First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"âŚwhat Iâve learned about it throughout the years is that itâs my way of giving voice to the often voiceless; I write mostly about the sort of people on the opposite end of flush, and so when I hear them speak in this kinda jagged form of poetry, it moves me in a way I canât even really describe. Technically speaking, some actors sing it beautifully, others canât wrap their minds around it."
"âŚWith theatre, Iâm 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 memberâstories Iâd like to seeâŚ"
"âŚI like the word impressionistic more than experimental for some reason. I think experimental, I think of abstract language met with geometric stage gestures, while my writing tends to be worlds and people that we know and recognize, but the rules have changed on them. And on us, the audience, but the struggle is that I want the audiences to not spend time trying to figure out the rules, rather to accept them and see what it means to them as the world unfolds."
"âŚsee theatre that moves you, theatre that challenges you, and theatre that bores you to the point that, as a beautiful human being once told me, instead of focusing on the performance, you begin attempting to levitate in your chairâŚ"
"âŚI think borders do not protect us, they wall us in. I think White Supremacy can be defeated by people reclaiming their histories and seeing how structural racism once excluded many from Whiteness that it now includesâa testament to its problematic construct. I think cultures, like our personal identities, are fluid, not rigid, and inform each other, and we should celebrate that as well. I believe that when we see this history, we can understand that the people and the forces that are working so damn hard these days to keep us separated from one another are a part of the long arc of history that has been doing so since this country began, and probably well before thatâŚ"
"âŚThe reason I write the plays is to open up some sort of dialogue or just to have this in the conversation. I mean what I would love is to have the guyâthe Republican who thinks that the only issue is keeping brown people awayâhe is my ideal audience. That's who I would love to have in the audience. So I get a little bit tripped up because, on one hand, I want plays that my family can go to. You don't have to be an artistic person. You can go in and actually get something from it."
"âŚThereâs momentum about making our presence known. Weâre here. Weâre Latino playwrights and theatre professionals. Eventually thereâs going to be a tipping point and more of our stories will become part of the American canon. I write what I know and for now I focus on Latinos because going through school, I longed to read about my experienceâŚ"
"âŚI think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time, and that's a great way to make a writerâŚ"
"âŚI think, from being an actor, I got the gift of understanding, respecting, and admiring what actors do and the ability to speak in a language that is useful to themâŚ"
"I hear a chavalo named Lin-Manuel in New York is pretty good."
"âŚI 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 â and so much more. Itâs a art form that synthesizes tons of other art forms into what appears to be simple, mindless entertainment, and itâs fascinatingâŚ"
"âŚThere are assumptions made about the kind of work Latinos make. I think that remains a challenge because when people are looking for Latino plays, theyâre looking for plays of that âtype.â Some of that gets defined by your ethnicityâŚ"
"âŚAs I was visualizing the play, before I even started writing it, I just imagined three characters and their lives happening, their stories happening, on top of each other. It just visually felt like a fugue to me. If you read music, you can picture a Bach fugue. You have one line and the line can come back inverted and theyâll be playing on top of each other and I was like, thatâs cool. That feels like something to me. I also was excited about combining this Latin world and this very western music classics worldâŚ"
"âŚItâs more complex because the longer I am writing, and living, I am coming to understand that there is a deep truth that we all have these experiences in some way or another. While we might not all be multi-ethnic (or at least not consciously presenting or celebrating it), we all have multiple identities at play. And itâs not just our genetic or familial cultures, but our societies, our social circles, all the complex ways we come to be who we are."
"âŚI believe that the more specific you write, the more universal it becomes. I see plays that arenât Latino all the time. Why shouldnât my work speak to a broad audience? What if theatre becomes a little more balanced? I believe that as the Latino middle class grows, theyâll buy tickets if thereâs theatre for them."
"âŚFor me, interviewing was like being a detective and listening for cues into a story. Ana Deavere Smith says that as an actor she listens for emotions. As a writer I listen for both emotions and details. People sometimes get emotional and sometimes they get descriptive when recalling a memory. Sometimes it seems people are visualizing what they see. Other times memories involve the senses, like the smell of burnt beans, or nanaâs eucalyptus leavesâŚ"
"To see brown bodies in this environment was exciting to meâŚRural upstate New York could be anywhere in middle AmericaâŚThe parents being from Brooklyn, and Pop having Puerto Rican heritage, and the mom being white, makes it a quintessential American story."
"Itâs really a play about these big ideas that donât have any sort of definitive conclusionâŚWhat I hope people get out of it isâas uncomfortable as it isâto 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 donât agree with them."
"Television is art by committeeâŚIâm lucky to have worked on some really interesting shows, but in film, youâre there to fulfill the directorâs vision. If you get to work with great directors, you become a vehicle for that work."
