In this paper, I explore innovative teaching methods in the field of Latina/o theatre and performance by considering several key questions. How are Latina/o theatre practitioners training the next generation of Latina/o theatre artists? How are contemporary Latina/o theatre instructors building upon the methodologies of Maria Irene Fornes’s playwriting workshops? Currently, who are Latina/o theatre’s most influential instructors and how do their methods help students create new theatrical texts and performances that complicate traditional dramaturgies and methodologies? To consider these questions, I delve into the theatre pedagogies of Maria Irene Fornés, Luis Alfaro and Michael John Garcés, which foster linguistic and aesthetic experimentation to empower the next generation of Latina/o playwrights and performers.
Maria Irene Fornés, nine-time Obie award winning playwright and director, nurtured some of the most significant playwrights in contemporary Latina/o theatre through teaching at theatres, universities, and arts organizations across the country and internationally, and especially through the Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory at INTAR in New York City, during the latter decades of the 20th century. Her students’ plays have been produced across the United States, from small storefront theatres, to regional theatres, to Off Broadway and Broadway. Visualizing character creates the cornerstone of Fornés’s pedagogy. I will consider how Fornés’s groundbreaking methods, influenced by her training as a painter, encourage her students to generate character-driven material that honors and expresses their unique theatrical voices.
Luis Alfaro, award winning playwright and solo performer, studied with Fornés at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, when he served as their co-director of the Latino Theatre Initiative. His plays and solo works, produced across the country, often express and reflect the Chicana/o experience in Los Angeles, where Alfaro was born and raised. Alfaro now trains the next generation of theatre performers and writers as an Associate Professor in the University of Southern California’s School of Dramatic Arts. I will examine how Alfaro adapts Fornés’s methods and incorporates his performativity to engage young artists as they create new plays and solo works for the theatre.
Michael John Garcés, served as co-producing artistic director (with Max Ferrá) at INTAR for two years, and created and ran the INTAR NewWorks Lab program for six years, where he studied with Fornés. Garcés, now Artistic Director of the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, creates community-based theatre with diverse communities and teaches the Cornerstone methodology at their yearly summer institute. I will analyze how Garcés employs Cornerstone’s unique approach, which emphasizes empowering young artists, through ethnography and performance training, to document diverse communities in Southern California.
The future of Latina/o theatre depends upon the current generation of theatre artists receiving in-depth training as writers and performers. Fornés trained Alfaro, Garcés and many others who are now expanding the field through their pedagogies. Documenting and analyzing these teaching methods creates an archival space for future theatre practitioners, pedagogues and scholars to draw upon as they continue to transform Latina/o theatre in the 21st century.
Education , Performance Studies , Chicano/a -- Mexican , Cuban , Humanities
