Spring 2021

THE TEAM:

Raul Garza (playwright) is an Austin-based playwright who tells stories that resound with culture and sense of place. His full-length play Fantasmaville received the National Latino Playwriting Award, and earned a B. Iden Payne Award nomination for Outstanding Original Script. His short play MyHEB garnered FronteraFest 2015 Best of Fest recognition. Raul’s full-length plays include Fantasmaville, Sanctuary, Cura, Confessions of a Mexpatriate, Ruby, There and Back, and El. His short story “In the Room” won the 2014 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest, “Running Bear” and “LeBaron” were cited for Honorable Mention by the 2017 and 2014 Texas Observer Short Story Contest.

Jerry Ruiz (director) has directed world premiere productions of Fade by Tanya Saracho at Denver Center for the Performing Arts Theatre Company and Mala Hierba, also by Saracho, at Second Stage Theatre in NYC.  Other off-Broadway and regional directing credits include productions at the Old Globe, Primary Stages, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Hartford TheaterWorks, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Mint Theater Company, Stages, Clubbed Thumb, NYC Summer Stage, Chalk Rep, Mixed Blood and Repertorio Espanol. A dedicated advocate for playwrights and new plays, he has developed work at the Alley All New Festival (where he directed a workshop production of The Survivors by Katie Bender), Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, The Public Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the Playwrights Realm. From 2011 to 2015, he served as curator for the Crossing Borders festival of new Latinx plays at Two River Theater in New Jersey.  He was a recipient of the 2009–2011 NEA/TCG Career Development for Theatre Directors Grant.  He received his M.F.A. in Directing from UC San Diego and his B.A. from Harvard University. SDC Member. Currently, he serves as the head of the MFA Directing program at Texas State University.

UNTITLED MOTHER/DAUGHTER PLAY

Giselle De La Rosa and her teenaged daughter, Chamila, play a mother/daughter duo clashing after months of witnessing widespread social unrest while in isolation and quarantine. The daughter wants permission from her mother to participate in a BLM protest; the reluctant mother is worried about the daughter’s health (re: COVID) and safety after police brutality against local protestors, and wants to keep her out of harm’s way. During a long, revealing conversation on their front porch, they are able to imagine what’s happening in the world beyond their front porch, coming to terms with each other to arrive at a delicate truce. This naturalistic, character driven play will explore explosive issues, generational rifts during this time of profound upheaval, and the differing perspectives and perceptions of Latinx people towards social injustice towards African-Americans.