Interview with Jorge Merced, associate director

By Arnaldo Lopez

Arnaldo Lopez: Good morning, Jorge. Let’s begin with your development in theater, your professional trajectory and whether you began with an intention to do ensemble work. I’d like to know how you found your way to ensemble work.

Jorge Merced: I began in architecture, I didn’t have any plans to do theater, ensemble or otherwise. I came to theater through dance. I went from music to architecture and from architecture to dance. Back then I was training as a dancer, and in college I started linking dance and theater and began participating in theater productions. I started off as a dancer in musicals, and then, through actors and directors I met in college, I started working on monologues and got invited to work in short pieces.

AL: Is this at Alvin Ailey or in CUNY?

JM: In CUNY, the City University [of New York]. Through these friends I start learning more about theater within a classical context, which is what was taught there. Later I became a member of the Latino theater group at CUNY, and did my first few shows in Spanish.

AL: Were you already familiar with the Latino community, the Latino communities in New York, or does that coincide?

JM: I come [to New York] and I do not take part in the Latino community, but rather in the student body. While studying architecture I lived in the student dorm, and later I lived near Alvin Ailey. My life revolved around the dance school and the YMCA, which is where I stayed. And when I started dance and theater at CUNY, I still lived at the Y. So, my life didn’t involve the Latino community per se. I didn’t know it all that well.

AL: Lincoln Center was not the center of the Latino community?

JM: It was not the center of the Latino community. [Laughs.] At CUNY I met several people who were key to my theater training. One was David Willinger, a teacher who was truly the one to introduce me to the world of theater. He stole me from dance and gave me work in several theater pieces. The other was Polly Rogers, a dance teacher, [modern] dance and jazz, who wasn’t the traditional dance teacher either. She was always pushing the limits and did things that mixed theater and dance. I began working in a small company she put together, where theatrical elements were combined and work was done in group. That’s where I started getting the idea of ensemble work, and although she was always the choreographer, I started understanding more about group theater work. Because of those two people I decided to take the leap into theater and started attending theater classes at City College. There I meet Judith [Rivera] and Sandra [Rodríguez].

AL: Were they students?

JM: Judith and I were studying together, she was a year ahead of me. I was in the fine arts department and she was in theater. I was in the dance BFA track, she was in the theater BA track. We did several works together with the Latino student theater and became good friends. She then graduates and joins Pregones; during the year she calls me to Pregones for an interview. I had no idea that they had been following my work in college; Sandra, in particular, had seen the work I was doing. That was my first encounter with a group that works as a collective. Up until then my training had been pretty formal, a traditional theater education. There’s a director, there’s a set script you are going to play out, characters are assigned, we rehearse, develop the characters and so on, and the show goes up.

AL: What was your first impression of the group?

JM: To begin with, it was my first trip to the Bronx. They had recently moved to St. Ann’s, it was January 1987. They had just had the first run of "Migrants."

AL: Did you see it?

JM: No, I didn’t see that production. It was in January, the beginning of January 1987. I went to the interview at their space in St. Ann’s. By that time I was more interested. I’d had an interesting political development.

AL: Tell me.

JM: Through experience at the summer camp where I used to work, Camp Kinderland, I began questioning a lot of my preconceptions about the history of Puerto Rico, about the history of the workers movement in the U.S., about the monsters of communism and socialism. I started breaking it all down, teasing it apart, and started to understand it more fully, without having significant contact with Latinos or Puerto Ricans at the time. I was in the company of a largely Jewish North American community, a liberal left. Up until then, I had not known other Latinos or Puerto Ricans who shared similar worries. In college, I was participated in the movement on behalf of the rights of all Latinos, challenging the intervention of the U.S. in Latin America. But most of the people at these meetings were North Americans, few Latinos attended this sort of forum. So, by then I had really begun to feel a political restlessness and the questions that came up with it. I was at a point where I started to experience a kind of conflict — maybe not conflict, but a sort of doubt and questioning of my political development and my political interests.

