Hispanic Americans

"…There are assumptions made about the kind of work Latinos make. I think that remains a challenge because when people are looking for Latino plays, they’re looking for plays of that “type.” Some of that gets defined by your ethnicity…"

"…Historically, musical theatre is a genre that doesn’t have a wide palette; its subjects have been very white. Thank God for Hamilton, (and In the Heights before that) for breaking down some of those doors! Before them, Zoot Suit got slaughtered when it moved to Broadway because it was too sophisticated and ahead of its time. The critics were condescendingly saying: “Don’t these people know that this is not a musical?” Actually, no one said it was a musical; it is a play with music!..."

"…For acting, I have no other place to begin besides my body, history, memories, and cultural points of reference. In my process, I’m my foundation and then the research, and additional character development gets layered on top. For writing, I admit I’ve got an agenda and I start from what I know—me…"

"I am a solo flyer. I go by dramatist or playwright. My brand is original plays that take on aspects of our shared American history that have shaped our culture. I write serious plays, but I use as much humor as possible. I also use a lot of music (original and found), and I’m not afraid to examine my characters’ sexuality…"

"…With theatre, I’m attracted to stories of social or political relevance to the world we all live together in… With film or TV, I approach them much more as an audience member—stories I’d like to see…"

"…The principal feature of the retablos I have seen and collected is the picture, the diorama, if you will, of someone’s earthly crisis, at which the divine is also present in the figure of a particular saint or Holy Virgin. This simple crudely drawn and painted image is wrought with drama, depicting a moment of powerful tension, pain, and transcendence. I took my cues from these images, and determined to use them as the motif for the moments in my life that defined me…"

"If you’re a playwright who doesn’t want to do people-on-a-couch plays, there are not a lot of avenues…You can go and do television, or you can stay and fight with organizations that aren’t really equipped to support work by people of color or experiment with form."

"…I realized that what I had been watching was a fairly remarkable hybrid storytelling form: part live theatrical event, part polished television production, part sports spectacular, part collaborative improvised dance — and so much more. It’s a art form that synthesizes tons of other art forms into what appears to be simple, mindless entertainment, and it’s fascinating…"

"Television has lapped theater in a lot of storytelling techniques — realism, depth of character, complicated storytelling…What we have that’s different in the theater is the audience in the space with us. And I’m not interested in ignoring the space between us."

"Chicago for me means life. I have lived in Chicago all my life. It keeps calling me back even though I have tried to escape. Chicago is a city filled with some of the most corruption and also some of the most courageous and successful organizing resistance overall. Chicago will always affect how I represent myself when I travel. It is home…"

"My inspiration for this play derives from a combination of my personal and the collective grief around the mass shooting in the United States. These incidents made me pay attention to the National conversation around the topic of gun violence. On social media I constantly read “lone white shooter” and I started to think about the cycle of how news is dispersed, interpreted, re-dispersed and reinterpreted. This cycle is destructive. From this news, what assumptions do we make about the shooter? About the victims? And about the moments between gunshots?..."

"The reason why I fell in love with being a playwright and why I fell in love with theatre is because I grew up in it. My first poem was published at six and called “I Am Stronger than Hate.” I proclaimed then that, “I am stronger than hate, I will open the gate, the gate to a kingdom of love, it doesn’t matter what your race, or the color of your face. I am stronger than hate,” and of why I am a poet and playwright. This work is about community."

"I had Chavo Guerrero in mind a lot when I was writing this play…Chavo’s job was to make guys look better than they were, which meant he lost a lot. And he was so skilled at it that there weren’t a lot of guys who could play that same fall-guy role for him so that he could be the champion."

"Richie, when all is said and done, is a romantic lead. There’s not a lot of romantic leads out there for Latino actors, and it allowed the industry to sort of see me as an everyman…"

"Television is art by committee…I’m lucky to have worked on some really interesting shows, but in film, you’re there to fulfill the director’s vision. If you get to work with great directors, you become a vehicle for that work."

"I never saw [Paps] as a bad guy, that’s the kind of work that I’m drawn to, stuff that’s not black or white but sits in a grey zone, where you’re not sure how to feel about things. I think that’s life."

"It’s really a play about these big ideas that don’t have any sort of definitive conclusion…What I hope people get out of it is—as uncomfortable as it is—to be able to live in these gray areas of conversation that none of us have answers to and see the humanity in people, even if you don’t agree with them."

"If you and your children were starving, if you saw violence and murder every single day, and just on the horizon is a safe country where people are allowed to dream, can make a decent living, of course you would cross the border. Any mother or father in their right mind would. We need to have compassion for this."

"To see brown bodies in this environment was exciting to me…Rural upstate New York could be anywhere in middle America…The parents being from Brooklyn, and Pop having Puerto Rican heritage, and the mom being white, makes it a quintessential American story."

