From the Notebook of Dámaso Rodríguez

ON MY ETHNIC, RACIAL, AND RACIALIZED IDENTITY, or ME LLAMO DÁMASO BERNARDO RODRÍGUEZ Y GARCÍA

As the Artistic Director of ART, I’m frequently called upon to write…fundraising letters, grant proposals, playbill messages, etc. in which you’ll seldom hear much about me. My job is most often to introduce and champion the artists whose work we are producing, promoting, or funding. As a director, I strive to be invisible in my direction, or to create the illusion of chaos, and that the events of the play are happening spontaneously without a controlling hand. ART Quarterly, with its mission to lift up the personal stories of Portland artists, is different. I’m tasked with revealing something about myself. I’m not comfortable with it, but that’s entirely appropriate for an inaugural issue inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the overdue racial reckoning that’s charging theatres like ART, and other predominantly white institutions, to examine themselves and sit in the discomfort caused by acknowledging racism, bias, privilege, and the intractable role each plays in the choices we make.

Preface or Epilogue: Scene in a Starbucks…

When I place an order for coffee, I always use the alias, “Joe.” I’m extremely proud of my name, “Dámaso” (pronounced DAH-mah-soh). Friends know that I’m the seventh generation, and my son the eighth, in a continuous line of namesakes. Our names are a link to generations of family history, hardship, sacrifice, strength, and love. I’ve resisted a lifetime of immediate requests for me to offer a nickname when I meet new acquaintances, classmates, teachers, employers, etc. It’s not a common name, even in Spanish-speaking countries. When asked my name, I will be asked immediately to repeat it. It will continue to be mispronounced by colleagues for days or months, or they will avoid saying my name out of fear of making a mistake. I’m patient while folks make an effort to get confident saying it. However, I decided many years ago not to invest that energy when ordering coffee or putting my name on a restaurant waiting list, so…the name on the order is “Joe”. Last year, I was in Miami at the Intercontinental Hotel, where the Theatre Communications Group National Conference was held. I stopped by Starbucks and placed my order. They didn’t ask for my name (I suppose they got it from the credit card I used for payment). I waited for my breakfast sandwich and coffee at a table. A few minutes later I was shocked to hear my name called loudly, and pronounced correctly (even with Spanish inflection). It was so jarring that I looked around the room absurdly as if someone else might have noticed. The prosaic act citizen of being called up to the counter as myself had become a major event. I’d never heard my name called out in public, by a stranger. Can that be true? Somehow, yes. Later that day, I went back for another coffee and the woman working at the register said to me in Spanish, “And you like it without cream and sugar.” I said, “Oh, you remember me?” She began to explain that her neighbor, a close family friend, was named “Dámaso” and that sadly he had recently passed away. We held up the long line talking about him. She shared that he had suffered greatly in the end, and that she had helped to care for him. She said she missed him very much. She said she could see him in me. §

Not many people in our Portland theatre community know that I became a director because I was not able to get auditions as an actor for English-language work, and I was pressured to change my name, for years. I remember sitting with my grandfather and father as I was about to embark on an acting career while they brainstormed how to change our name to a white-sounding one with a faint resemblance to something on our family tree. “Don Mayo” and “Dan Jordan” were the frontrunners. I never seriously considered it, but they knew what I was up against.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, living in Chicago and Los Angeles, I could rarely get film or television auditions for English-language work. I only worked in Spanish or with an accent (several industrial training films, two SAG commercials, and a recurring role on a Telemundo sitcom that got canceled before I had the chance to reprise my role). In professional theatre, I was only ever called in to audition for Latino roles. The breaking point that moved me to abandon acting was a Spanish-language commercial that I booked for McDonald’s. I arrived on the set to discover that there were two casts (the white cast and the brown cast…the English speakers and the Spanish speakers). We would tag out between close-ups, each cast performing their “bite and smiles” before spitting out our Big Macs on the director’s “cut!” This is where the systemic racism of our field became stunningly clear to me. My frustration was that I had not been invited to audition for the English version of the commercial, which would have been distributed nationally and paid tens of thousands of dollars more. In my naïve (or idealistic) mind, my castmates and I had the added special skill of being bilingual and should have been in both commercials. I was angry and disillusioned. I was impatient then. I didn’t see an achievable career for me as an actor. There would be too many obstacles associated with what I now understand to be my racialized identity, and I couldn’t live with changing my name. I impulsively made the strategic decision to stop acting and become a director as a way to better my chances of a career. Twenty years later, after building an accomplished record as a director and artistic director with nearly 100 productions to my credit, if I think too long about the choice I made, or even attempt to talk about it, I become quickly triggered and filled with emotion. Trauma can hide behind success.

I am a U.S. born Cuban American. I am Latino. I am Hispanic. I am part of the Latinx population. I am a member of the BIPOC community. Both of my parents were born in Havana, Cuba and I am of the first generation in my family born a U.S. citizen. My parents, grandparents, and most of my extended family, emigrated to the U.S. as refugees in the decades following Fidel Castro’s declaration that Cuba would become a communist state. I have family members that are DominicanAmerican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican. I am bilingual. I only ever communicated with my grandparents in Spanish. I have always felt comfortable with, confident in, and proud of my heritage despite a lifetime of seemingly casual, probing questions attempting to diminish my authenticity. I am never more at peace or at home than in a room full of Latinx people.

