THE POWER OF BILINGUAL THEATRE El Poder del Teatro Bilingüe
BY TATYANA-MARIE
CARLO
As a bilingual theatremaker from Miami, my heart beats in service to the community that shaped me. Some of my most lasting artistic and cultural influences come from the people around me and those I’ve worked with. Growing up in Miami, I was surrounded by an environment that relished life and celebrated who I was, making me feel I could live without compromising my cultural identity. This freedom and assurance of self was further encouraged by my grandmother, who was a major influence in my upbringing. Orphaned at age five, she was a strong, playfully serious woman who always emphasized the importance of family, education, and how we should each work to improve “our little slice of the world.” Her perseverance, hope, and indomitable spirit gave me life, and her tenacity was something I sought to emulate in my work. Initially, my journey into theatre began as a joyful escape and a way to connect with others, an avenue for making my own “little slice of the world” a better place, and a space to celebrate what, and who, I loved. My grandmother made sure to never miss one of my plays, no matter the distance. Although my work was primarily in English—and she spoke very little of it—she always made an effort to congratulate me, commenting on the costumes or how handsome an actor was.
Tatyana-Marie Carlo + her grandmother
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I sadly knew, though, that however much she wanted to support me, she wasn’t able to fully participate in the theatrical event or engage with the thematic material itself. It was my desire to bridge this linguistic gap with my grandmother, and connect with her through an art form that I felt was so powerful, that was the primary catalyst for my interest in bilingual theatre. That catalyst eventually sparked an opportunity to join the creative team at MicroTheater Miami, a primarily Spanishlanguage theatre housed in El Centro Cultural Español (CCE Miami), a cultural center that serves the surrounding Hispanic community. There, in collaboration with Executive Director Jorge Monje, I not only developed the theatre’s first English-language season but also uncovered and expanded my own understanding of Spanish-language theatre. In the process of developing work in both Spanish and English, MicroTheater Miami showed me bilingual theatre’s wider outreach. By adding an English season, our audience grew, with more multigenerational families coming together to watch plays and connecting afterward because of it. I saw the potential bilingual work has for both increasing theatre’s cultural impact and facilitating human connections within my own community. As a director and theatremaker, I felt this was a true lightbulb moment and an affirmation for me on my artistic journey to
keep moving forward in a way that served my people. In addition to witnessing the reach and impact of bilingual theatre firsthand, I found that working in MicroTheater Miami came with unexpected serendipity. The open floor plan and open work culture of CCE led to opportunities to work with the glorious women who ran that organization: Mayte de la Torre, Mildred Cabezas, Veronica C. Alvarez, and Ena Columbie. In a predominantly female space, I saw empowered women leading compassionately and effectively, and excelling in their fields, all while making space for others. These brilliant, powerful women worked with one another seamlessly, considering every idea in a room, including my own, and I didn’t even work for them! They had a way of making everyone feel heard and valued, and I was inspired after seeing the benefits of this trust in their nonjudgmental collaborative process. I sought to emulate the way they ran their organization in my own artistic process by guiding creative spaces as a director with an openness, vulnerability, and safety that allowed ideas to thrive. With respect to my own theatremaking, I believe that every voice matters. Trust matters. By trusting every idea, impulse, or glimmer of a suggestion from my community of collaborators, I seek to embrace a process
Vanessa Elise, Amber-Lynn Benson, Rei Capote, Marcela Paguaga + Icela Marliese in Real Women Have Curves at Main Street Players, directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo PHOTO Ashton Rey
