Seeking Common Ground: Latinx and Latin American Theatre and Performance

Evelina Ferdandez, Carlos Celdrán, J. Ed Araiza, Alex Alpharaoh, Manolo Garriga

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350230200
• eBook ISBN: 9781350230231
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre

Honorable Mention from the 2022 International Latino Book Awards for Best Nonfiction - Multi-Author

A curated collection of new Latinx and Latin American plays, monologues, interviews, and critical essays that asks the question: what is the common ground between Latinx and Latin American artists?

Featuring a mix of plays and scholarly essays, this work originally emerged from the Latino Theater Company's Encuentro de las Américas festival, produced in partnership with the Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 2017. The collection chronicles not only the theatrical productions of the festival, but also features a transnational exploration of U.S. Latinx and Latin American theatre-making.

Alongside plays by Evelina Fernández, Alex Alpharaoh, J.Ed Araiza and Carlos Celdrán this anthology also includes a mix of monologues, snapshots, profiles and interviews that together provide a dynamic account of these intersections within U.S. Latinx and Latin American Theater. A unique collection it serves not only as a testament to the diversity of Latinx artists, but also to the strength of the Latinx Theater movement and its ever-growing networks across the Hemispheric Americas.

Full playtexts include:

Dementia by Evelina Fernández
WET: A DACAmented Journey by Alex Alpharoah
Miss Julia adapted by J.Ed Araiza
10 Million by Carlos Celdrán

Dementia

Evelina Fernández

Latino Theater Company—Los Angeles, California

1 Latino Theater Company’s Dementia, Los Angeles Theatre Center, 2010. Photo: Christopher Ash.

Critical Introduction

Chantal Rodriguez

The Latino Theater Company has a storied history in the trajectory of Latinx theater in the United States and in Los Angeles. The members of the company include Artistic Director José Luis Valenzuela, Resident Playwright and Associate Artistic Director Evelina Fernández, and ensemble members and Associate Artistic Directors Sal Lopez, Geoffrey Rivas, and Lucy Rodriguez.¹ For over thirty-five years they have developed an ensemble-based artistic practice committed to the creation of thought-provoking theater.

Originally conceived as the Latino Theater Lab in 1985, the company developed new work under the auspices of the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC), then under the leadership of Bill Bushnell and Diane White. After the LATC closed in 1991, Center Theatre Group (CTG) agreed to become the fiscal receiver for the Lab, and CTG’s Artistic Director Gordon Davidson invited Valenzuela to develop and direct the Latino Theatre Initiative at the Mark Taper Forum.² By 1995, the Lab had formally become the Latino Theater Company, and they left CTG so they could run a small community theater house at Plaza de la Raza Cultural Arts Center in Lincoln Park where they created their first season of Latinx plays. Eager to produce work on a larger scale and with equity contracts, the company soon returned to the LATC, then being run by the City of Los Angeles, where they produced Evelina Fernández’s Luminarias in the 1996–7 season. After several years developing Luminarias into a film, working professionally in television and film, and further honing their aesthetic, the company returned to the LATC in 2002, with Dementia, one of the first Latinx plays to directly deal with homosexuality and Aids.³

As Geoffrey Rivas recalls, Dementia was the production that put the company on the map. Not only did it garner the prestigious GLAAD Award for Outstanding Theater Production in Los Angeles as well as four Ovation Award nominations, it marked the company’s return to the LATC and also their staying power as a professional company committed to the development of new work.⁴ Soon after, the company was encouraged to apply to run the LATC and in 2006, after a three-year struggle, they were awarded a twenty-year lease from the City of Los Angeles to operate the historic building. As the stewards of the LATC, the Latino Theater Company’s mission is “to provide a world-class arts center for those pursuing artistic excellence; a laboratory where both tradition and innovation are honored and honed; a place where the convergence of people, cultures, and ideas contribute to the future.”⁵ The 2014 and 2017 Encuentros were envisioned as part of this mission, and offered as a gift to the field as well as to the city of Los Angeles.

As the producers and hosts of the Encuentro de las Américas, the company decided to produce a revival of Dementia as its programmatic offering for the festival so that they could re-examine their roots as a company, given the inciting question for the festival, “Where do we come from?” The play is not only an important one in their professional history, but also in their personal lives as well. Loosely based on true events, the play is informed by the life and death of José Guadalupe Saucedo, an acclaimed Chicano actor, director, and theater manager. Saucedo was a founding member of the historic Chicano theater El Teatro de la Esperanza in Santa Barbara where he worked closely with Valenzuela and Fernández. He would go on to be the best man at their wedding, and godfather to their son. Saucedo’s ties to the Latino Theater Company extended to the Los Angeles theater scene as well, and they collaborated on many projects. In 1991, Saucedo became the first Latino to be named associate artist at the Mark Taper Forum and he was very vocal about his plans to partner with Valenzuela on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Carlos Morton
• An interlude with the Latino Theater Company
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero, and Chantal Rodriguez
• Section One: Traversing Boundaries of Gender and Sexuality
• Dementia by Evelina Fernández
• Las mariposas saltan al vacío by José Milián
• Quemar las naves. El viaje de Emma by Rocío Carrillo Reyes
• Section Two: Staging Transnational Realities of Race, Ethnicity, and Class
• Ropa Íntima (Intimate Apparel) by Lynn Nottage, adapted by Ébano Teatro
• Miss Julia, an adaptation by J.Ed Araiza
• El Apagón (The Blackout), adapted by Rosalba Rolón, Jorge Merced, and Alvan Colón Lespier
• Sensory Strategies: Artist Panel from the Encuentro de las Américas with Carmen Aguirre, Jorge Cao, Carlos Celdrán, David Lozano, Alicia Olivares, Brian Quirt, Rocío Carrillo Reyes, Rosalba Rolón, Nicolás Valdez, and José Luis Valenzuela
• Section Three: The State, Politics, and Lived Experience
• Deferred Action by David Lozano and Lee Trull
• Culture Clash: An American Odyssey by Culture Clash
• 10 Million by Carlos Celdrán
• La razón blindada (Armored Reason) by Arístides Vargas
• WET: A DACAmented Journey by Alex Alpharaoh
• Section Four: Music and Autobiographical Performance
• Conjunto Blues by Nicolás Valdez
• Broken Tailbone by Carmen Aguirre
• Latin Standards by Marga Gomez
• Conclusion: Aquí estamos, we are here by Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero, and Chantal Rodriguez
• Closing Reflections from the Latino Theater Company
• Afterword by Diane Rodriguez
• Notes on Contributors
• Copyright