Olga Sanchez Finds Humanity in Latinidad

FALL 2009 167 Olga Sanchez Finds Humanity in Latinidad Timothy Krause Raised in a traditional Colombian family on New York City’s Staten Island, actor and director Olga Sanchez understands first-hand the challenges and rewards of being a bi-cultural theatre artist. Her undergraduate education and early career were shaped by work from the likes of William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, but her subsequent experiences in the Pacific Northwest pulled her closer to the worlds of playwrights such as Federico García Lorca, Luis Valdez and Nilo Cruz. Now, as an artistic director of Miracle Theatre Group in Portland, Oregon, Sanchez draws on her bi-cultural heritage to create collaborative works that exemplify the human experience through a culturally informed lens of latinidad. What was your first experience in Latino theatre? For a long time, whenever I participated in ethnically identified arts, it was never the main focus of my work. On the East Coast, where I grew up and began my career, I was more likely to be directing plays like The Taming of the Shrew or Cyrano de Bergerac. I really had only one brush with a Hispanic writer when I worked on a scene in college from La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca. It was a surprisingly powerful experience. My director asked me to do the scene once in English and once in Spanish. When I did the scene in Spanish, I burst into tears. At the time, I had no idea of the power or the importance of this kind of work, only that I had a visceral connection to it. It was only after moving to the Pacific Northwest, taking myself to a very different place, that my work changed, my identity was broadened, and I found a new sense of purpose through culturally specific arts. What was different about working in the Pacific Northwest? In New York City, I was part of a very diverse community. No one really stood out because everyone was different. I didn’t sense an ‘us ver- 168 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW sus them’. But in Seattle, I was immediately identified as Latina both by the public at large as well as the Latino community. Although I was cast in plays by Steven Dietz and Y York that were ethnically neutral, suddenly I was also cast in works by José Cruz Gonzalez, Milcha Sanchez Scott and Carlos Murillo — works that were decidedly Latino. It was a strange thing to be suddenly ethnic. I always thought that I was ‘American’. But in the Northwest, I was exotic — and even more rare, a trained bilingual theatre artist, as well. [Sanchez has trained with Peter Brook, André Serban, Mary Overlie and Augusto Boal, among other master theatre artists.] What happened in Seattle that focused your attention on culturally specific arts? I was working on a show with a writers group called Los Norteños, an evening called Una noche de liberación. It was a slate of one-act plays by writers who were not really playwrights but who decided they wanted to try writing plays. So I paired them up with dramaturges, directors and professional actors. Near the opening night, one of the writers cornered me in great frustration about some technical thing that we were still working on. I understood his concern; he was a novelist — a lawyer by trade who had grown up in a migrant worker camp — who was having his first play produced. But most important was what he said to me, which I’ll never forget: “They’re watching us. Everybody outside the Latino community is watching us to see whether we are going to fail. They can’t wait for us to make a mistake or to be less than perfect.” His passion — his panic — was so palpable. It struck me as a call to responsibility: I became aware of how serious work like this is because it represents who we are, it speaks for us and, as our mouthpiece, can be our harshest critic and our most valued champion. How did this affect you and your career? I don’t think I knew how big a question...