One of my earliest memories is making tamales with my extended family in my grandmother's home. These afternoons shaped me into the artist I am today. No matter your age, gender, or cooking abilities, you had to help in the assembly line. Making and enjoying tamales is a communal event, requiring too many steps to be practical to make on your own. In that way, I am also drawn to theatre because it is an inherently collaborative art form. It works best when actor, director, and designers of all disciplines are encouraged to shine. Having worked as the Associate Artistic Director at San Francisco Playhouse for a number of years, I naturally consider the staging of my plays while I write. And being a professional freelance stage manager and lighting designer, I take joy in writing stories that a production team will be excited by.
But my first writing classes were these childhood afternoons spent with hands and wrists covered in sticky masa, and every finger stained reddish brown from the meat filling. While our hands worked, we'd pass the time telling stories. Some were true, some were imagined, but most were a tangled web of both. This aesthetic has seeped into my writing. I love to create worlds that resemble our own but allows space for imaginative theatricality that can only be explored on the stage. In Restore, five characters sit in a circle with the audience as they deal with the after effects of gun violence. This non-linear play lives in the collective memories of two families irrevocably affected by a fatal shooting. But is often the case with memories, there are falsities and exaggerations in every breath. Instead of portraying characters recall their memories, the remembered scenes are enacted without commentary. The play zips from one scene to another, requiring the audience to put together the pieces of what happened. In this way the play recreates, rather than explains, the experience of reliving trauma for character and audience.
The language that filled my grandmother's home always existed between two worlds. Some of my family, particularly those born in Mexico, were much more comfortable speaking Spanish than English, seemingly unaware when their tongues slipped into the former. And some were like myself, able to understand much of the Spanish, but often missing a key word or phrase to understand the punchline of a joke or family tale. My plays often exist in this world of longing for understanding where two languages meet. In A Driving Beat, 14-year-old Mateo and his adoptive mother, Diane, go on a road trip from their home in Ohio to the hospital where he was born in San Diego. Mateo loves to speak Spanish as a way to connect himself with his Latino roots, but Diane doesn't always understand him (and not always because of a language barrier). As the road trip progresses, the passage of time is marked by poetry that Mateo speaks for himself. The poetry often weaves together Spanish and English as he searches for the space where he exists between the two languages. Just as no translations were ever provided in my home, no translations are provided for the audience. Being caught between two cultural identities is a theme that I often return to in my writing, because it is a deeply personal struggle for me that I don't often see represented on stage.
In the home, there was always music playing in the background. We'd listen to Linda Rondstadt or Pink Martini, depending on who got a hold of the CD player first (this was the 90's after all). And while my plays don't contain much written music, I strive for lyricism in all my writing. To Saints and Stars is about two life-long friends who find themselves embarking on different journeys in life. Zoe is pregnant with her first child and Sofía is preparing to go on the first manned mission to Mars. In the opening scene, we hear Sofía talk about humanity's need to embrace modern technology and move to another planet, while her speech is underscored with Zoe chanting "Lord have mercy" in church. The language of science and the rituals of religion are the lyrics that weave throughout this play. In all that I write, I try to truly embrace Federico Garcia Lorca's quote, "A play is a poem standing up".
A seismic shift in my family occurred when our matriarch, my grandmother Naomi, committed suicide in 2014. My whole family was in mourning, but none of us could speak about it with each other. She didn’t receive a funeral, so Las Pajaritas has become my eulogy to her. The play is an examination of the cycle of debt that some people find themselves in after receiving a simple municipal fine. And by placing two dark skinned women and one white skinned woman on stage, this play naturally deals with body politics. In this way, the work I create is deeply personal yet deliberately political.
One of my earliest memories is making tamales with my extended family in my abuelita's home. These afternoons shaped me into the artist I am today. No matter your age, gender, or cooking abilities, you had to help in the assembly line. Making and enjoying tamales is a communal event, requiring too many steps to be practical to make on your own. In that way, I am also drawn to theatre because it is an inherently collaborative art form. It works best when actor, director, and designers of all disciplines are encouraged to shine. Having worked as the Associate Artistic Director at San Francisco Playhouse for a number of years, I naturally consider the staging of my plays while I write. And being a professional freelance stage manager and lighting designer, I take joy in writing stories that a production team will be excited by.
