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My name is Selena Munguia, I am 20 years old. I was born November 13th, 2000 making me a Scorpio. I have one sister from my parents, and I have five half siblings. I was born in McAllen, Texas about ten minutes away from where I was raised, Mission, Texas. I am a Hispanic woman who should but doesn’t know Spanish and actively is trying to change that. I graduated from La Joya Palmview High school where I started participating in theatre and where I fell in love with the stage. I was sixteen when I started participating in theatre and seventeen when I started acting. I have been in about four productions as an actor and yearn for more experience as an actress. I have had a lot of personal issues at home that really affected me as a kid and teen. My mom was not in the picture, my dad was so consumed in his own issues and my sister was not around. It was just me and my nephew, Christian, Who I raised since he was 6 months old, most of the time and that took its toll on me. Eventually I started losing focus in school and ended up having to repeat my senior year, but I pulled myself together, got a regular job, went to summer school, and still maintained a summer theatre job. My biggest dream is to be on Broadway and represent the RGV with pride. Side note: the RGV has TONS of unrealized talent, which is why I want to be the one to shine a light on the amazing artists back home.  Fun fact: before choosing to chase my dreams and study the arts I wanted to be a Marine Biologist, Psychologist, a psychiatrist, when I found out they got paid more, or a Youtuber (How ironic).

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Open-mindedness: I am just one personality out of many, and I have my set of values and others have theirs. That being said when I am collaborating or even as an actress, when I take on a new character, I try to keep in mind that their lives have shaped them into the person they are now. Everyone is unique and I may not agree with what everyone I meet does or says or their Ideas, but I like to keep my mind open to the unique perspectives each person brings. That being said I also keep my own moral compass in mind and try to find balance in staying true to myself and being open to being wrong or changing my perspective.

Honesty: No matter the project that I work on I find that honesty is the best policy. When in collaboration it's important to stay honest about how I feel about a decision, especially because collaboration is a partnership so we should both be happy with the art we are making. Also when acting if you aren't being honest to your character then I believe that you're not doing it right. Just as you should be true to yourself when acting you should be true to your character.  Much like what I mentioned in the open-mindedness section, I try and keep a balance of being open to trying new things. On the other hand, I find it extremely important, to be honest about things I am not comfortable with doing and saying.
These values go hand in hand because they balance each other out and are skills that you need to have to make the art that makes all collaborators in the team happy. Compromise and being Honest and open to new ideas can make a project special and magical.

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EP. 1: THE VALUES EPISODE-  OPEN-MINDEDNESS AND HONESTY

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Education of the arts in the age of COVID-19: I think overall arts education has been stuck in the same spot over the last couple of years and even before that. The same syllabus and the same course but I feel the pandemic has forced educators and students alike to challenge the way we learn about and teach the arts. I want to see a change in what is being taught to young artists. I want to see more information being put out there about race, gender, sexuality and overall diversity in theatre, dance and fine art in general. How specifically we need to start changing and challenging what we know as creatives about those specific topics. I think we need more discussions on situations like the Scott Rudin situation that just happened on Broadway. We certainly need to be speaking more on what we can do to combat the classist system theatre and fine art is stuck in at the moment.

Widespread collaboration: Even though we cannot meet in person, Artists are still finding ways to create. For example, this summer on the popular app TikTok a community of artists created a whole new musical based on the Disney movie "Ratatouille" and on the same app currently there is a musical being composed based on the Netflix series "Bridgerton" and building on that the Cohen new works festival is a more domestic example of widespread collaboration, artists all around campus and because of COVID-19, in reality, there were students from all over the place, taking part in this festival. We are living in the age of technology which has opened up the pool pf collaboration to the billions of people on earth and I do not think we should be taking that for granted.

Making theatre accessible Right now as we cannot physically go into a theatre and sit through a beautiful high school production of beauty and the beast or pay humongous amounts of money for a Broadway production- As much as we want to. We have had to rely on whatever movie musical is on any streaming service and seeing MT and Theatre move to become more accessible, makes me want to learn the art of acting not just for the stage but for the screen and how to translate a story written specifically for the stage to a big screen (or how ever big the living room TV is)! Broadway, and theatre in general in particular has been known for the big price tags and demographic those price tags limit. I really think that we ought to be fighting against that How can we find the talent that is hiding in the corner and make them want to pursue fine art when they have no exposure to the thing that very well may be the thing they are destined to do? Hamilton has been a big player in making moves to start this conversation and I think we should be taking the time to have that conversation.

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EP.2: EDUCATION OF THE ARTS IN THE AGE OF COVID-19, WIDESPREAD COLLABORATION, and MAKING THEATRE ACCESSIBLE. 

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EP.2: EDUCATION OF THE ARTS IN THE AGE OF COVID-19, WIDESPREAD COLLABORATION, and MAKING THEATRE ACCESSIBLE. 

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EP. 2: EDUCATION OF THE ARTS, WIDESPREAD COLLABORATION, AND MAKING THEATRE ACCESSIBLE

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Confidence: A major goal of mine is to gain confidence in my work and talent through building my skill and gaining experience. I have had a great amount of trouble with my confidence and how that affects my art and the way I create and collaborate. I find that I tend to have trouble asserting myself in groups, and inserting myself and my ideas into conversations, because of the fear of having a “wrong Idea”. Over time I have come to realize that I can not give all of me to everyone else. There needs to be something left for me. I have spent most of my life giving all of me to everything I do and I think that is a huge contributor to my low self-esteem, that and childhood trauma that I have not had the opportunity to process and heal from in a healthy way. I want to spend the next couple of years building up my experience for me. I want to continue to follow my dream for me and I have to reserve some of what is left for me. I have also spent the past several years of my life feeling the need to explain my words and actions to justify my intentions, I now know I do not have to do that anymore.

Community: In my time making theatre and making art, I have found that the thing that makes a project so fun and special is the community that is built whilst working on a project. I have made building community one of my goals because moving from high school to collegiate theatre means I have lost a lot of the connections I have built with my high school theatre company members. I find joy in making friends through art I generally find that they stick around longer, and I know they will understand the struggles of creating art and the pain that can cause sometimes.