 All right, let's go ahead and get started. So welcome everyone. Welcome to everyone on the live stream. My name is Jacqueline Flores. My pronouns are she, her, and I'm the producer for the Latinx Theater Commons. I'm so excited to tell you all what we have in store for the next three years of LTC programming. And to tell you all how it happened. In summer 2023, so last year, we put out a call for pitches. The LTC has always been an open movement for Latinx and Allied theater makers, practitioners of all stripes to come together, gather resources, and put those resources towards actions that cultivate, celebrate, and challenge our community. We try to be as decentralized as possible and spread that power that comes with access to foundation funding, relationships with gatekeepers, and name recognition. Like I've said throughout the weekend, the exact number of people in the LTC is hard to track because there are no dues or membership or pledges. If you want to be in the commons, you're in. And so we ask people instead of saying, look at what they're doing, ask what can we do better? And we ask them to submit a pitch of programming that aligned with our values and that could use the partnership. And last year, Tara Houston wrote a piece for HowlRound called, how do we transform the field we've inherited? So I'm gonna read a little bit from that piece, and I encourage you all to go read the whole piece on HowlRound.com. But she said, how do we transform the field we've inherited? What are the needs of the moment? And how is the LTC the right group to take on those challenges? How do we get more Latinx plays on stages in the United States? How do we honor teatros and their leaders? How do we work together in healthier and less harmful ways? How does Latinx work show up in this region whose voice isn't in the room? How do we tell stories together? How do we laugh together? How do we change? What do I need and what can I offer? Each LTC convening begins with an intervention, a powerful vision of potential and possibility that could only be achieved by gathering folks together and working in solidarity. So that's what we did. As we look forward to the future and we invited folks to submit again pitches which were reviewed by the new programming committee. And then we invited a few folks to submit full applications. These applications were reviewed by the entire LTC steering and advisory committee. And we had lengthy meetings about what our new programming should be, what it could be, what was possible with the resources that we have and what we want this next cycle of the LTC to look like. There are two people who co-champion this committee and I'm going to introduce them. They couldn't be here physically with us but we're gonna play a video and they're gonna introduce our new programming but they are Emilia Costa-Powell. Yes. Emilia is a long time member of the LTC steering committee. She also championed the comedy Carnival in 2022 in Denver and she's currently in tech. So we are sad she's not here but she's the impact producer and co-director of artistic programming at Actors Theatre of Louisville. And then Eric Schwartz is also a long time member of the LTC. Yes. And he's currently getting his MFA and directing at UCLA. So he couldn't be with us just now but we send them both their love and they will now share with us what's going to happen in these next few years. Hi everyone, I'm Emilia Costa-Powell. I use she, her, a, pronouns and I've been a steering committee member of Latinx Theatre Commons since 2015. I decided to step forward to volunteer as a co-champion for the new programming committee because I really enjoyed participating in the 2018 new programming selection process. I was an applicant at the time who had submitted a project as a champion, a proposal and I was really grateful for that experience. I learned a lot. I found the discussion around it really robust and fair and I wanted to pay it forward and to steward a process for future champions so that they would feel as included and taken care of as I did then. So I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to serve as new programming champion this time around especially with my dear friend Eric and we look forward to sharing with you the new programming slate. Hi everyone, my name is Eric Swartz. I use he, him, a, pronouns and I am one of the co-champions of the new programming committee for this cycle with my good friend Emilia. I joined the LTC in 2019 after having been one of the creative producing fellows on the 2017 and Quentro and I was so inspired by the conversations and by the community there in Los Angeles that I decided that I wanted to contribute and do my part and that is why ultimately I decided to join the new programming committee for this cycle. I had previously been on resource gen and also on the comedy carnival planning committees and that was such a wonderful experience and getting to see my friend Emilia really shepherd that project and that process inspired me and the chance to work together to lead this intentional process for the new programming cycle coming up was an easy choice to make and I'm super excited for this new tranche of programming. We're gonna go to some new places, talk about some new subjects, revisit some old themes and places and personally I'm really excited that we are going back to DC, which is my hometown. Coming up this fall in October 2024, we will have an LTC convening at the 2024 Latino Theatre Company in Quentro. Latino Theatre Company is celebrating our 10-year anniversary of hosting these in Quentros with the first one happening in 2014. It will take place in Los Angeles at the Latino Theatre Company at the LTC in October and the Latinx Theatre Commons will host a weekend long convening during the festival that will aid in documenting, preserving and disseminating what is learned from the participating companies, illuminating dialogue that emerges from the festival to achieve its events and furthering the advancement of the Latine narrative in American theater. Those who've been to it in Quentro before know that it is a joyful, fun celebration and a beautiful place to convene with fellow art makers and to discuss aesthetics in our Latine theater community. Our next bit of programming is the 2025 Fornes Institute Symposium, which is championed by Anne Garcia Romero and Brian Herrera, which will be happening in Princeton, New Jersey in March 2025. The 2025 symposium will be designed to activate the next wave of critical, creative and collaborative explorations of the Fornesian tradition. It will also celebrate the pathbreaking publication of Fornes in Context, a volume featuring the work of more than 30 artists, advocates, and scholars, which is slated for digital publication in summer 2024. In summer 2025, Latinx Theatre Commons will host the