"There is no one answer about why women are historically, across just about all of civilization, treated this way. Itâs economics, itâs religion, itâs the reality of sex and pregnancy for women. Itâs these value systems that get passed down from generation to generation that need questioningâŚWomen havenât survived for eons by being âweakâ and âemotional.â Weâve survived by being a hell of a lot tougher and braver than weâre given credit forâŚ"
"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 Iâm Mexican and Iâm white, I often struggle with wondering if Iâm âallowedâ to tell stories through this lens; growing up, the white kids always told me I was Latina or âethnic,â and the Chicano kids always told me I was a âgringa,â so I never really felt like I fit in anywhereâŚ"
"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."
"Richie, when all is said and done, is a romantic lead. Thereâs not a lot of romantic leads out there for Latino actors, and it allowed the industry to sort of see me as an everymanâŚ"
"If youâre a playwright who doesnât want to do people-on-a-couch plays, there are not a lot of avenuesâŚYou can go and do television, or you can stay and fight with organizations that arenât really equipped to support work by people of color or experiment with form."
"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 homeâŚ"
"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 âI Am Stronger than Hate.â I proclaimed then that, âI am stronger than hate, I will open the gate, the gate to a kingdom of love, it doesnât matter what your race, or the color of your face. I am stronger than hate,â 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 playâŚChavoâs 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 werenât a lot of guys who could play that same fall-guy role for him so that he could be the champion."
"Television has lapped theater in a lot of storytelling techniques â realism, depth of character, complicated storytellingâŚWhat we have thatâs different in the theater is the audience in the space with us. And Iâm not interested in ignoring the space between us."
"âŚIâve been thinking a lot in terms of how growing up in the context impacts a personâs 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 âobservingââŚ"
"âŚThe play does not purport to be the play of the communityâitâs really about that artistâs idiosyncratic voice and what that encounter elicits in themâŚ"
"âŚmore than half the struggle is putting the pencil to the paper and trusting. If trust is too hard right now, know that page is the one place where you can always go back and use your eraser."
"I pretty much live in the details of them, and they teach me while Iâm writing. I donât come to it thinking, âI want this character to serve this function in the play.â I have a very inside out approach as opposed to outside inâŚ"
"As I mature as an artist and human being, what wants to âexpressâ itself through any of the areas I love: acting, directing, writing, singing, teaching and storytellingâall of it has a mind and heart of its own now! My task now is to stay out of the way and let it have its way with me! Itâs a âbeginnerâs mindâ with every encounter!"
"âŚHistorically, musical theatre is a genre that doesnât 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: âDonât these people know that this is not a musical?â Actually, no one said it was a musical; it is a play with music!..."
"Itâs a text and movement conjuring of Latina archetypes and the women who embody themâ past, present, and future. There are archetypes/stereotypes that are often placed upon Latinas (i.e. La Virgen, La Llorona, hot tempered, sexy, etc.) and I wanted to know what happens if the images we think we understand are, in fact, more complicated and more human than we thought? And then what happens if those âimagesâ not only talk to us, but each other too?..."
"âŚwith any story there are infinite ways to tell it, infinite character arcs to follow, when you drop the needle into the story, and when you pick the needle up."
"Donât let anyone âshouldâ all over you and donât âshouldâ all over yourself. Writers: nobody knows the story you want to tell better than you do. You get to decide what feedback serves you and the rest of it you can leave behindâŚ"
"âŚFor acting, I have no other place to begin besides my body, history, memories, and cultural points of reference. In my process, Iâm my foundation and then the research, and additional character development gets layered on top. For writing, I admit Iâve got an agenda and I start from what I knowâmeâŚ"
"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 playâŚ"
"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 Iâm 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 Iâve lived donât always sync up with the image of Texas at the moment."
"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."
"I call myself a citizen artist, because one of the things I do is try to get my playwrights â especially my graduate playwrights â interested in the world. Itâs about how you connect art to culture and community here and now, and how we are vital to the expression of our community..."
"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 articulateâŚ"
"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."
"Itâs what I know best. Itâs roots. Itâs Dazed And Confused and Friday Night Lights. Itâs border life and El Pato and Whataburger and getting drunk in a back of a pickup. Itâs dancing every weekend to country music, or Tejano music, or club music. Itâs the beach. Itâs, for better or worse, home."
"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 Iâm not afraid to examine my charactersâ sexualityâŚ"
"I never saw [Paps] as a bad guy, thatâs the kind of work that Iâm drawn to, stuff thatâs not black or white but sits in a grey zone, where youâre not sure how to feel about things. I think thatâs life."
"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."
"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."
"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."