Luis Alfaro: Opening the doors to LA theater
Luis is a celebrated and award-winning artist and writer. His plays, short stories, poems and performances are often set in barrios, like the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles where he grew up. His plays are often autobiographical and are about working class people and the systems that trap them – systems of poverty, incarceration, racism and homophobia. His Greek trilogy has won particular acclaim: contemporary retellings of Electra, Oedipus, and Medea, set in Chicano and Latinx communities.
He’s a MacArthur "genius" fellow, an associate professor at the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts, and the first-ever playwright-in-residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (the country’s largest repertory company). Alfaro was recently named the associate artistic director of Center Theatre Group, which includes the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre downtown and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
Alfaro spent a decade at Center Theatre Group as an associate producer, director of New Play Development, and co-director of the Latino Theatre Initiative. His mentor was Gordon Davidson, founding artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum.
On Oct. 11, Alfaro will join the UCLA Arts series "10 Questions" to help us answer the question “how do we connect?” alongside Mary Osako, vice chancellor for strategic communications at UCLA; and Morten Bay, research fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
He joined the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress" to talk about how the movement for equity, diversity and inclusion is reshaping theater, how LA theater specifically needs to change to reflect the stories of its audiences, and how live theater will recover from the pandemic.
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