The Latinx Theatre Commons Announces The 2022 LTC Comedy Carnaval

The Latinx Theatre Commons today announced the 2022 LTC Comedy Carnaval at Su Teatro Cultural & Performing Arts Center, 721 Santa Fe Dr, Denver, 9-11 June 2022.

The event will feature three full length play readings, a late night of stand up/solo performances, three sketch comedies and a panel discussion, and seeks to highlight and expand the theatre field's understanding of Latinx theatre and uplift the roots of comedy in Latinx/e performance.

Carnaval participants will have the opportunity to see a production at Su Teatro and at The Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Comedy Carnaval is free to the public and select sessions will be streamed online via HowlRound. An application for in person participation can be found at LatinxTheatreCommons.com.

"The 2022 LTC Comedy Carnaval is a critically important platform to celebrate and uplift all that is joyful, fun, and humorous about the Latine experience. All too often, when the American Theatre puts Latine voices on stage, trauma-based narratives prevail. While these works individually can invite rich dialogue about urgent issues facing our communities, the cumulative effect is a two-dimensional portrayal of Latine people that lacks agency or hope and reifies the status quo of White Supremacy," said Amelia Acosta Powell, LTC Comedy Carnaval Champion and Impact Producer at Actors Theatre of Louisville. "Comedy Carnaval is an intervention. Comedy Carnaval invites Latine artists and art-lovers to a revolutionary space of collective healing and communal nourishment through laughter and playfulness."

Comedy Carnaval will highlight eleven new pieces (detailed below). The event has two goals: to introduce national theatre decision-makers to new comedy Latinx plays and talent, and to connect the local and national Latinx theatremaking communities. The featured projects were selected by a thirteen-person committee from a nationwide call for proposals.

The projects and stories selected range from site-specific, tent-like vaudeville to roaming the streets of Colombia with human-like hippos; coming out to conservative Afro-Panamanian parents to exploring the role of caretaker, processing grief, and balancing between the lines of selfless and selfish; dancing with the Queen of Tejano music to a psychedelic comedy; exploring our identity and having fun while doing so.

"Inside our deepest tragedies, a sly, slick and completely obnoxious belly laugh awaits to erupt, expunging the shackles of convention and acceptance. It is the resilience of resistance that tells us that we are survivors and any potential for our happiness is in our own hands. No one is better at ridiculing and exposing our internal contradictions, however we are even better at ridiculing and exposing the contradictions of the oppressor." said Tony Garcia, Artistic Director of Su Teatro Cultural & Performing Arts Center. "Historically our humor has been a sword to eviscerate and skewer the powerful. Our comedy has found its place in carpas, drag shows and graffiti art painted on urban sidewalks and underpasses. It has been a tool for critical analysis, intellectual processing and emotional release. We will come together to celebrate those who live to laugh, and make us laugh for a living. They challenge us to find the edge and explore the potential of the unobvious. We will place them centerstage where they will take us to a place where the irreverent is the spiritual. They strip away our pretensions and cause us to heal."

The 2022 LTC Comedy Carnaval marks the twelfth convening produced by the LTC since its founding in 2012, when a group of eight Latinx theatremakers, led by Karen Zacarías, gathered at Arena Stage in Washington, DC under the auspices of what is now HowlRound to reimagine the American Theatre as a space that welcomes and champions the work of Latinx theatremakers. That group partnered with Latinx theatre communities from across the country to create a dedicated steering committee of over thirty practitioners who worked together with HowlRound to produce the first LTC National Convening, held in October 2013 at Emerson College in Boston. The 2013 LTC National Convening was an historic event, bringing together nearly eighty practitioners in the largest gathering of Latinx theatremakers in over twenty-five years. After the convening, the Steering Committee self-determined to continue working, expanded membership, and began looking to future projects. The LTC has now grown into a national volunteer-driven movement of Latinx and allied theatremakers working to establish a strong, visible, equitable, and inclusive network of over 6,300 constituents, championed by thirty-nine active Steering Committee members and thirty-five Advisory Committee members. In June 2017, the LTC was awarded the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award by Theatre Communications Group (TCG), which recognizes an individual or organization whose work reflects and promotes ingenuity and artistic integrity, exemplifies pioneering practices in theatre, are dedicated to the freedom of expression, and are unafraid of taking risks for the advancement of the art form. The LTC is committed to producing events and dialogue through a commons-based approach to ensure their methods are intersectional and diverse, and that their impact on the field, and on the lives of practitioners, is lasting.

The 2022 LTC Comedy Carnaval Selection Committee included: Amelia Acosta Powell, Dr. Patrice Amon, Michele Apriña Leavy, Jacqueline Flores, Mica Garcia de Benavidez, Tony Garcia, Norma Medina, Richard Perez, Dr. Gina Sandi-Diaz, Dr. Daphnie Sicre, Eric Swartz, Andrew Valdez, Lori Vega

SELECTED PIECES:

Exhaustion | Arroyo by Fran Astorga

Three friends escape into the Santa Cruz mountains in search of a place to swim and BBQ. They packed for the beach without realizing they had a treacherous hike down a ravine. Once at a waterhole the consumption of some shrooms sets the stage for a heartfelt adventure between friends too tired to know how to rest.

