New Latino Theater Festival Seeks to Engage Houston’s Underrepresented Communities

When Houston City Council approved the Arts and Cultural Plan a year ago, one of the goals was to reach out to communities seen as underrepresented in the arts. "Reflecting the city's cultural diversity is something that came up over and over during the cultural planning process and is really a theme throughout the plan," says Debbie McNulty, Director of the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs.

Mayor Turner has approved $50,000 in city funds to create the new Latino Theater Festival, which was an idea proposed by the Alley Theatre. In addition to the money from the city, the Alley hopes to get an additional $100,000 through a Creative Placemaking grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The featured play is Misa Fronteriza, described as a satirical comedy about life near the US-Mexico border. The Alley's Associate General Manager Shayna Schlosberg says she and Managing Director Dean Gladden discovered it at a Latino Theater Festival in Colombia. "The story is very relevant to Houston audiences so we thought: ‘This is absolutely a piece that we should bring,'" Schlosberg says.

The play is in Spanish but will include English translation through headsets. Through a partnership with a few community centers, it'll be staged in some of Houston's predominantly Latino neighborhoods. The Latino Theater Festival is set to launch in the spring of 2018 once the remainder of the funding is secured.