christina Marie you can type in Palabras on the website oh they work they work and let's give the playwright a round of applause there's a playwright something tomorrow like a chat it's a cafecito it's an affinity space for Latinx playwrights and it's during lunch I believe tomorrow so that'll be a nice space for some of the people to meet