Some of the most important theater I have ever made happened with no stage, just a street in Mexico City and whoever stopped to witness. Working with Sístole A.C. a Mexico City-based theater and cultural organization rooted in community practice; I performed, facilitated, and co-created teatro callejero, street theater, in the public spaces of one of the most populated and politically charged cities in the world. We brought performance directly to the people, not asking them to come to us, but going to them. This is theater as it was always meant to be.
This community practice ran parallel to rigorous theatrical training; I was also cast in a full university production during this period, developing the technical craft and ensemble skills that ground everything I make. Those two experiences: the polished rehearsal room and the street corner, the stage and the shelter taught me that the most powerful artists move fluidly between both worlds. Neither is more valuable than the other.
The same practice of theater as a tool for human connection and dignity carried us beyond Mexico City and into migrant shelters along the southern border region. There we met people mid-journey, individuals navigating one of the most dangerous passages in the world. Through participatory storytelling and performance we created temporary spaces where immigration stories: stories the world was actively trying to erase could be spoken out loud, and witnessed. We performed immigration narratives back to the communities living them in real time.
In 2026, as immigration enforcement fractures Latine families across the United States and dehumanization becomes federal policy, the work I did in those shelters and on those streets feels like my obligation as an artist: a calling that has only grown louder.
I learned in Mexico City and in those border shelters that theater requires courage and the radical belief that every person's story deserves to be witnessed. That is the belief at the heart of Atrevida. That is what I carry into every room including the development room of El Tesoro de la Raíz.
