Living the Politics of teatro in Los Angeles: An Interview with Diane Rodriguez

Abstract

FALL 2009 143 Living the Politics of teatro in Los Angeles: An Interview with Diane Rodriguez Chantal Rodríguez On June 23 2009, I met Diane Rodriguez in her office at the Music CenterAnnex in downtown LosAngeles to discuss her impressive career.An OBIE Award winning actor and multi-disciplinary teatrista, Diane’s work is distinguished for its deeply political bend and use of humor to confront oppression. A founding company member of El Teatro de la Esperanza, El Teatro Campesino and Latins Anonymous, Diane has become an expert in activist performance and ensemble work. Committed to diversity and equal access, Diane was appointed Co-Director of the Latino Theater Initiative at the Center Theatre Group (Mark Taper Forum) along with Luis Alfaro in 1995. A self proclaimed “theater geek,” Diane is currently an Associate Producer at Center Theater Group. I have followed her career with great interest as she continues to produce, direct, and write new work whose reach extends far beyond U.S. stages. How did you get started in teatro? I come from a performing family; my father was a singer and sang in a Baptist church. My mother was the church pianist. That sanctuary, holy place, was where I learned how to be in front of people and perform in plays. In the late 60’s my cousins were members of El Teatro Campesino and I saw them perform in The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, which was the first time I saw the teatro. Then my uncle and aunt sold their house and moved to Delano, CA, worked on the paper “El Malcriado” and belonged to the farm workers’ union. So, the notion of church and a social consciousness was in my family before there was really a Chicano Movement. But I think the real seminal moment was going to UC Santa Barbara and studying theater with Jorge Huerta.1 144 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW When did you begin working with El Teatro Campesino (ETC)? How did your experience there shape your artistic perspective? I performed with ETC during my summers in college and then became an ensemble member after graduation. When I went into ETC, I basically learned the concept of activism in terms of both social and theater activism: using theater to inspire and move a people to social action but also as a way of making choices as an actor. You have to make artistic choices and commit to them to make the moment work, and so in that way you are an activist, you activate a moment. It’s also a metaphor for being an activist in life. That’s the main concept that I took away and always carried with me. The other was building a foundation for our work. We used to do exercises based on the steps of the Mayan Pyramid that would build some part of your character as you climbed each step of the pyramid. You would listen to your heart, or simply your breathing. These rigorous exercises made me look inside and learn to follow my heart and listen to my instincts. It was instrumental in shaping my rostro, the Nahuatl concept of face or character. When did you leave ETC and why? Honestly, the resources began to change in the 80s with Reagan and it just felt like it was time to move on. The money wasn’t there to support a full time ensemble so we had to think about what we were going to do. It was a natural evolution and so we packed up our stuff and left, it always makes me sad to think about it though. I wrote a testimonial about it called “Searching for Sanctuaries: Cruising through Town in a Red Convertible.”2 It was very hard and traumatic, I came of age in the ETC and I learned how to create work on my own which was very empowering because I had to create the work, no one was going to create it for me and I’ve carried that through my whole career. When you left ETC for Los Angeles what did you hope to do? I was going to be an actor. I was very...