But my first writing classes were these childhood afternoons spent with hands and wrists covered in sticky masa, and every finger stained reddish brown from the meat filling. While our hands worked, we'd pass the time telling stories. Some were true, some were imagined, but most were a tangled web of both. So, I love to create worlds that resemble our own but allows space for imaginative theatricality that can only be explored on the stage. In En Las Sombras, Mari narrates the mythological story of Xenia and Luz, who journey to take the trial of the gods. If successful, they will save their mother and become gods themselves. As the play progresses, there are hints that the world onstage is not exactly as it seems. The first test that the siblings must face is to escape a room made of ice. Then the children must solve a series of seemingly impossible riddles. Finally, they are detained in a room, surrounded by the bones of dead children and simply told to survive. By the end of the play it is made clear that Xenia and Luz are being detained along the U.S./Mexico border and the audience has been seeing the world through their eyes as they try to cope with the horrors of their situation.
The language that filled my abuelita's home always existed between two worlds. Some of my family, particularly those born in Mexico, were much more comfortable speaking Spanish than English, seemingly unaware when their tongues slipped into the former. And some were like myself, able to understand much of the Spanish, but often missing a key word or phrase to understand the punchline of a joke or family tale. My plays often exist in this world of longing for understanding where two languages meet. In A Driving Beat, 14-year-old Mateo and his adoptive mother, Diane, go on a road trip from their home in Ohio to the hospital where he was born in San Diego. Mateo loves to speak Spanish as a way to connect himself with his Latino roots, but Diane doesn't always understand him (and not always because of a language barrier). As the road trip progresses, the passage of time is marked by poetry that Mateo speaks for himself. The poetry often weaves together Spanish and English as he searches for the space where he exists between the two languages. Just as no translations were ever provided in my home, no translations are provided for the audience. Being caught between two cultural identities is a theme that I often return to in my writing, because it is a deeply personal struggle for me that I don't often see represented on stage.
In the home, there was always music playing in the background. We'd listen to Linda Rondstadt or Pink Martini, depending on who got a hold of the CD player first (this was the 90's after all). And while my plays don't contain much written music, I strive for lyricism in all my writing. To Saints and Stars is about two life-long friends who find themselves embarking on different journeys in life. Zoe is pregnant with her first child and Sofía is preparing to go on the first manned mission to Mars. In the opening scene, we hear Sofía talk about humanity's need to embrace modern technology and move to another planet, while her speech is underscored with Zoe chanting "Lord have mercy" in church. The language of science and the rituals of religion are the lyrics that weave throughout this play. In all that I write, I try to truly embrace Federico Garcia Lorca's quote, "A play is a poem standing up".
A seismic shift in my family occurred when our matriarch, my abuelita Naomi, committed suicide in 2014. My whole family was in mourning, but none of us could speak about it with each other. She didn’t receive a funeral, so Las Pajaritas has become my eulogy to her. The play is an examination of the cycle of debt that some people find themselves in after receiving a simple municipal fine. And by placing two dark skinned women and one white skinned woman on stage, this play naturally deals with body politics. In this way, the work I create is deeply personal yet deliberately political.
Whether it is a family gathered around a kitchen table or a room of strangers sitting in a theatre, both have the incredible capacity to create community. Theatre uniquely allows audience and artist to come together in the same space. And it is finite- a moment together and then gone. My writing manifests itself through numerous styles and voices, but each play is ultimately about our intrinsic desire for human connection, no matter how brief. I’m captivated by the ways people try to reach out to one another for community, the rejections and missed opportunities as well as the successes. When writing dialogue, I rely on heightened language as well as subtext and the truths left unspoken. My goal in all my writing is to provide a space to explore the personal, political, and poetical in a way that is uniquely theatrical.