I am a disrupter who works within the crucible of collaboration.

My theatrical practice engages both audience-participants and actors-performers in participatory collective change. My work never aims to simply entertain or offer stories for commodification or passive consumption. I desire to provoke discussions, disagreements, raise questions, and invite debate. I have spent the last 13 years of my professional practice dedicated to the ambition of creating space for women of color that engages a direct discourse with the body politic of marginalized communities with society at large. This desire is built upon the shoulders of Latinx and Women of Color who have come before me and propel me to continue in the struggle for social justice and equity.

My work explores the power of collaboration as a tool for social change and I find Theatre the most collaborative form and forum; to encounter and engage with art that expands our imagination changes us-- and we change the world around us. I create theatrical experiences in specific community contexts, and I develop and direct new plays with playwrights. I use theatre to expand the limits of the imagination of the practitioner and audience alike.

My sphere of expertise is in collective creation, in devised theatrical practices, and in leading non-hierarchical teams to unique solutions and form-pushing experimentations.

I am a generative artist and I create and direct original plays that are immersive and built with designers, performers, scholars, community members, choreographers, all in the room together. I utilize technology in the development phase and in production so that I can work with artists living anywhere . I create festivals and cultural interventions because they bring change makers together; they are ideas in action and large scale change cannot be activated without large scale consensus. The right gathering, performance, convening or experience can expand our collective imagination.

Collaborative art work, especially those led by women of color, has long been excluded from higher education and public institutions. And yet these are some of the same places where women like me have proven ourselves effective in transforming in order to serve our communities better- but the labor has been rendered invisible. Visibility is key to disrupt systems of power and structural barriers that truncate our growth and influence. CNN proclaimed recently that “the future of American economy was Hispanic and female,” while reminding us of the economic gaps still to be overcome and the many obstacles to our gaining ground. But these gaps are no accident. They are intentional, these gaps are structural inequities in action, and my work aims to shed light on why we need new approaches and on its best days provides an alternative model. It is a myth that the Theatre has to operate within these oppressive structures to be successful, to maintain an audience.

I am pushing our field to be the best forum for fostering bold and brave spaces that place front and center the full spectrum of the human experience.

A space where theatricality reigns supreme and is a gift to the audience (whereas generally now “art” is a Home Depot kitchen imported onto a stage). The American Theatre thinks it will fail if it puts into practice the change asked for by audiences and artists of color, not just an expansion of who is on stage, but also how the work itself is made. Failure here means blaming the audience for the reason why the theatre cannot make changes towards equity because of this idea that they will no longer relate to what is on stage and in turn will stop coming to the theatre. This is myth. This is distraction. The reason the majority of Americans do not see theatre as cultural practice they are interested in is because it has ostracized them. Theatre is far behind the cultural shifts in the United states, and it should be at the forefront.  The last few decades were spent on the institutionalization of the form both in how we produce and teach it, cutting out bit by bit all the delicious parts that kept theatre in the hands of the people. By definition, institutionalization means slow to change. And change is the only constant we have. 

The theatre, as a rule should embrace the concept that risk is the only currency that matters, and failure is a milestone sought after in the artistic process.