"I was like, “Man, young people in Chicago need to hear these young people in Ferguson articulate that, because that’s so powerful for young people to come to that political awakening on their own—outside of academia, outside of institutions that they’ve been denied access to.” And so we were really inspired to build with them. And we came back the next week and asked them if we could launch a pop-up gallery on their campsite. So we printed the photos that we had taken the week before, we brought down easels, and we created a pop-up gallery on the camp site—that was sort of the first gesture, the first portal of this loose collective of artists that would later become #LetUsBreathe, using art as an access point for political education and engagement, turning the Ferguson protest’s occupation into an art gallery…"

"…The play does not purport to be the play of the community—it’s really about that artist’s idiosyncratic voice and what that encounter elicits in them…"

"When I left South Texas, I realized that I became the other. I was the token of the room. Most of my friends were white so when I went to a party or a wedding or a work function, I would scan the room and only see my face in the people who were serving the drinks or passing around the appetizers. I realized I was the hanging fruit in the room, the living and breathing statue in the room, the object in the middle of the photograph, surrounded by white eyes."

"A play is like a free-flowing poem in some ways. The play, as you write, will tell you what the structure will be. But, sometimes you forget to ask those questions as you write and you end up spending a lot of time trying to find the essence of the play…"

"It’s what I know best. It’s roots. It’s Dazed And Confused and Friday Night Lights. It’s border life and El Pato and Whataburger and getting drunk in a back of a pickup. It’s dancing every weekend to country music, or Tejano music, or club music. It’s the beach. It’s, for better or worse, home."

"I call myself a citizen artist, because one of the things I do is try to get my playwrights — especially my graduate playwrights — interested in the world. It’s about how you connect art to culture and community here and now, and how we are vital to the expression of our community..."

"For all the booksellers and librarians who've supported me this past decade, I'm so grateful that you've kept this dream of mine alive and well. And lastly, for all my readers, but especially the ones who have struggled with life. You know who you are. I know who you are. There are so many more pages in our stories, so please don't close the book. Keep turning and turning and turning."

"I like to diversify, so for me writing an article for a magazine is as exciting as writing a play. And I think if you open yourself up to it, lots of opportunities come forward that are not the opportunities that were going to be yours."

"My grandfather saw a lot of violence and a lot of poverty, and really was incredibly, deeply tortured by it. It was always this elephant in the room that we never talked about growing up. He spoke fluent Spanish, but never in front of us. I think he was really afraid that we would be judged and held back by our Mexican heritage, like he was. Part of writing this play was like digging up my own family ghosts and things that I personally had always been afraid to talk about, because my family never talked about them. Also, because I’m Mexican and I’m white, I often struggle with wondering if I’m “allowed” to tell stories through this lens; growing up, the white kids always told me I was Latina or “ethnic,” and the Chicano kids always told me I was a “gringa,” so I never really felt like I fit in anywhere…"

"The best apology isn't words. The best apology is action taken to make things right."

"Past alarming thoughts are getting stronger and stronger, like a Death-Cast alert ringing through my head. I'm the only one who knows my full story no matter what my father believes."

"Paz is quiet. I should have discussed this with him privately. I definitely don't want to pressure him into doing promotions for a company that upended his life, I only want his wounds to heal. Everyone around the world will see this campaign. Maybe that's a bad thing. The last thing I want is to invite more chaos into Paz's life. Now I'm scared I'm doing just that. Paz walks up to my father. For a moment I'm nervous he's going to hit him, but he shakes his hand instead. "Thank you," he says before hugging Ms. Gloria as Mr. Rolando cheers."

"Death-Cast didn't call last night, but if I had to die, I'd love for it to be in Alano's arms. It took forever to fall asleep, but Alano soldiered through the night with me. And now he's staying in LA. I roll over in bed, wanting to wrap my arms around him, but he's gone. My chest tightens. Did he break his promise and abandon me? I check my phone, and there's no missed call, no text explaining himself. I gotta ground myself. Alano wouldn't ghost. Ghosts don't hold you all night and beg for you to live."

"I cry about wanting to die, about wanting to be reincarnated as my mom's new baby, and about wanting the fresh start that winning my trial compromised. I wanna self-harm so bad, I don't even care how. Cutting. Burning. Smashing Orion's big-ass book into my head over and over. Anything can be a weapn, which is frightening. "I'm so scared of myself," I cry out, hating my brain for making me my own greatest enemy. "You don't have to be," Alano says, locking his arms around me. I'm a sword, and he's my shield, protecting me from myself."

"I'm on edge, scared of learning more, but if there's a world where I can have a future with Alano, even just as a friend, I can't be haunted by his past with Rio. And if I'm ever gonna confront this, it's now, when Alano is still in LA to ground me."

"Unfortunately, scars don't just appear out of nowhere. They are all wounds first. Some painful, others not. The loud cries of her son let Gloria know that Pazito's wound has been ripped open again before it can heal; she's grateful that his wound is metaphorical, not physical, but pain is pain. A body needs a survivor's spirit to keep it alive. Only then will it heal, only then will it close all wounds, only then will it scar, and only with time can a scar fade. one day, Gloria and Pazito will be survivors with faded scars, but today is not that day."