That’s when I arrive at Pregones. There I meet a group of Puerto Rican actors with a political restlessness similar to my own. And instead of an interview, what took place was an incredibly rich exchange that went on for several hours, just talking about our country, about history, about things that were in need of a place for me to be able to share, share them with peers, people like me. And since I had so far always been required to guard my identity, I was now able to question it, instead, in this new place. Plus I could do it through art. Well, I didn’t see a production or rehearsal, we just sat in the dressing room, I think following a rehearsal, and had this splendid, rich conversation. I went home thrilled to have met artists with whom I felt comfortable talking about things that don’t necessarily have to do with art, but are of no less interest. And at the end of the conversation we read the script for "Migrants." There was an actor on his way out, Arcadio, and I was coming in as a replacement. I agreed to join and meet at the next rehearsal, and that was my first encounter with ensemble work. The piece had already been created, but was still in development then. When I joined the group in January we continued to develop it. "Migrants" was a critical retelling of the history of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, from colonization and the clash with the island indigenous culture, up to the testimonial experience of Puerto Rican workers in the U.S. during the 1920s. Something like that.

AL: I wonder if you remember the relationship these artists had with Latinos and Puerto Ricans here, because you said you did not have that relationship yet.

JM: Up until then, as I mentioned, I had not established any direct contact or friendship except with Judith and she was raised here in New York.

AL: She was not your everyday Puerto Rican.

JM: Exactly. Plus, we met in a college environment, which is different from real life. In college you’re more sheltered, and we were doing plays. We had a job to do and it did not necessarily involve investigation and questioning. When I found Pregones, well, here was a group of artists who did harbor those questions and who were in fact involved in the sorts of research that lead to a particular theatrical staging. Among them (they were a mixed group) were artists born and raised in Puerto Rico, and artists like Judith who were born and raised in the United States. It was the first time that I sat down, during that process, to analyze my feelings, my stand, my beliefs, how I felt about the reality of Puerto Ricans who are born and raised here in the United States. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where there is a lot of bias. So, in the space where the exchange takes place, I didn’t know what relationship [the artists] had with the community, or the so-called community, I only knew of their personal journey here. [Of] those who were born here and those who were not. We were all in one place researching the history of Puerto Rico; it was a really rich process and incredible discoveries were made by all of us, the ones born in Puerto Rico and the ones from the other side of the pond. It was a process of mutual validation in the recognition of gaps in our history.

AL: So, did you get to perform in "Migrants"?

JM: Yes. First thing we did was rehearse what was there, so that I could join get attuned to the group process. Then we continued developing the piece. We searched for more testimonies, added images, more songs, more scenes that could add to what the group had been finding. Then my experience as a dancer also feeds the project — specially in regards to movement — and we were able to incorporate what each of us brought to the table.

AL: Where was your first show?

JM: My first production of "Migrants" was in St. Ann’s in February, I think. A month after [I joined Pregones], it was up and running. It was the second version of "Migrants," there were several, but this one was in February.

AL: Who came to see you? Were you aware of who came to see you?

JM: Well, it was interesting at the time because a rebirth was taking place at St. Ann’s, a new interest in reclaiming spaces where culture could flourish. And many people were interested, not just in the immediate community, but also in a much broader community that was not geographically limited to the five or six blocks around St. Ann’s. Also a community of artists who came to listen to what [Pregones] was proposing.

AL: Latino artists, or—?

JM: Latin artists, leaders in the community, people who were involved in similar a process though not only through the arts, but in their own communities, in the work place, through questioning and research. It was very clear that Pregones followed a line of inquiry that was dear to the left, so we also attracted audiences who were interested in that discourse, or curious about its application to the history of Puerto Rico, which is what we were doing.

AL: This also included people from the immediate surroundings?

JM: It varied. Those from the immediate surroundings were people who were interested in the fact that there was a live theater with real programming in the vicinity. But at the time I wasn’t fully aware of how many or where from, I thought of it as a general public that was truly receptive to our work about the Puerto Rican migrants.

AL: I understand that you became involved in Latino gay activism. That’s further down the line or does it coincide with this period?

JM: That begins several months later.

AL: But it’s around this time?

