So, why did you focus specifically on Latine theatre?
José Luis: Really my purpose was a need to change. I’m from Mexico City, Mexico. I had no idea about the stereotypes of Mexicans that existed in the United States.
Nidia: Yeah. Mexico City is a gigantic, gorgeous, very international place.
José Luis: Yeah. So, that was really my vision. We have to change the perception. We have to really talk to the community about what the issues are. Our company only does theatre that reflects the United States Latinx experience. We want to elevate that dialogue and nurture the Latino talent in the United States. I love Latino theatre. It’s our mission as a company; it’s my mission as a director.
Nidia: Yeah. I feel like Los Angeles/Chicano culture is so influential to Latine culture in the rest of the United States for sure. I think it’s always going to be that way, such a force, and such an important voice in America.
José Luis: To me, specificity is so important in the art world. We have to know who we’re talking to as artists.
Nidia: Who were your mentors?
José Luis: Well, I must say I have a lot of mentors. I think Jorge Huerta was a big influence in the theatre for me. But during the Chicano theatre movement, a lot of people from around the world came and were with us and directed us, gave us workshops and trained us. People like Enrique Buenaventura, Santiago Garcia from Colombia, Mariano Leyva from Los Mascarones from Mexico, Luis Valdez, Peter Brook. We had a lot of influence from great Latin American theatre.
But now, how I met my mentor, Stein Winge, who was my real mentor for forty years, and who I still talk to at least once a month… When I was fifteen years old and I was living in a little town in Mexico, the tarot cards were read to me, and they told me a lot of things that have come true. One of the things that they told me was that I was going to meet this man and his name was going to be Stein and said that he was going to be a very important person in my life. So, I was hired at the LATC first as an accountant.
Nidia: Did you actually know how to do accounting, or did you just say you were a great accountant?
José Luis: I have a great mind for math. In El Teatro de la Esperanza, we did the accounting, the productions, the costumes, everything. So we learned things.
I was working at the LATC and then doing my theatre work at night in the rehearsal rooms. They allowed me to do a reading of La Victima and they liked the play, so they produced it. So I was directing La Victima, and I went to ask where the producer was, and someone said, “Oh, she went to pick up Stein at the airport.” And I go, “Oh wow, that’s the man who’s going to be important to me.”
I had no idea who he was or what he was coming to do. I went to his office and I said, “You don’t know me and I don’t know you but you’re supposed to be a very important man in my life. So here I am. I’m José Luis”
Nidia: Yes, I love that!
When I think about people that I consider to be my mentors, it goes far beyond just being a person you look up to who is teaching you or taking you under their wing in the profession.
José Luis: He was here to direct Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters and I said, “I can just sit in your rehearsal. I can bring you coffee. I can do whatever.” And he says, “No, no, I don’t need assistance.” Somehow we went to a party together, we drank, and he said, “Yeah, why don’t you come over and we can start something?” That began my process with him.
He came back and did a play called Barabbas, and after that he said he was going to Europe and wanted to know if I would go. He didn’t have any money to pay me, so he asked the cast if they would help me buy my plane ticket. They all put money in, and they bought my plane ticket. And I told my wife, “I’m going to be gone for six weeks, and let’s try to figure it out.”
Nine years after that, he was able to find the production company to hire me. We did all kinds of operas and plays in Europe for many, many years. I would direct in LA at the LATC, and then for a few months I would go and assist him anywhere in the world that he wanted me to be. He would come to my rehearsals and give me notes. I would go to his rehearsal and give him notes.
We had a great relationship, a beautiful relationship, and we still do. He’s old now and fragile, but I still call him once a month at least to see how he’s doing and talk about theatre and our dreams or what we should be doing.
Nidia: The way you talk about your relationship with your mentor resonates with me. When I think about people that I consider to be my mentors, it goes far beyond just being a person you look up to who is teaching you or taking you under their wing in the profession. You become friends and collaborators as well. It grows into much more of an exchange of ideas and thoughts and guidance. I think that’s what a mentor is meant to be.
José Luis: Yeah, and it’s a lifetime mentorship. What happens with a mentor is they grow as much as you do. They keep growing. You need to keep up.
Nidia: That’s amazing.
José Luis: Something really important is that I don’t want people to think that it’s me who did all of this. It’s not. It’s the Latino Theater Company that has really helped me to be here. We’ve been together for thirty-seven years, the same group of people. All this growth that I’m talking about, it’s not myself doing it. It is Latino Theater Company moving forward as a company. I happen to be the face of it.
Ensembles can be the future of the American theatre. The Chicano theatre movement was really a movement of ensemble theatre companies beginning with El Teatro Campesino, El Teatro de la Esperanza, El Teatro de la Gente, Su Teatro, and on.
I love the Latinx Theatre Commons because it’s a huge ensemble of artists who are trying to work for the future of Latino theatre. This is what the Commons means. It’s a collective group of people in benefit of a whole community of artists and a whole community who needs theatre. This idea is what creates a movement; it’s what creates history. In an ensemble, it’s not about you. It’s about the benefit of the other. It’s about the benefit of the whole. That’s what I feel the Commons is about: everybody’s benefit.
Movements are complicated and difficult. That’s why they’re movements, because they keep evolving. You have to understand the Chicano theatre movement is a response to the American theatre that doesn’t acknowledge us or take into account who we are historically. We have to make our opportunities, our own work. Theatre is a dialogue with your community. That’s the reason we do it: to have a dialogue with our community, with our people, and with the audience, whoever they are.
People say, “Well, we’re not going to give money to the arts. We’re going to give money to social justice.” I say, “That’s what we do.”
The goal is not to mold our work to fit into what is traditionally recognized as the American theatrical canon, but for our work to be recognized as equally important and vital to the ecology of our field.
Nidia: Yeah. Theatre is vital to social change.
José Luis: That’s right.
Nidia: It’s all about humanity and community.
José Luis: It’s exactly about it. We are observers of human behavior.
Nidia: I totally agree. We’re talking about how much energy goes into working in Latine theatre. The goal is not to mold our work to fit into what is traditionally recognized as the American theatrical canon, but for our work to be recognized as equally important and vital to the ecology of our field.
This work in advocacy has been going on for decades, but that takes energy. How do you balance working for change while preserving your energy?
José Luis: Our goal has never been to be recognized by the American theatre. That’s too much energy. We don’t have time for that.
Nidia: Yeah, I hear that. Let’s just make our work.
José Luis: Yeah. We do our work and people say, “Well, that’s a very LA play.” It’s okay, that’s our community. I think we speak to many other communities, but it’s not necessarily our goal. And it’s not our goal to please or to pander to people to produce our work.
