Milagro Teatro in Portland, Oregon: An Interview with Founders and Artistic Director Dañel Malán, José González, and Olga Sánchez

Given the momentum that Latino/a theatre makers are enjoying with the consolidation of Latino/a Theatre Commons (LTC), which has successfully gathered under one banner a good and important segment of Latina/o theatre makers, artists, and scholars thanks to the sponsorship provided by Howl-Round from Emerson University, I decided to dedicate a series of interviews to Latina/o theatre companies that have been operating for more than twenty years without interruption throughout the country. These interviews are done in the spirit of highlighting “the importance of honoring the individual and collective voices in the Latina/o theatre community”¹ that has prevailed throughout the activities that followed the initial 2013 LTC Boston National Convening. I am referring mainly to the Encuentro, a national Latina/o theatre festival that took place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, on November 2014,² and Carnaval, a Latina/o playwright competition/showcase to be held in July 2015 in Chicago, hosted by the Theatre School at DePaul University.

The interview with Dañel Malán (Founding Artistic Director, in charge of Teatro Milagro, the Touring and Arts Education program), José González (Executive Director and also Founder), and Olga Sánchez, (Artistic Director), to talk about Milagro’s history, goals, and accomplishments during the last three decades, took place in the offices of Milagro, in Southeast Portland, on a mild mid-winter afternoon in February 2015. During my visit, I also had the opportunity to tour the premises—a quaint historic building that showcases the oldest hand-operated elevator in the city—and attended a performance of Mexican playwright Luis Mario Moncada’s engaging comedy Opción múltiple, aptly directed by Nelda Reyes.³

What brought you to Portland? Why this city out of any other place in the U.S.?

Dañel: We came here in 1984 after graduate school at UCLA, and José’s family was here. The weather and the climate were beautiful, so clean and peaceful, unlike smoggy L.A. It was like a new frontier and we could be pioneers of a new theatre. We found the Oregon Trail! But José is better at that history than me.

José: She is absolutely correct. We took a trip up here when we were both at UCLA. She fell in love with Portland. So when I finished, we decided to move up here and see if we could start a new life in the theatre. It was really challenging because Portland is much different now than it was then. It was a smaller town. Now, I have no idea how many theaters there are; there must be around thirty. At that time there were maybe five. So, the opportunities were very limited for us to work. I got a few jobs in some local theaters, but they were just part-time. And, then, one day sitting around our kitchen table with a friend, we got the crazy idea to do a play. The very first play that we did was a British comedy by Alan Ayckbourn called Relatively Speaking. We had the idea, because I was a scenic designer and Dañel was a costume designer, that if we did this play everybody would see our great work and we would be hired and we wouldn’t have to do a play again. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. So, we produced the play and it was successful, and then, before we knew it, more people started coming to us to produce work. We started producing our own work. We got a reputation, of being sort of guerrilla producers. We produced some very edgy, avant-garde pieces from all backgrounds. At that time, honestly, we didn’t know what we were going to do, but we knew that we wanted to stay working in the theatre and that was the most important thing. Eventually, more people gathered around us. We actually started producing a Festival of Greek Theatre and then, really, I think it...