JM: Around the time. It was in '87 that I began working with the Latino gay groups here. That was also the year that many Latino gay groups surfaced: Boricua Gay and Lesbian Forum, Hispanic United Gay and Lesbians (HUGL); Las Buenas Amigas had been in existence for about a year, they started in '86. That coincides with the time I join Pregones. But it was very important for me to initiate a dialogue with other artists. Aided by research, that dialogue enriches my participation in other forums emerging in New York in 1987.

AL: This is interesting, because if I understand correctly, you go from not being in touch with a Latino community to an experience that helps you identify that community clearly, and to see different interests within it. Can you tell us a little more about that?

JM: There is physical aspect to the work, meaning I was finally working and had to walk, had to go to a specific place in the Bronx that was connected to a so-called community. As I understood it at the time, to me, that’s what it meant to go to a community. The St. Ann’s community was this group of people who had taken over a space in order to bring their work to fruition. At the time I still lived on the CUNY campus and I had to take a bus to get to St. Ann’s. Physically, that put me in a different space, outside the safety-net of a college campus. And so, rather innocently, I begin to associate that with a community, with the community. Night after night, I worked there with the company and started to see how many Puerto Ricans lived there, in the oldest neighborhood. Then I begin to identify, to appreciate what a community in the South Bronx was all about, and what it is that I do in there. In essence, my first few months with Pregones were very important because I was pushed to or forced to understand another space where a dialogue among artists is taking place. I start to define community in those terms, and before I did not have that. That same activist and political interest later puts me in touch with other people who are doing this very kind of work in the gay community. So, I take the dialogue to those other spaces.

AL: There’s also an experience of displacement in the gay world, no? Because gay activists don’t all come from the same place, right?

JM: Especially Latino [gay activists], those of us who started those groups in ’87. And the ones who follow later, we were quite the mixed crew, we all came from different places even though a few actually lived in the gay neighborhood or the gay community. We came from different ghettos and we lived in each of those so-called ghettos and from there we lift our voices. Part of our initiative was to question the gay ghetto from a particular vantage point, [to question it] from our place or places of origin.

AL: Does part of Pregones’ role have to do with questioning the ghetto in that sense?

JM: I didn’t see it that way back then. For me it was a very intimate need to understand my identity, to question my identity as a Puerto Rican. And to do it from an artistic point of view. That’s what attracted me to "Migrants," and in so doing, as I appropriate the research and the language, I also appropriate the styles of ensemble work. I arrive at this language, and it becomes my way of understanding art, where the artist has a very active voice, where her or his opinion matters enormously to the creative process. That is specifically what I was looking for, an alternative to the world of classical dance and theater where we were the little people at the mercy of the director or the choreographer. Not so here. Here we got lost together and we found our way back to the work together, we found scenic solutions through joint effort. And that process was in tune with my interests; it was a socialist perspective, a questioning of the system itself.

AL: How significant, in that regard, are the popular sources and materials employed by Pregones? In more traditional work, these may not be all that significant. How did you understand this particular trait?

JM: Understanding that all [the popular sources and materials] are a part of us and that we can own them, use them, take advantage of them, see them upside down, inside out, that is something I hadn’t done until then. I didn’t understand that, in fact, within the codes of so-called folklore or the so-called cultural identity of a community or of an ethnic group, or even a country, one may find the tools to craft a new voice without sacrificing that which is dear. That was a very, very important process for me. To understand how is it that we do theater, and how is it that other artists do it, each within her or his means. Then, to know what a mazurka is, what bomba is — all our [Puerto Rican] things, and then to see how they become a platform from which we may find a contemporary voice, an active voice, a new voice for questioning. That was a very rich process, very rich. It is something that stays with us and in our work. [We] root every experiment in Puerto Rican popular [artistic] expression. Always.

AL: In my view, that’s one of things attracting people to Pregones. Because it’s not about shows that have been intellectualized, "masterpiece theater," but rather master works built out of fragments that people share in the most intimate fashion. In other words, when you say "what belongs to us," I’ve met that same reaction when speaking to members of the audience. There is a strong sense of ownership, and I’m always astonished with it. Can you comment on any project, perhaps one that you headed or one from the early days.