Carnival of New Latine Musical Theatre. This event is championed by Maria Patrice Amen and Lisa Portes, and will take place in San Diego, California, summer 2025. The Carnival serves as an intervention, uplifting Latinx theater artists, and this year's will expand our pool from not only directors and designers, but also including musical directors, choreographers, and the other artists who make musical theater specifically. We'll bring together Latinx theater makers and theater decision makers from across the nation to amplify, illuminate, and forward Latinx musical theater. In 2026, we will be going to the Southwest for the first time for the Actor Training Laboratorio, which is championed by Cynthia Santos de Cure and Micah Espinosa. We are gonna be hosted by Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona in spring 2026 for our first event that focuses on actors and specifically actor training. The Laboratorio seeks to reimagine and restructure the practice of actor training. It will offer participants the opportunity to practice in culturally inclusive forms and embodied acting techniques that embrace heritage, identity, and diverse narratives. The final event of our new programming slate is a forum on the future, language, technology, and provocations in multilingual theater making. This event is championed by Cristina Fernandez and Eric Schwartz and it will take place in Washington DC in summer 2027. Washington DC is the birthplace of the Latinx theater commons and a place where we have not reconvened in many years. The forum will gather artists, scholars, and industry professionals in our nation's capital to discuss the past, present, and future of trans-linguistic theater making. Participants will engage in bilingual and multilingual works here from artists and scholars across disciplines, network, and wrestle with the possibilities and hurdles of creating bilingual and cross-cultural works. Many of our Latinx theater commons events have had multilingual components, but we have yet to have an event or program that focuses on this topic specifically and we're so excited to dig into a very important question and group of ideas within our field of Latinx theater making. We're very excited. We're very excited. I want to say thank you to everyone who is a part of the new programming committee. If you were part of it, we went through the pitch form and all of that. Can you please stand? Yeah. It takes a lot of people, y'all. So thank you all for being part of the new programming committee and stewarding us into this next cycle of programming. We also have some other partnerships that are still in the work, so stay tuned for that. Public announcement in the coming weeks, but now I'm really excited to introduce you to some of the champions in person so that you put faces to the programming that they're going to be championing and if you are interested in what they're doing, go up to them, introduce yourself, tell them you wanna join and make the work happen, just like you've seen all the different committees that make our work happen throughout the years and Lisa is going to demonstrate how the champions are going to introduce themselves and we're gonna go in chronological order. I'm a director. Okay, so this is where we get our inner dork on champions, our inner proud dork on. So many of you do not know this, nor should you, and I can't believe I'm saying it on livestream, but when I was a teenager, I ended up in a pageant in Nebraska and I won it. Yeah! And then I had to go to the national championship. I mean the national pageant and one of the things that we had to do was this. Now imagine I'm wearing a large football that my mother made for me. Hi, I'm Lisa Portez, I'm from Nebraska, the great state of Nebraska, home of the Cornhuskers. Okay, so this is what we're gonna do as champions. Yes, if you're a champion and Jose Luis is gonna kick us off, you're gonna run up here and you're gonna say, hi, I'm Jose Luis Valenzuela, I am a champion for blah, blah, blah, and it's happening blah, blah, blah and something else. Okay? This is what we're gonna do and we're gonna go in order. Okay, passing it to Jose Luis. I'm Jose Luis Valenzuela and I'm the champion for the Encuentro 2024 and I wanna see you all there in the convening. Thank you. Hi, I'm Brian Herrera. I am here with my colleague and collaborator. Hi, I'm En Garcia Romero. And we are together, the co-champions of the Fornes Institute. Get your stickers in the lobby. To announce the 2025 Fornes Symposium at Princeton University, which is a follow-up to the extraordinary success of the 2018 symposium, which as the paper that's going around will remind you, one of the great and enduring legacies of that is the Celebrando Fornes Initiative, which is extending to the centenary of Fornes' birth in 2030. Please take this information, celebrate it, pass it along, get it from me later if you need it. But we're gonna be joining together at Princeton for one day of Fornes Palusa. And it's going to be involved art making and art presentation, as well as breakout conversations thinking about the future of the next wave of Fornesian scholarship, art and culture. Hi, I'm Maria Pichis-Amen and we are, I'm co-champions with- Lisa Portes. And we are bringing you the Carnaval 2025 Musical Theater Carnaval. Woo! The LTC Carnaval of Latinx Musical Theater will feature new musicals by Latinx, book writers, composers, and we will also feature music directors, choreographers and Latin music theater directors to uplift and celebrate the vibrant work of our amazing people. Cynthia Santos de Cure. Hi, I'm Micah Alicia Spinoza. And we are going to introduce to you the actor training laboratorial at Arizona State University. We hope you'll join us. We're gonna have a lot of fun. Come play, come learn. Let's dive into culturally inclusive forms and our heritage and dive into acting training. We look to reimagine the actor training in the American theater and empower a future generation so that we can be seen in all of the spaces across the globe. Orale! There's too many mics, y'all. Hi, hola, I'm Christina Fernandez and me, along with Eric Swartz, are presenting the 2027 Foto del Futuro Forum on the Future bilingual. I'm gonna see, we wrote the, it was amazing thing, a forum on the future, language, technology, and provocation in multilingual theater making. We're gonna have actors, plays, scholars speak about the work and all the exciting challenges about making hybrid work and different languages and the technologies that we have emerging that we can work with. And we're super, super excited and we can't wait to see you in 2027! For the next three years. Thank you all, thank you everyone for tuning in via the live stream. Thank you, very excited, very excited to see you all over the next three years in these many cities. All right.