Shayna Schlosberg: I’d love to hear more about your mentors.
Olga Sanchez Saltveit: José Carrillo came to mind first. I met him through our work at the Seattle Group Theatre. He was a theatremaker, a writer, an actor, a poet, and a clarinetist and flautist. He was always an inspiration. He was somebody who celebrated Latinidad and Chicanidad.
Then there was Rubén Sierra, who was with Teatro Nacionales de Aztlan (TENAZ) and started Seattle Group Theatre. His company, Teatro del Piojo, was founded in Seattle, Washington, inspired by Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino. He formed his own company because he wanted to also be part of the movimiento and transform the experiences of Chicanos and Mexicanos through teatro. Seattle Group Theatre was one of the few multiethnic theatre companies in the country at the time. He wrote a play called When the Blues Chase Up a Rabbit and asked me if I would direct a reading in Seattle that he and his friends and collaborators in Seattle could see and give feedback. He was based in Portland by then. I directed two or three iterations of this reading, and we would always have a conversation afterwards. Then the play was selected by Milagro Theatre for a world premiere the following fall. In the spring, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And he said, “I don’t know what kind of shape I’m going to be in September, so I’m going to step away from that responsibility.” He went to José González, executive artistic director of Milagro, and said, “Why don’t you hire Olga? She’s very familiar with the play, and she has directed two or three readings of it. I trust her with the work.” So, I got hired.
Rubén’s play is about a young Chicano man who gets hit by a bus when he’s in high school, and he is now paraplegic and needs constant care. He’s in a wheelchair, and his dad’s got a terminal illness, and he knows he’s dying. Now, this play was written before Rubén has his prognosis. So we’re in the rehearsal process, and Rubén would come in, and he’s losing weight. He’s very thin. He would sit and talk with us about what it was like to know you’re dying, which was the most generous act in service of the work.
The Latinx Theatre Commons inspired me to become an academic. It pointed to the need in the field to raise the visibility of Latine/x theatre through the archive.
In the play, the reason the kid was in the wheelchair was that he had presented an essay in front of his class and, because he was Chicano, the teacher doubted that he had written it. He was so frustrated that he just ran into the street and got hit by a school bus. So, it’s a metaphor for the damage done in supposedly trustworthy places when our capacities are undermined based on our identities. Ultimately, what the father is asking him to do is like, “Get over it. You’re in a wheelchair now. Come on, let’s go. You got to be the man of the house.” It was a beautiful play.
Rubén was in the hospital near the end of his life. I went to visit him, and this was I think the last time I visited him. He drew me in closer because he was weak, and he said, “Now it’s your turn. You have to carry it forward. You have to carry it on.”
Shayna: Oh, wow.
Olga: I was handed this thing, whatever it was, to serve whatever this mission is moving forward. He was a mentor, not only in that he handed me this baton, but in his generosity putting the work ahead of himself, ahead of his own discomfort—and in his generosity in inviting me to come and direct his play at the one Hispanic identified theatre company in seven states. He gave me this really beautiful opportunity. Rubén sticks with me. He died too young.
A third mentor is Juliette Carrillo, who I met at the Latinx Theatre Commons Convening in Boston. She’s a super accomplished director and an inspiring artist with a tremendous heart. She has been a friend to help me navigate shifting gears into academia. The Latinx Theatre Commons inspired me to become an academic. It pointed to the need in the field to raise the visibility of Latine/x theatre through the archive. To paraphrase el maestro Jorge Huerta (another mentor!): if it’s not written about, it never existed. So much of our early work is undocumented, no pun intended. I had spent decades working in Latine theatre but found I couldn’t be a teacher in higher ed without the terminal degree, so I decided to get the PhD. But I really didn’t know what I was getting into. Juliette has talked me down off the ledge more than a few times, which has been great.
Shayna: Those are the important relationships.
You’re going to do important work because you’re already coming in with a desire to be in a space where you can make change.
Olga: I would love to hear about your mentors.
Shayna: I’ve struggled to find those. My first mentor is definitely my mom. Truly, there’s no way I would’ve pursued the arts without her. She’s someone I go to for advice. She has been a critical mentor to me, which I feel eternally lucky for.
Aside from her, it took me a long time to find mentors. There was virtually no one when I was focusing on performance that I developed that relationship with. When I moved into management, there was interest in people mentoring me. Frankly, the person that I developed a mentorship relationship with was an older white man, but there were limitations to our ability to connect on some things.
I expressed frustration about my struggles to find a mentor in the management space with a friend of mine, Pia Agrawal, who is now the executive director of Staten Island Arts. She’s just a few years older than me, but she has been a great mentor to me. She connected me to a program called Women of Color in the Arts Leadership Through Mentorship that opened me up to a whole new community of women leaders and people who wanted to be mentors and who understood the challenge of finding mentors. The executive director of the program, Kaisha Johnson, became a mentor to me, and I ended up working for her. That has been a really special community as I found my way. I’m no longer in the theatre space.
Olga: What?
Shayna: Yeah, I know. It happens. Shocking. I miss working in the performing arts, and I know there is a lot of need for new management and new leadership in the performing arts. So likely I’ll come back. But I’ve shifted full-time into racial equity work and diversity, equity, and inclusion work. That shift was influenced by my relationship with Women of Color in the Arts.