JM: After the initial encounter comes a moment of celebration and a battle cry that suddenly takes you over and you become the, I don’t know, the guardian of that space and, of course, of the community. One tends to romanticize those spaces. The first project I did was — Pregones had been hosting theater workshops for children and adolescents, but mostly with children, in different places where they worked. I took it upon myself to do the workshops and began to give theater classes.

AL: For youth?

JM: For youth. First I began with children and then I established a theater project for adolescents, sponsored by a pregnancy prevention program that gave funds for the theater workshops. The [pregnancy prevention program] was called Better Bronx for Youth. I also moved into the community at this time. I moved a block-and-a-half from Pregones and get down to business. I take on the task of living and working in that community, with the understanding I then had about community, what it was, my misunderstanding of what it meant.

AL: Why misunderstanding?

JM: Misunderstanding because it limited my perception of the breadth of the work one does; that [work] is not determined, or limited by the four, five or six blocks around the place where the show goes up. But it was crucial for me to go through the process of living there, teaching to kids and teens who come from Pregones’ immediate surroundings. It was really important because we built close ties with the children, their parents, the families that came to work, who sent their children to Pregones, and with the parents of teenagers and with teens themselves. And, of course, the theater process gives way to the children’s most intimate stories, so many of them heartbreaking. Because I identified in them a missing connection to identity, the definition of what makes you unique, what makes you yourself. They had no connection, the way I had no connection growing up in Puerto Rico until I arrive at Pregones and I begin to understand how the world around me works. These children did not have that space, and when Pregones offers that space for them to pursue their own questioning, it was a very intense period, both for them and for me. I was overwhelmed, sometimes, by the stories.

I would sometimes visit family homes home, have supper there with them. I’d constantly leave Pregones and go to people’s homes or other places, I spent all my time with the neighborhood youth and it saps the energy from me. Because one takes on troubles that have nothing to do with the work at hand, and it makes things— Each family had its needs and its problems, and one volunteered a little support, or balance. It was a beautiful project, we created really interesting productions. The youth created four plays and we had a really interesting group of people working. That’s what earns me full time work in the company. Through the work as an artist and the classes, they allow me to join full time. This was my first project. After that I did a summer camp for youth, also in that same year at Pregones. Again, these were ways of coming to terms with the so-called community I had joined. That was my training process as far as the immediate community, the actual St. Ann’s neighborhood, is concerned. It began with youth then it grew to include "El abrazo" ["The Embrace"], a theater project about AIDS. [Through "El abrazo"] we work with organizations that dealt with AIDS prevention at St. Ann’s. And all this was interesting, because it was part of a relatively new community, what happened at St. Ann’s was that a truly new community was being formed.

AL: And the space was new...

JM: But not just Pregones and what we did with that gym, there were other organizations creating community in that building, a flow of persons who came connected to one organization or another, but who all ended participating in programs that were also offered there. For example, there was Vamos a la Peña, which became an independent organization. That one was in the basement below Pregones and they attracted a different sector of the community with a different sort of activity. They were geared towards nightlife, much more bohemian, not set to a two- or three-hour performance, like Pregones. Instead, they’d host a long night of bohemian entertainment. Also with us were the people from the syringe exchange program of Health Force, the health clinic. We were all recent arrivals to this new space, we built it, and we gave ourselves to the task of learning about it and understanding our work within the building and with the immediate community.

AL: Evidently there was a service mission.

JM: In the organizations, yes. But ours was not a service organization. It was space for artists to work and discuss and develop their work. The other organizations did have a service function and were very specific in their mission. Not us. It just happened to be that we were in there with them. But all the projects that emerged there were linked or fed by the traffic of persons who entered St. Ann’s, which had been closed to that sort of exchange up until then.

AL: How did you manage to hold on to that traffic when Pregones moved to the studio on the Grand Concourse?

JM: The traffic had begun to die down before our move, when a new, more conservative administration followed Father Roberto Morales, who was the one to invite us to St. Ann’s. That administration began, little by little, to dismantle the different units that created traffic, until we are the last ones there. We were the last of, I don't know, maybe 12 or so organizations that had been in St. Ann’s. Of course, we had already created our own audience and our own traffic by then. We already had a season consisting of three or four productions, three shows a year.

