The Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) has announced the 2023 LTC Designer and Director Colaboratorio, happening from June 28 to July 2, 2023 in Portland, OR. The event will be hosted by Centro Cultural, Northwest Children’s Theatre, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Colaboratorio is a five-day series of learning opportunities designed to encourage authentic creative expressions and collaboration between Latinx designers and directors. This event will foster alternative communication models for production teams, challenging the typical director-driven model.
The event is co-championed by four theater practitioners: Tara Houston (Ashland, OR), Daniel Jáquez (San Diego, CA), Dámaso Rodriguez (Portland, OR), and Pamela Rodríguez-Montero (Santa Cruz, CA). “The planning process has been a warm collaboration, pairing designers and directors in the decision-making process,” shared the co-champions. “While energizing and experimental, the team has also been able to hold the project to constraints which center its purpose and audience, showing the rewarding possibilities of working in decentralized spaces.”
The Intervention
The Colaboratorio was first publicly announced in 2019 as part of upcoming programming for the LTC. The traditional model of a United States creative team seats the director at the top of a pyramid with roles of diminishing power, vision, voice, and importance expanding below. Colaboratorio challenges this model and seeks to establish methods for true collaboration between peers, resulting in stronger and richer design meetings, rehearsal rooms, tech rehearsals, and realized productions.
Through this work, the LTC states, “The hope is to develop tools that aid in the creation of a rehearsal room for a new American theatre devoid of unnecessary patriarchal and white supremacist hierarchy, instead centering true collaboration and diverse Latinx aesthetics.” Typically, production teams develop and realize concepts before the rehearsal process begins, often without teams in the same place. LTC is asking the following questions: What kind of vocabulary will encourage brave creative work that remains responsive to the rehearsal room? How can we efficiently create deep and meaningful relationships between directors and designers? Who is “in charge” of aesthetics? How do directing and design teams work as ensembles to support the play? What communication tools will help every member of the team be more effective in contributing to the shape of productions? How do we encourage and cultivate a sense of discovery and play in our work?
Who Can Participate?
The intended participants for this convening are designers and directors who identify as Latinx and Latin American, especially those from historically excluded populations including Indigenous, Afro-Latine/x, Caribbean, and Asian-Latine/x. Thirty-five participants will be accepted into the Colaboratorio. During their time in Portland, participants will be split into teams and have three days of uninterrupted work time at a Portland venue. All the teams will be working from the same script and their time in Portland will culminate in a day of presentations on learnings and the process. As a participant, the LTC will cover roundtrip airfare to Portland, OR, from any U.S. city, housing, transportation in Portland to and from the venues, and shared meals.
Documenting the Ideas
While in Portland, the goal is to document the learnings, discoveries, and ideas that transpire during everyone’s time together. This is a direct intervention on the historical lack of documentation on Latinx theatre and its creatives. So along with the 35 participants, an additional five individuals, scholars, and/or anyone interested in and capable of creating this documentation will be selected to join the Colaboratorio in Portland. Each individual will be paired with a team that they will follow through their three-day journey of collaboration and brainstorming. The only current expectation is that the scholar/documentarian write or co-write a piece for HowlRound on the Colaboratorio and their specific team’s journey. LTC also hopes to find different ways of sharing knowledge and will discuss this with the teams once they are established.
How to Apply
At this time the LTC seeks participant applications for designers, directors, and scholars/documentarians. The designer and director application can be found at https://bit.ly/DesignerDirectorApplication and the scholar/documentarian application can be found at https://bit.ly/ScholarDocumentarianApplication . Applications will close on Jan. 22, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. The selection committee will review applications in February 2023. Teams will be announced the week of Feb. 27. As a participant, the LTC will cover round-trip airfare to Portland, OR, from any U.S. city; housing; transportation within Portland to and from the venues; and shared meals. Have questions? Take a look at the FAQ sheet at https://bit.ly/ColaboratorioFAQs . There will also be one-hour info sessions on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023 at 11 a.m. PDT and Wednesday Jan. 18, 2023 at 1 p.m. PDT. You can sign up at https://bit.ly/LTCInfoSessions to receive the Zoom information for the sessions. For any additional questions, please contact LTC producer Jacqueline Flores at jacqueline@howlround.com.
The Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) is a national movement that uses a commons-based approach to transform the narrative of the American theatre, to amplify the visibility of Latinx performance making, and to champion equity through advocacy, art making, convening, and scholarship. The LTC is a flagship program of HowlRound.
