Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
Diane Rodriguez was an American theatre artist who directed, wrote and performed. An OBIE Award winning actress, she was known for using comedy to confront various forms of oppression, often with special attention to issues of gender and sexuality.
Luis Alfaro is a Chicano performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist.
The Cesar Chavez Convocation was an annual event at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) during the month of May, commemorating Cesar Chavez and his legacy. Keynote speakers were invited to partake in the convocation to honor Cesar Chavez by relating social justice issues to the Hispanic and Latino community on campus. The convocation aimed to create a space where students could have dialogue about engaging with social justice issues and leadership. This annual event was organized largely by the Chicanx/Latinx Resource Center, also known as El Centro, and students of UC Santa Cruz. The event was open to the Santa Cruz community and was free of charge. The 16th annual convocation took place in 2019, with a focus on community organization. In 2020, the event was renamed to Nuestras Raíces: The Art of Community Empowerment.
Jerry Ruiz is an American theatre director.
Marisela Treviño Orta is a third-generation Mexican-American playwright and poet from Lockhart, Texas. She attended the University of San Francisco where she received an MFA in Writing. While she was trained in poetry, Treviño Orta began writing plays after becoming the resident poet for El Teatro Jornalero!, a Latino theatre company which focuses on social justice issues.
Latino theatre presents a wide range of aesthetic approaches, dramatic structures, and themes, ranging from love, romance, immigration, border politics, nation building, incarceration, and social justice. Whether of a linguistic, ethnic, political, cultural or sexual nature, the plays often have a social justice component involving Latino people living in the United States. The Oxcart by René Marqués, Marisol by José Rivera (playwright), and In the Heightsby Lin-Manuel Miranda are examples of staged Broadway plays. There is also a strong tradition of Latino avant-garde and absurdist theatre, which double as political satires; prime examples include The Masses are Asses by Pedro Pietri and United States of Banana by Giannina Braschi.
Monica Palacios is a Chicana lesbian American playwright and performer, specialising in Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian themes. She has charted the intersection of queer and Latina identities in Latinx communities, with their mutually marginalising impact. A trailblazer stand-up comedian in the 1980s and 1990s, Palacios is now better known for her work as an award winning playwright and activist. Her works are taught in many schools and colleges, where she has served frequently as a director of student theatre.
Beto O'Byrne is a multiethnic playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He has written 14 full-length plays which been produced in major cities including New York City, Austin, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. He has been nominated for numerous awards and has participated in playwright festivals across the United States. He is perhaps best known for founding the multiethnic theater collective Radical Evolution.
Georgina Leanse H. Escobar is a Mexican-American playwright, raised on the frontier in Juárez, with a strong sense of her dual nationality. Her plays explore themes of fantasy, mythology, witchcraft, feminism and the breakdown of the family. Escobar also conducts artistic youth workshops, directs musicals, as well as performing translation work.
Matthew Paul Olmos is an American playwright from Los Angeles, California. Now living in Brooklyn, New York, he is most well known for his play the living'life of the daughter mira, which won Arizona Theatre Company's 2015 National Latino Playwriting Award and was named one of the Best Unproduced Latin@ Plays 2017 by the 50 Playwrights Project., and so go the ghosts of mexico a three-play cycle about the US-Mexico drug wars.
Herbert Siguenza is an American actor, writer, visual artist, and performer based in California. He is best known for co-founding the theater performance group Culture Clash, which is still active since its founding in 1984, more than thirty years later. He is currently the playwright-in-residence at the San Diego Rep and has continued to pursue many solo ventures in addition to his group work.
Henry Godinez is a Cuban-American actor, director, and professor of theatre who is committed to the production of Latino theatre in Chicago. He has also directed and acted in New York City, Kansas City, Indiana, Colorado, Washington D.C., and San Diego. He is the Resident Artistic Associate at the Goodman Theatre, founded and serves as director of their biennial Latino Theater Festival, and has directed and performed in multiple productions at the Goodman. Additionally, he is the co-founder and former artistic director of Teatro Vista, a Latino Theatre company in Chicago.
The Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) is a national movement launched in 2012, which promotes Latino equity in American theater through convening, scholarship, advocacy, and art. The goals, activities, and methods of its actions are determined, championed, and carried out by the LTC's volunteer, self-organized steering committee of predominantly U.S.-based theater-makers and scholars of Latina/o/x theater, working together and with community partners around the country. The LTC was founded by eight well-known Latinx playwrights, directors, and scholars, led by Karen Zacarias, who was hailed by American Theater Magazine as one of the most produced playwrights in the United States and who was named as a United States Artists Fellow in 2021. The group included Antonio Sonera, Kristoffer Diaz, Anne García-Romero, Lisa Portes, Tlaloc Rivas, Jose Luis Valenzuela, and Enrique Urueta. Abigail Vega served as the first LTC producer from 2014-2019. Beginning in May 2019, Armando Huipe succeeded Vega as the LTC Producer. Beginning in June 2021, Jacqueline Flores succeeded Huipe as the LTC Producer.
Laurie Woolery is a Latinx playwright, director, and educator based in New York City. She is the director of Public Works at The Public Theater and founding member of The Sol Project. In 2014 she was awarded a Fuller Road Artist Residency for Women Directors of Color. She is best known for her 2017 musical adaptation of As You Like It.
Carlos Murillo is an American playwright, director, and professor of Puerto Rican and Colombian descent. Based in Chicago, Murillo is a professor and head of the Playwriting program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. He is best known for his play Dark Play or Stories for Boys.
Jorge Alfonso Huerta is a Chicano scholar, author, and theater director. He specializes in Chicano and United States Latinx Theatre. He has written and edited several books specializing in Chicano theatre and is considered to be an authoritative expert in his field.
Jacob Padrón is the Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre. He is also the Artistic Director of The Sol Project and a co-founder of the Artists' Anti-Racism Coalition.
Chantal Rodriguez is the Associate Dean of the Yale School of Drama and a scholar of Latino theater.
Carmen Leon is an American painter and teacher known for her work in the Watsonville, Santa Cruz area.