La Carpa de la Frontera by CARPA San Diego

La Carpa De La Frontera is a site-specific, tent-like vaudeville touring show which can be taken into communities that are in most need of healing from the current pandemic situation. These performances address issues such as immigration, race, gender, human rights, accessibility, and culture in comedic form using the concept of the old carpa style used in Mexico during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. This unique touring troupe of performing artists focuses on social change, creating a show dealing with social, political issues through a comical platform that anyone can enjoy.

Are You There? by Cristina Fernandez

Are You There? is a standup comedy show that pokes at modernity, motherhood and existentialism.

Escobar's Hippo by Franky Gonzalez

A Colombian town along the Magdalena River plunges into chaos after a flatulent, destructive, easily offended, and sexually adventurous hippo comes to town and wreaks havoc. The crisis worsens when people begin transforming into hippos themselves, causing, not only chaos, but the beginnings of a revolution where humans are put to death by these new Hipposapiens. As this shifting of civilization unfolds, three friends try to figure out how to deal with the transforming population and solve the connection between the hippos and a notorious drug lord.

Marimacha by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

When an illicit pic outs the daughter of two conservative Afro-Panamanians on their way to a family wedding, the family must finally confront the elephant in the room and decide who gets to define love in and outside the family.

Stand Up Comedy by Jess Martinez

She's single, bilingual, and ready to mingle... Well, she's single. Jess Martínez is a Chicago-based stand-up comedian who enjoys making audiences laugh as she genuinely tries to make sense of the world around her. She is the Associate Producer of Las Locas Comedy and Assistant Producer at The Moth StorySLAM Chicago.

The Invocation of Selena by Marilet Martinez & Jessi Realzola

The Invocation of Selena (TIOS) is a sketch comedy and cabaret-style show that explores how cultural icon Selena Quintanilla Pérez continues to inspire and motivate Latine people, particularly women and the LGBTQIA community. Through character monologues, drag, choreographed dance numbers, audience participation, moments of song, and more, TIOS celebrates cultural duality while examining when, why, and how we call on Santa Selena in our everyday lives. At the top of the show, Selena is literally invoked and, in this case, she is a larger-than-life drag queen who guides the cast on this journey to help them find their way in a society that desires to put them in a box. The show also uses biographical information about the artist as well as the 1997 Greogory Nava film Selena as source material to create characters and scenes that tease out our diaspora as Mexicans, Americans, Mexican Americans, Pochos, Latines, Queers..."and its exhausting"!

La Egoista by Erlina Ortiz

La Egoista explores the story of Josefina, a rising stand up comic who takes nothing seriously and her conservative sister Betsaida who is suddenly diagnosed with a chronic illness.This surreal one-act follows Josefina through her comedic sets as they unfold in conjunction with the deterioration of her sister's health. La Egoista uses comedy, puppets, magic, and memory to explore the cost of caregiving, the different ways we process grief, and how to find the balance between selfless and selfish. La Egoista was commissioned and developed at Live & In Color.

What Are You? by Milta Ortiz

In the ten-minute solo piece What Are You?, a young muxer finds herself in 1990's Oakland Hip Hop culture. People assume she's mixed: Black and Latina, and she begins to question what it means to be 100 percent Salvadoreña. Is the drum beat an ancestral call? But Mami grew up in El Salvador and has different ideas.

A Little Bit of Gay by Réal Vargas Alanis

Dive into the queer world with R. Réal Vargas Alanis.

A Little Bit of Gay: A Standup Piece by a Homo leaves censorship and code-switching behind to tap into your inner chola and takes you on a journey to a barrio in Central California. Get a glimpse of the life of a homo, navigating sugar daddies, queer hookup culture, and religion. Careful though, you might catch "the gay" after experiencing this piece... we can't blame you though. Gay is cool.

A Little Bit of Gay is slated to open during Pride Month. It would be homophobic of you not to support. #?

[Warning, this stand-up piece is not for the prudes-you will hear about the time they went to urgent care because they damaged their throat Glock Glockn' on Turkey necks.]

HOLY KIT KAT by Katie Ventura

HOLY KIT KAT is an emotional dramedy following a first-gen Chicana YouTuber coming to grips with Catholicism and generational curses of her Mexican lineage while being queer. Told in vignettes, we follow her as a teen and young adult trying to define who she is inside/out.

About the Latinx Theatre Commons

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.

Our values include Service, Radical Inclusion, Transparency, Legacy & Leadership Cultivation, and Advancement of the Art Form. The actions of the LTC are championed by a volunteer Steering Committee made up of passionate Latinx theatremakers and scholars from across the country. The LTC Steering Committee a self-organized collective that has chosen to adopt a commons-based approach to advocate for Latinx theatre as a vital, significant presence in the New American Theatre. We foster emergent national leadership through an organic organizing method of activating our networks and expanding our circles of connection. We seek to celebrate diverse connections, honor our past with reflection, and envision our future with optimism and enthusiasm.

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