To my relief, during my only trip to Cuba (in 2015), I never once felt out of place, or that my physical appearance was unusual or confusing. I felt a profound sense of belonging, of roots. I have lighter skin than many Latinx people, brown hair, and European features. If I were a Cuban citizen, I would fill out “white” on a census form. In this country, however, I am not part of the white majority. For most of my lifetime, I knew myself to be part of a seemingly monolithic group called “Hispanics” alongside other non-members of the dominant culture. As long as I can remember, I understood myself to be “a minority” or what we are now calling a “person of color.”

When I was a child my parents moved us to Dallas, Texas, and away from the Cuban American community in Miami. I occasionally mourn the loss of not being raised in a majorityLatinx environment.

I acknowledge that my physical appearance has always afforded me privileges not granted to most Latinx people and members of BIPOC communities. I don’t fear for my life if pulled over in a traffic stop. I’m not followed in stores when shopping. I can jog in my neighborhood any time I like without considering the consequences. I often have the privilege of controlling whether or not, and how, I reveal my racialized identity to you. Until I’m forced to introduce myself to you, or you read my name on a resume or playbill, I have the privilege of being white. I’m also aware of the fact that once some folks know my name, hear me speak Spanish, learn about my upbringing, or if I speak about matters pertaining to racism and white supremacy, or refer to myself as Latino or a Person of Color, initial perceptions shift and biases are revealed. I’ve even been told by one person that I literally began “to look different” to them as they got to know me.

I am asked quite often, so I’ll explain it here: Latino (or Latinx, the “x” includes all genders) is not a race. It is an ethnicity encompassing people from Latin American countries and people of Latin American origin living in the United States. Latino/a/x people (and Cubans specifically) are as racially diverse as the world itself. Colorism, anti-indigeneity and antiBlackness are an insidious part of Latin American and Caribbean society. Latinx identity is racialized in this country regardless of skin color, but privilege favors proximity to whiteness.

When I was a child my parents moved us to Dallas, Texas, and away from the Cuban American community in Miami. I occasionally mourn the loss of not being raised in a majority-Latinx environment. Still, my world was expanded, and I went to public schools that had significant populations of Latinx, African-American, Asian-American, and South Asian-American students. I was surrounded by diversity in classes, sports, and in the school plays where I discovered my obsession with theatre and acting. In this environment, I was especially privileged. I was a top student and won a full scholarship to Texas A&M University, a predominantly white and Republican-majority campus—this was the time of “affirmative action” and I was the beneficiary of those diversity efforts. I assimilated especially well because of my physical appearance, and without the accent I surely would have developed had we stayed in Miami. I have now spent most of my life living away from my roots, much of the time in large and relatively diverse cities like Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles before moving to Portland nearly eight years ago to lead Artists Rep, a predominantly white institution in the whitest major city in the country.

I’ve been able to build a career, and eventually a living, as an artist of color (without the advantage of family wealth or an advanced degree) by sticking with it for nearly 25 years, and by being the beneficiary of extraordinary privilege. Could I have made it through the rigorous, eight-month interview process with darker skin? Without code switching? Could I have lasted eight years, overcome the shockingly quick skepticism I received in my first season and earned vital support from board members without skillful diplomacy, an always calm demeanor, and an easygoing collaborative style? Without the next undeniable accomplishment? The statistics suggest probably not. I am one of only several artists of color leading a LORT theatre (that’s the League of Resident Theatres)—just a few years ago, I was one of only four. I’ve been told I am the first Latinx artistic director to run a LORT theatre, and I might only claim this credit because ART became a member under my tenure. I’ve become skilled at working and advancing within the white-biased system of the American Regional Theatre and its precarious and problematic funding model, while trying to affect incremental changes and hold open the door for other artists of color. I was readied for this work thanks to gate-busting opportunity and mentorship from two artistic directors of color: Julia Rodriguez-Elliott of A Noise Within Classical Repertory Theatre, where I interned 20 years ago, hired me five times to direct classic plays; and Sheldon Epps of the legendary Pasadena Playhouse who granted my theatre company a residency and later hired me as his associate artistic director, entrusting me with high-profile, largescale directing projects. Claiming my position in the field thus far has required tenacity and ingenuity to accompany experience, talent, and qualifications. And always, too, a degree of…caution. I may not have changed my name, but I have adapted myself to make it as easy as possible for patrons, staff, press, colleagues, and audiences to embrace me on their terms. Now that the system which initially shut me out as a young actor before I found my way in as a director and artistic director has been shut down by the pandemic, there’s a chance to remake it in one form or another. It’s time for me to choose audacity over caution in order to build a multi-racial, anti-racist, anti-biased ART. Call me up.

THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT.

“THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT.” – MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Photo credit Keith Sheffield