AL: Did you have visiting artists?

JM: We started to bring in artists. But we had already established a tradition for this space [St. Ann’s] as a place for theater. Before that, the only other theater was the Teatro Puerto Rico, which was about two blocks away and a much larger venue, and had been the first Latino theater in the Bronx, now turned into a movie house. It was a theater of the '40s or '50s maybe. We were the first since Teatro Puerto Rico.

Hence we began to make an audience, not only among people who lived nearby, but among people who were interested in the point of view of the artists at Pregones, how we analyzed society, or how we commented on what was going on it. An audience is born, a reasonably mixed audience, an audience that grows accustomed to the caliber of artists we bring in, and so it happens that we start to outgrow St. Ann’s. But [St. Ann’s] was no doubt a beautiful place, where people felt comfortable and word-of-mouth spread fast. From the woman who worked in the soup kitchen below Pregones. She always sat front row center, Nymia, she never missed a show. We were local celebrities in the world as she knew it, a woman who never left the Bronx. And this was [for her] a slice of show business. From that to, I don’t know… Tim Robbins, who also came to see our shows at Pregones. In other words, we had a pretty eclectic crowd. Once we moved to the Grand Concourse, a part of the audience follows at first, they come to Hostos which is where we went to stage our productions. [Our move] coincides with the inauguration of their new theater.

But, yes, indeed, I’d say [the audience] changes. It was a moment for changes, because it no longer meant going to this beautiful, special place with the pretty trees. To go in there you’d feel safe and intimate, and the theater was so very personal. Now, an institution like Hostos, where the seats are those of a traditional theater institution, where there is a security guard at the door who greets you… It’s a much larger venue. 367 seats instead of 120 which is what we had at the other space. And so I think that, in a way, people started to miss the old place. Some people lost interest during that first year. But we attracted new audiences, persons who had been afraid of our location now felt more comfortable coming to us. But the intimate setting changed completely. When we moved into [Pregones] Studio, we were once again creating new audiences. [There are] those who still follow us, but we were creating a truly new audience at a totally different place

AL: More intimate.

JM: Much more intimate yet, but not with the same comfort level we had at St. Ann’s.

AL: It’s also much more urban, not being in a residential area...

JM: No, it was not residential space.

AL: —or not clearly so. Then the studio opens with a piece in which you have the starring role. I’d like to hear you comment on collective process and starring roles within ensemble work.

JM: By that time we increased the number of tour engagements done with works from the company’s repertory. During the last year at St. Ann’s we began to experiment with smaller casts; two shows in particular. One coincides with the launch of a new gay group called Latino Gay Men of New York, who in '91 asked me to do a piece with Afro-Caribbean poetry. I research the project together with Ricardo [Pons] and between the two of us we create a piece titled "Y tu abuela dónde esta?" ["And your Grandma, where is she?"]. Then we bring it to the group. This creates an opportunity to work in poetry and theater with a smaller cast, and we like the idea and we give it a try. Rosalba [Rolón] joins Ricardo and I as the narrator. It was the first time we did a piece with such a small cast. Before that, there was "La caravana" ["The Caravan"], with three actors and two musicians, five people; it was a children’s piece that Alvan [Colón Lespier] had written and that had a very successful run.

AL: During of St. Ann’s, this was in contrast with larger works?

JM: Yes. Back then, we also created works like "Voces de Acero," which was very important for me both artistically and politically, and which was key to my understanding of the so-called community. Up until then, we had done pieces based on the artists’ own interests, we even did one about a family in the South Bronx, titled "Remote Control" or "Control Remoto." We were trying to take in our own experiences, the things we lived during the last years at St. Ann’s, the community itself. That was a really interesting play for us. When it comes to "Voces de Acero," once again, we realize we are a group of artists whose interest lies not in writing about a community or doing theater based on a community, and that our interests — our artistic interests — go well beyond a geographical boundary. We took on the task of creating this play about the Puerto Rican political prisoners in experimental fashion. We looked for poetry, we looked for testimonies, and we had a cast of eight or so persons. We were six actors and two musicians, I think. We created a piece that, like "Migrants," was a very important moment in Pregones’ [professional] trajectory. Well-rooted in the research [for the piece] and all the while boosting our own strength as an ensemble, we could see in "Voces de Acero" the emergence of Pregones’ very own style. (And we can discuss that later on if you want.)