"If I'm gonna have any chance of surviving past Friday, I'll need to finally embrace all the people working to keep me alive: my mom and stepdad, who need me around to be a big brother to their baby; my therapist, who can guide me through my borderline brain; my psychiatrist, who can up meds or prescribe something better; and now the boy who has become my life coach and the shield to my sword."

"My father comes over and shakes my hand too. "Excellent negotiating, mi hijo," he says. "I have taken your words to heart, and I hope you see that I can be receptive to your needs. I cannot help but be overprotective as your father, but I will work harder to find a balance that allows you more freedoms. It would mean the world if you will reconsider giving Death-Cast your full commitment, both in its service and in one day serving." If I'm granted the life I want, I can see myself leading in the future. "Maybe," I say. "I will do what I can to regain your confidence," my father says. That is a long road, but it's as if we've walked miles of it tonight."

"There is no one answer about why women are historically, across just about all of civilization, treated this way. It’s economics, it’s religion, it’s the reality of sex and pregnancy for women. It’s these value systems that get passed down from generation to generation that need questioning…Women haven’t survived for eons by being “weak” and “emotional.” We’ve survived by being a hell of a lot tougher and braver than we’re given credit for…"

"My End Day is coming up," Paz whispers. "No one knows their End Day in advance," I say. I never have, and I definitely don't now. "This Friday, July thirty-first. The day I killed Dad is when I'm destined to kill myself." "You're not destined to take your own life, Paz." "I am. That's why Death-Cast hasn't called. It wasn't my time yet." "Now isn't your time either. We're living to one hundred, remember?" "I'm not strong enough to keep surviving, Alano." "We're building your strength. You'll be starting DBT and-" "No, I..." Paz sobs, his body caving in. "I feel like a liar when I talk about the future."

"I refuse to let the only future Paz believes in be the one where he kills himself."

"Andrea is not delusional. She knows she is guilty of many crimes, more than Joaquin is aware of himself, and his investigation will discover some, ensuring her incarceration, and the remaining crimes Andrea shall take to her grave. She doesn't fear death, but she does fear for her daughter's future. That is why Andrea Donahue is at a campaign rally, ready to tell the world her truth (even if her truth is built on many lies) so she can not only exact revenge against Joaquin Rosa, but use her voice to help elect Carson Dunst as the next president, all so he can pardon her if she is to be convicted."

"As the audience cheers for Andrea, she heads toward the stage's exit, snaking around Carson Dunst. "Pardon me," she says, trading winks with the next president of the United States. Then she basks in the chants for the death of Death-Cast, knowing she has played her role in destroying their reputation, but the true destruction is yet to come."

"I'm up against a world that doesn't know me but hates me anyway, but I'm gonna keep fighting until my life looks like my dream obituary. But if I fail at getting cast in a mega-hit franchise or winning an Oscar or receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, this life is still worth living because of Alano Rosa. And one day- one day really fucking soon- I can't wait to tell Alano how much I love him."

"If Joaquin thought he was losing power over Alano before, he now knows he is completely powerless as Alano and Paz stare into each other's eyes like Deckers who have fallen in love on their End Day. He can only hope these boys will not be the cause of each other's deaths."

"There are some Deckers who manage to live perfect End Days, but not everyone's got a life where you can get a happy End Day. Some of us got wounds and brains and hearts that need more than twenty-four hours to heal. Days, weeks, months, even years. That time can be suffocating, and planning those futures can feel like telling lies, but love saved us tonight, and as long as we stay together, love will keep us alive."

"The thing is, I can remember my entire life. This includes before I was technically born. This might not seem significant to anyone that I can remember being in the womb except for the fact that while it's true that my father has never told me the secret to Death-Cast, he did tell my mother while she was pregnant. I've known the secret since before I was born, before I could absorb the words, before I could make sense of what was said. My parents stopped talking about the secret around me when I was four because they were scared of me learning it, which only made me keep my own secret from them. On the first End Day, I went into the Vast Vault at Death-Cast to see the secret for myself. I shouldn't have gone in. If I hadn't, the Death's Dozen might be alive today. I don't know. All I know is that love will not survive once Paz discovers I ruined his life."

"Growing up in the Pico/Union barrio of downtown Los Angeles in the 1970's was to be born into abject poverty and violence. And even that fed into telling stories and finding ways of surviving. I can see now that I was always a playwright, I just didn't know or have the language for it then."

"I am often inspired by actors and I fall in love with them, so I write towards their strengths and gifts. Sometimes, it is merely about logic and making sense of the poetry in my head and how it translates that can be hard to articulate…"

"I have a strange love and affinity for South Texas and Texas in general. I carry a bit of dissonance for loving a place so many people outside of Texas hate. The reputation Texas has in places that I have lived is a rough one. The politics have skewed so far to the right and I’m usually in an environment that is mostly liberal so I find myself having to defend a place I no longer live in. But the Texas I know, the people I know, the experiences I’ve lived don’t always sync up with the image of Texas at the moment."

"…I’ve been thinking a lot in terms of how growing up in the context impacts a person’s sense of place in the world. My sense of it. Never quite believing that anything is permanent, uncontested. Never quite landing. You always are a little bit “observing”…"