A Note from the Editor

The seed for this special issue on Latinx theatre germinated at ATHE 2014 when I stepped into the business meeting of the (then) Latina/o Focus Group (LFG) and welcomed contributions for this issue. This verbal act committed to enabling something that had not been done before, but that needed to be done: Theatre Topics had never focused an issue on concerns relevant to Latinx theatre-makers and their wider communities, and this was an oversight. Latinx theatre in this country has always been at the lead of the various fields of applied theatre (for example, through the work of Augusto Boal), practice-based research, and community-based theatre (such as with Teatro Campesino and Culture Clash, a group that is frequently discussed in this special issue), although they may use differing labels to describe their work. Through the work of Maria Irene Fornes¹ and her students, Latinxs have had one of the most rigorous and successful lineages of playwriting pedagogy, cohering through the work of Nilo Cruz, Migdalia Cruz, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, as well as many others. In short, as I noted in my subsequent call for submissions, the domain of Latinx theatre is the domain of Theatre Topics, and an effort must be made both to recognize this and acknowledge the ways in which such communities of color are often disregarded from the more mainstream nationalist histories of US performance.

Since that initial moment, our local, national, and global communities have undergone radical changes. At the 2016 ATHE conference, LFG voted on a name change, and is now the Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas Focus Group (LIA); due to this vote and other factors, I decided to change the title of this special issue, from "Latina/o Performance" in the call to "Latinx Performance" as it now appears in print. And with the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, the political and social climates in which this special issue emerges are very different ones from what many of us had ever imagined they would be.

This moment is one of fast change and sharp differences. As Jimmy Noriega smartly frames in his essay "Don't Teach These Plays!," the times we live in call for a negotiation of startling contrasts. Indeed, the second decade of this century was marked by fundamental "milestones," to use Noriega's vernacular, for Latinx theatre: in 2012 Hudes was the first Latina to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful—a production of which is adroitly described by Patricia Ybarra in her essay "How to Read a Latinx Play in the Twenty-first Century: Learning from Quiara Hudes"; and the Latina/o Theatre Commons (LTC) held its first national convening in Boston in 2013 (its ongoing presence will be noted by the reader in many of the ensuing essays). And, of course, unprecedented numbers of theatregoers flocked to the phenomenon that is Lin Manual Miranda's Hamilton, which transferred from the Public Theater to Broadway in the summer of 2015. Yet, recently the cast of Hamilton chose to speak openly about the pervasive anxiety that many communities (of color and beyond) are currently experiencing during their request for the racial tolerance of audience member (and then vice president–elect) Mike Pence. This exchange led to various tweets from Trump, who seemed to feel that it was his job to jump in and protect Pence from a respectful dialogue. As Noriega notes, school districts, such as Tucson's, have passed destructive legislation limiting diverse curricula and classes that supported and educated students about the heritage of Latinx writing and cultural production. The successes and challenges of the Latinx theatre community, and of various other communities that embody nonnormative identity positions in the United States and other countries facing a global rise of nationalist fascism and xenophobia, cannot be regarded as separate phenomena. Indeed, the rise of Trump and the policies he stands for and the increase of a more diverse electorate in the United States and globally are not unrelated. If we must maintain any hope, it is that the victory of this administration is both...