Where are all the Mexican actors?

I am currently working on a staged reading of a docuplay about gentrification in Logan Square. For those unfamiliar with Logan Square, it is a neighborhood on the west side of Chicago that for decades has served as an entry point for different immigrant groups. At the moment it is predominantly Latino (mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans) but the yuppies and hipsters have started colonizing it over the last few years, so who knows how long this will last. This, in part, is what the play is about.

So I walk into the first rehearsal, expecting to see a bunch of latino actors but no. There were supposed to be 10 actors but only 6 came and out of the six, 4 of us were Latino. Now this is technically a good percentage but that leaves us with four missing actors! Where are the other four Latino actors? No seriously, where are they?

Every year, hoards of young actors arrive in Chicago freshly sprung from their conservatory programs. They are wanting to act, to start their own ensemble theater companies, to be "artists", to be the next Gary Sinise. Most of these young hopefuls are white. Now given the ratio of Latinos to white people in the general population (especially in a city like Chicago), one might imagine that there are more Latino actors than there actually are. But there are no hoards of Latino actors just like there are no hoards of African American or Asian American actors. Where the heck are they? Hiding? Sleeping? Lost? Maybe they are all in the same theater company, which they started because no one else would cast them?

I don't where they all are but I know that there aren't that many which is why I shouldn't have been surprised when I showed up to rehearsal and I was told that they were having difficulties finding Latino actors. But I was surprised. I stepped out of theater for a while and I forgot, somehow I forgot that there weren't enough of us to go around. Given that there wasn't a single Latino writer and no Spanish speakers amongst the writers of this script (which was about the gentrification of a Latino neighborhood) I should not have been surprised. But I was. I guess after all this time, I had hoped that things were changing. I had hoped that the success of theater companies like Teatro Vista and Teatro Luna had helped to somehow stimulate and encourage more Latino actors, writers and directors. And they have. And things are changing. But we're not there yet. We have not yet reached the point where there is such a plethora of Latino writers, actors and directors that there are hoards of them.

Perhaps if there were hoards of them I would have had a Latino or Latina mentor in theater to look up to and guide me all the while understanding my cultural background and the baggage that comes with it. I've had great theater mentors and none of them were Latino. Through all the classes and productions, I never came across a Latino in theater who could have guided me. Funnily enough though, all my mentors were African-American. I guess somewhere deep down I must have figured that if I couldn't have a Latino mentor, I could have one that was also a minority. It was easy to relate to them. They had similar struggles, similar troubles. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a Latina to look up to, to mentor me--someone who really got where I came from. Growing up there were such few Latino celebrities to look up to. I loved Gloria Estefan because even though she wasn't an actor, she had made it! She was out there! She proved it could be done! If only she had been Mexican...

My second rehearsal produced more Latino actors. This time there were 6 of us, an improvement to be sure but again it had clearly been a struggle to get us all together. One of the actors from the first rehearsal had dropped out. She's the artistic director and an ensemble member of a Latino theater company in Chicago. Given that there are so few of us who make it that high up the ladder, she was in high demand and was offered another job. So she left and because she is so well connected with other Latino artists, she was able to find a replacement for herself. But again, this incident underlines the fact that there are really so very few us.

This docuplay which is about gentrification contains little Spanish. The writers interviewed residents in Logan Square but most of the Spanish speakers were not included in the play because it's too hard to incorporate it when you don't know the language or the culture. This is not a criticism but it does highlight the fact that Latinos rarely get an opportunity to have a voice. And those that do find their voice or have a voice are like me, like the other Latino actors in that rehearsal--well educated, "americanized," and often middle class. The average Mexican in Logan Square is not like me. And yet, we are not so very different...

It's hard being Mexican in this country and it's even harder being Mexican in theater but I have hope. There is hope because even though they had a hard time finding Latino actors for this staged reading, they found enough to put it together--which is more than I can say about the play that I wrote in college. And who knows, maybe one day I will be some young Mexican girl's mentor or role model.

A Beginning

I have read articles and books about being stuck between cultures and while many of them talk about this struggle, few of them really get that each person who is in a situation like that is essentially creating their own individual cultures. So this blog is my attempt to share my journey in building my own culture, my own rules.

I was born in Mexico but I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago amongst Mexicans whose families had been in the U.S. for more than a generation. Needless to say that their values and beliefs were very different from the ones I was being raised with. So I never really felt comfortable around people of my own culture. I never considered Mexican Americans that were born and raised here true Mexicans and I rarely acknowledged them as anything other than American. I thought I was more Mexican than any of them would ever be because I had actually lived there and my Spanish was flawless. (Geesh, I was a brat!) Looking back, this attitude was partially a reaction to the fact that I never felt that I was truly accepted by Mexicans living here and partially a way for me to differentiate myself from every other Mexican. That was then.

As I grew older I made friends with people from other cultures and other backgrounds and perhaps it was because they were so different that I felt at home in their company. I felt safe. But it was merely a way for me to escape from the problem that this blog is about. How can you be Mexican and American at the same time? I don't know. And that's the point.