Chicano Theatre is a way to use the art of theater to talk about social justice through our lived experience, based on our cultural heritage, to promote cultural pride, to find liberation.

Our people need to feel hope, Feel that "sí se puede."

Say, it's like, hey, how do we tap into our imagination beyond survival?

How do we get beyond all this constant violence enacted on us that we can actually breathe and imagine?

Chicano theatre has no reason to exist.

If it weren't to respond to the oppression or our people.

To make a statement that we are here, and we are not going anywhere.

I would define Chicano as a consciousness.

You know, "herencia mexicana."

But you knew you weren't Mexican.

And then we certainly, you know, we weren't American and we hadn't been accepted.

And there was a discrimination that we experienced as Chicano people.

We also were in struggle for bilingual education and the unionizing of the farmworkers.

Well, the origins of Chicano theatre in the US began with "El Teatro Campesino".

And it really was a collective structure.

And its intention was absolutely to organize workers to join the farm workers union Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, they began making theater on flatbed trucks.

And basically they were in the fields in order to organize people politically, to raise their consciousness.

So it was a really incredible moment.

Well, "Actos" were originated by El Teatro Campesino to portray oppression and how one then counters the oppresion.

The "Acto" is a short meant to be a call and action in a way that highly exaggerates who the bad guys are and the heroes become the organizers.

They're very accessible to all classes, and they're always super funny.

Which, you know, entertains and convinces at the same time.

I was in high school when I went to San Jose State, and I saw Teatro Campesino perform for the first time.

I was just blown away.

This was our voice.

It's just like a big explosion went off in my head.

For me at the time, I wasn't motivated by wanting to be a performer.

I was wanting to reach people.

So I was in college, San Jose State, and there was a guy in the Latin American class, and he told me about "Teatro de la Gente."

And that they were like Teatro Campesino.

But here in San Jose.

And I dropped out of college and joined Teatro de la Gente.

Ran away with the circus.

The "teatros" were constructed by collectives.

And those collectives were largely directed by men.

There was, like in a lot of Chicano organizations, the contradiction of gender inequality, of sexism, homophobia.

Certainly in our group there was like a division of labor.

What women did and what men did.

We've, found ourselves oftentimes silenced, kind of relegated to even literally, you know, being the ones that cleaned our rehearsal spaces.

And it was a struggle to challenge that.

And so I left, and several women left with me, and eventually a couple men, too.

And we formed the nucleus of "Teatro Visión."

In the 70s, the late 70s, there was a great movement of women of color beginning to emerge, including Chicanas.

Suddenly I'm writing in my journal and there was this person talking, that wasn't me.

And she was this little chicanita.

Her first lines are like, "the older I get, the tougher I get, the meaner I get.

Tough cookie, my mom calls me.

Sometimes I even use a blade.

Nobody knows it or nothing.

But I can feel it there.

Pretend like I'm something."

And it goes on.

Well, I'm not that little girl.

And it was like I was giving voice to this character that wasn't exactly me.

She had more courage than me.

And I got really excited because I realized that she had a voice.

In order to have a voice get heard, you have to have a body and you have to put the body on stage.

And it wasn't going to be me.

That was my first play, Giving Up the Ghost.

And after that I just continued to write theater.

Being in a Teatro Visión production included dialog amongst ourselves.

Participatory experience through telling our story.

It's a profound transformation of what we understand as United States.

In this environment of Teatro Visión, bilingualism whether it's Spanish and English, I always call it a superpower.

Because we're able to communicate in a more extensive way.

And so we promote that cultural pride, the recognition of the power of our language and the power that our language has because it is rooted in our culture practice.

I'm dark.

Not like my primos and primas who are light.

I'm a waterfall on dirt.

"Piel de lodo" with Indio black hair.

Big lips, "como mi abuela Minga, La Prieta, who I've never met I am Los Casitas, the barrio in Guerrero.

I'm "las casitas de barro en Guerrero."

It is this skin that makes people talk to me in broken Spanish.

"¿Cómo es tu país", they ask but there's no answer.

I'm dark.

Not "blanco or negro."

I am the in-between.

"Prieto, como maíz."

"No Llegamos Aquí Solos" is a play inspired by my neighbors.

I grew up in an apartment complex inhabited by undocumented folks.

I didn't necessarily know that being undocumented was a thing.

I thought everybody lived like this.

And so I think this play is more about community care, the ways in which undocumented people support each other and build ecosystems.

Oh my God!

On this play, we want to address the issue of gentrification that is happening in East San Jose, where the majority used to be Latinos.

It's not to present this particular community as the suffering, but to present in its complexities and celebrate who we are.

We also have dreams.

We also have the power to overcome challenges.

And we do it every day.

And this play shows how we still thrive through the circumstances.

Observing performance, experiencing performance together, we can have a healing experience together.

And seeing a story on stage that is your story also, that there's a particular character that you just vibe with and you're, you know, with them as they're going through their healing journey and that gives you hope or gives you some other kind of insight into the experience, your own experience.

If you touch the wound, it has the possibility of getting healed.

If you open the wound, it can get healed to give it air.

And in giving air, there's laughter, there is joy.

These are the kind of things that inspire art.

That inspire young people to get engaged in art.

And if you get engaged in art, usually what happens is that it's contagious and that's what you want.

You want to change minds.

We carry with the legacy of those who fought so we could be here to develop, what was the foundation of Chicano theatre for youth to be on stage and see themselves as powerful entities and as powerful drivers for change, being assertive of themselves, of their culture, of their own identity, and then take action to transform a society.