My penchant for the arts didn’t completely come out of nowhere – my paternal grandfather is a poet and journalist, and he instilled in me an early love for storytelling. For much of my childhood I’d write short stories, but it wasn’t until high school that I found theatre to be my favorite medium for storytelling. I was instantly enraptured by the communal and ephemeral nature of theatre – it is a story that only exists in a singular time and space, when audience and storytellers come together. 

Shortly after, I learned what kinds of stories I wanted to tell on the stage – border stories, with border voices. In the past seven years or so, as the border has become a subject of political contention, and as pundits and politicians paint a singular portrait of the border, I’ve found myself deeply in discomfort at the way the border has been presented. The story being told is one of crime, suffering, and contention, and it is entirely unrepresentative of the totality of the border experience. The least that I can do is try to uplift other voices and stories of the borderlands, to create a slightly wider portrait of the land I call home. I seek to tell these stories on border stages, but beyond the border as well, where they need to be heard most. 

This course has provided the perfect opportunity to refine my collaborative skills, particularly in encouraging me to collaborate across different mediums, some which I’m familiar in and some which I’m decidedly less well-versed in. We began the semester with the Playwriting module, a familiar medium where I felt safer in working with someone else to create a single piece. The following two modules, Dance and Devising, definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone, into a place where my lack of familiarity helped me to invite collaboration. I concluded the semester with the Design module, a medium I have more experience in, and by this point I was a more skilled collaborator, and I was able to efficiently bring my prior experience to the project. 

As the academic year comes to a close and the summer fast approaches, I find myself eager to collaborate on my theatre endeavors for the summer. I have a theatre company in El Paso, Teatro Quetzal, composed largely of old classmates from my theatre high school program. They are all variously talented in a vast array of fields, from writing, to composing, to designing, to illustrating, to singing, and I am excited to work with them to create something which I never could have done on my own. Likewise, I look forward to bringing collaboration to my next year of theatre education at UT Austin. 

The border showed up in almost every project I worked on for the PCP course. In the Playwriting module, I wrote about the sight of the border from Scenic Drive in El Paso. In the Dance module, I created a small dance inspired by a portion of choreography from a quinceañera I was part of – a celebration extremely common in El Paso. When it came time to work on our FOPP, we chose to create an installation that commented on interconnectedness at the El Paso-Juarez border. 

The people, the history, the music, the voices, and the places of the border are continuously at the center of my work. Even when my current project doesn’t directly concern the border or a related subject matter, my upbringing and lived experiences influence how I approach every project I work on.

In recent months, I’ve started to look to the work of other Latino theatre-makers beyond the border for inspiration. In particular, I’ve been looking into the work of Latino dramatists in Texas, and Latino theatre companies, such as Teatro Vivo in Austin and Cara Mia Theatre in Dallas. I’m deeply inspired by the collaborative work by these companies and their members, and am trying to bring similar values to my work as a playwright.  

Being at UT Austin is a step in that aspiration. As the son of immigrants who don’t hold a collegiate degree, opting to go to college nine hours away from home seemed an unattainable goal when I first set out on my college admissions journey. And yet – I know find myself at the tail end of my first year at UT, having navigated college life fairly well thus far. In my first year, I directed a children’s show, sound designed two plays, and did technical design for another two plays. It was an incredibly busy year, but likewise invigorating and rewarding. Next year looks to be an even busier year for me, as I aim to sound design a show for the department, and direct a musical with a student theatre company. It may seem much, but I am eager to tackle this coming year at UT.

Another key part of my aspirations for the coming year is to have my work read and produced beyond the campus of UT. There is a thriving community of Latino theatre makers all over Austin, Texas, and the U.S., and I’d like to tap into these communities and share my work. There are dozens if not hundreds of play festivals in a given year, and I’d like to submit to more of them in the coming year. Teatro Vivo in Austin hosts its LatinX New Play Festival every spring, and Stages in Houston hosts the Sin Muros Festival around the same time. Both are part of rich communities of Latino theatre, and this year I will submit my work to these and more, as I aspire to share my theatre artistry beyond the borderland and campus.