"Voces de Acero" turned out to be really important, because it had the ample support of our so-called immediate community, and was also welcome by much broader community of people who wanted to hear about the reality of the Puerto Rican political prisoners. Without propaganda, something truly interesting and artistically complex. "Voces de Acero" accomplished that. It also differed from the newer works done with smaller casts. It also happens that Rosalba and Judith go off to create yet another piece. I think back then it was called "La marcha nupcial" ["Wedding March"], I don’t know if it had a different name before that, based on a story by Judith Ortiz Cofer. The cast included Judith and our pianist at the time. So, we had two small cast works that sometimes were produced together and sometimes not. That was the tail end [of our days at St. Ann’s]. Last we did "El apagon" [The Blackout] which at the time was called "La noche que volvimos a ser gente" ["The night we became people again," based on the story by José Luis González], which included Alvan, myself and two musicians. At this point, we had begun producing smaller pieces. When we moved into [Pregones Studio], this was already part of our history, this type of interest, this type of exploration of with a staging that didn’t include the entire company. Plus, the Studio forced us physically to question and to search out this sort of work, and that’s how "El bolero" ["fue mi ruina/The Bolero Was My Downfall"] is born.

AL: Is there any other solo piece, well, not counting the musicians?

JM: Right. Always four or five people involved, no solo pieces at Pregones. We experimented with "Quíntuples" ["Quintuplets" by Luis Rafael Sánchez] in '94 with two actors, for a total of four small cast pieces. They made up our active repertory and also served as a tool used by an to develop further. Solo work provides that opportunity, and we considered it an utmost necessity in our artistic development, individual training, how to make room for these individual projects.

AL: How is an ensemble or collective vision preserved in such works?

JM: Collective vision is evident during production and staging, we tackle it in the same fashion we tackle a cast of 12 or 15 persons. Just like then, everyone participates, everyone does the readings and the group discussions, everyone contributes. And when the moment arrives, just the director and the actor are left on the set. But nourished by an ensemble vision; that’s how we can consider these works company projects and not independent projects belonging to an artist in the company. They are plays by Pregones.

AL: If I may, I’d like to ask you about educational projects, because I know you’ve had a lot to do Pregones’ work in schools, with adults, and with artists. Tell us more about the responsibilities in this area, what are the challenges from, perhaps, the institutional point of view?

JM: [Just] to underline what we discussed previously about the protagonists, I don’t think our work is based on protagonism. It’s not motivated by that.

AL: It’s not star-driven.

JM: Not at all. Regarding educational projects, well, since I am the person who joins the company running theater workshops, I am the adequate person to take charge of the matter when the workshops and related programs keep growing. The company has that other side to it, taking training and theater workshops to the schools, or as a way to raise teachers’ awareness about the functions of theater, its importance in their classrooms. And these are tasks that generate income for the company, because there is demand for Latino artists who speak Spanish and who also espouse an aesthetic, a Latino perspective. And [it is wished] that this be their primary voice so that they can be a resource to teachers and professors in the New York school system, not so much as teachers themselves, but as the artists who collaborate with the teachers. Up until then, there were very few of us who did that kind of work. So, Pregones fills a void, and since there is a demand, we get a lot of training ourselves so we may be ready for the work the schools request us to do. It continues to grow through the years and it has generated income for the company. Not the most income, but a decent income; and it has also allowed artists to join the company as teachers in our partnership with the schools, and in training [workshops]. Sometime it has been an obstacle to continued training in the company. We may spend too much time giving workshops and not enough time taking them. It’s not so much an obstacle as it is a concern that we all share. But I also believe that if our artists can teach a certain theory that was first developed in the ensemble, then this is an opportunity to better internalize that theory until the time comes to use it in our own works. I mean, it also serves a double purpose.

AL: What are the institutional challenges you can pin-point for work such as Pregones’?

JM: One of the things that characterizes the work we do as a company, not necessarily the artistic work, but that of a company, is that, from the very beginning, it was run by the artists themselves and that is a characteristic that, although it gives you much freedom of expression and allows for ownership of the work, it also brings with it a heavy administrative load. We are in charge of not only selling our product, but also promoting it, producing it, acquiring the funds from different organizations or foundations that may allow for uninterrupted growth. And that requires a serious time investment. Over the years we’ve been faced with the need to support both ends of the work and have rehearsed a few strategies. In the early '90s, I think it was, we began bringing in more administrative personnel to ease the burden, but soon realized that more staff meant more work that was generated. For instance, when we brought someone in to help launch a new season, the person brought in more public, we had to expand our programs, and the time investment escalated. Or we brought someone else to manage other aspects of programming, and so on and so forth. I mean, we are always facing this dilemma.

AL: How easy is it to bring someone in to do, say, fundraising at Pregones?

JM: It depends. Sometimes it’s difficult to adopt ideas from the so-called development and fundraising world, [ideas] that don’t necessarily have much to do with the way we function at Pregones, or with the way in which people who visit Pregones will function. It’s not enough to have a background in corporate administration or in the arts world in order to be capable of carrying out the task at Pregones. There is a certain commitment expected from that person, a commitment to our vision, to the way we function as a company. We function collectively as an artistic ensemble, and we work collectively towards an adequate administration. Ensemble vision includes the administration, and that’s difficult for certain people. Anybody can walk in and see that we all collaborate in the execution of certain tasks, even when we maintain a reasonably clear division of responsibilities. It’s no easy task.

AL: I’ll ask you one last question. Going back to the stage, is there a project that you feel captures the dynamic between you as artists and your audience?

JM: Summer Stage. I think it’s the one current project that best exemplifies the relationship we have with audiences that may vary from place to place, a public that is not set to a particular geography but that rather connects with a particular work. An audience sometimes made up of passersby, a public that does not necessarily know who Pregones is but is interested in what’s taking place on stage. These productions take place outdoors, in places where people sometimes walk, stop to watch for a moment, and then keep going their way. [Also] in places where the community or a street or a block is closed off so that the people can throw a big party to welcome us, the theater company, and feed us, give us a reception before and after the show. People will claim ownership of their geographical space, that street, and they decorate it, and they play music before and after, and they bake cakes and things for people to share, and we become part of that event. We’ve done it, on occasion, in collaboration with the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

This project has been very successful and there one can see how accessible the theater really is. Sometimes people talk to us while we’re on stage, or they want to get up and join us on stage and participate in the show, or they want to comment on what we’re doing. The interaction with the audience is truly alive and a huge challenge for the artist. Because to do live outdoor theater is something not everyone is ready or capable of doing. It gives us a chance to try a script or a show the company is interested in, and that we may eventually develop further and add to the company’s active repertory. It also gives us a chance to test new artists or persons we may be interested in for future collaborations; this is a good way for us to invite them to work with the company and see how they function within Pregones’ group dynamic. A dynamic that exposes the artist to what it is to go on tour, only in a lesser scale, a one-day tour. We go out and come back the same day. We can see how the artist works in those spaces and see how she or he integrates into the collective creative process for the play. It’s a very rich process and, were it not for sponsorship we have secured, these communities would not have access or these places would have no access to the theater, to a professional theater company.

AL: Sponsorship comes from—?

JM: Different sources. Up until now from Chase, JP Morgan and other organizations that are interested in seeing this kind of dialogue taking place between a community or an audience that comes from a specific community or may not come from the same community, and a professional theater company. I believe it’s a very interesting model because it allows us to connect with a public that can visit us later during our regular season. It is a very interesting project, fresh and rich in possibilities that go beyond simply performing in one space, in one theater. To see how these communities go out of their way to insure that the artists feel at home. There is one community that presents us with a trophy every year, a trophy for the artists who come to their street to perform. It’s all very beautiful.

AL: Thank you very much.

An ensemble-theater scholar born and raised in Puerto Rico, Arnaldo J. Lopez studied English literature, typography and letterpress arts in Pennsylvania, where he also lived and worked as a graphic designer. A Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU, he likes to write on issues of identity, arts and politics.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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