ESB-MACC Enhances Programming with
Latino Arts Residency By Imani Gonzalez
ProyectoTearo’s “Mi Mujer es el Plomero.”
for the community to enjoy, dissect, discuss and ultimately claim as its own.” The ESB-MACC will be home to some of Austin’s most innovative Latino arts organizations and the place from which the finest work will be produced for years to come. “Every one of us at ProyectoTeatro is absolutely thrilled about this amazing opportunity to be one of four organizations that can now call the ESB-MACC their home,” said Luis Armando Ordaz Gutiérrez, Executive and Artistic Director of ProyectoTeatro.
Laura Esparza, PARD’s Cultural Arts Division.
The organizations selected for the inaugural year are:
The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) will launch its newest expansion of cultural programming in July, welcoming four local performance arts groups to the Latino Arts Residency Program (LARP). Selected for residency in the inaugural year of the program are the Austin Latino Theater Alliance, AZTLAN Dance Company, ProyectoTeatro and Teatro Vivo. The ultimate goal for the organizations is to graduate from the residency with a greater ability to sustain artistic production at the highest professional quality. Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) created the program to increase the presence of Latino arts organizations at the site and support the center’s mission. According to PARD Division Manager Laura Esparza, “The purpose of the program is celebrate the rich tradition of Latino arts in Austin and invest in their sustainability to assure that generations to come will get to enjoy the finest in Latino arts. We hope that in years to come, Austin will be recognized as a national center for Latino arts.” The Latino Arts Residency Program and the four selected resident Latino arts organizations will be officially welcomed on July 13 from 5 -7 p.m. at ESB-MACC. Following the presentation of the resident organizations, the ESB-MACC will host a gallery opening and reception. Each organization’s representative will be present and share their mission, vision, and goals for their time in residency. The program was developed in response to concerns expressed in Austin’s Hispanic Quality of Life report regarding by the costs associated with presenting cultural productions at the ESBMACC including rental of the facility. In response to their concerns, the ESB-MACC Advisory Board presented a resolution to the Austin City Council in August 2011. The adopted resolution directed the City Manager and staff to “research and create a Latino Artists Incubator Program at the
Center geared towards developing local small and mid-sized Latino arts organizations.” “Teatro Vivo is very proud and excited to be part of the Latino Artist in Residency Program,” said JoAnn Reyes, Executive Director of Teatro Vivo. “This program will foster the growth of Latino arts groups and support their collective missions to celebrate our culture and make the arts accessible to a diverse spectrum of Austin audiences.”
Austin Latino Theater Alliance was born 14 years ago with the intention of uniting and supporting the different Latino and Hispanic theater groups in the community. Today, ALTA has been reborn as a community of artists and volunteers who are firmly committed to fostering the development of new talents in the theater arts, promoting collaborative productions among local and international artists, and bringing the highest quality theater to the Austin audiences.
The AZTLAN Dance Company has enriched audiences through annual theatrical dance productions and creative cultural workshops. The AZTLAN Dance Company is guided by the mission to establish a stable and conducive environment for imagining, creating, and presenting dance projects that reflect and inspire the communities within which it works. Through our work AZTLAN promotes greater intercultural, cross-generational understanding and appreciation of Indo/Xicano/Latino dance arts. AZTLAN creates dance that imagines a future informed by the past, in the present. ProyectoTeatro’s mission is to preserve and promote the Latin-American culture through theatrical arts in Spanish, providing a source of transformative arts education and quality cultural entertainment. ProyectoTeatro strives to offer all participants-actors, students and audience members alike a space conducive to human development through the arts. Teatro Vivo produces and promotes Latino based theater, providing a window into the Latino community to make theater accessible to all audiences, especially those underserved in the arts. As a bilingual theater company, Teatro Vivo’s mission is to produce culturally relevant Latino theatre that addresses critical social issues. Teatro Vivo serves the community by telling the Latino story, positively reflecting the Latino community and uniquely celebrating the vibrancy of the Latino culture and the power of the human experience. Teatro Vivo’s “Petra’s Pastorela.”
The program will also seek to increase awareness of the cultural projects produced by the organizations in the Austin community, at large. “Ideally, at the close of their residency, these organizations will have an increased following, funding, and new partnerships,” said Nino Miranda, ESB–MACC Latino Arts Residency Program Coordinator. Another component of the program will be to encourage resident organizations to invite the public to participate in the creative process. Additionally, resident organizations will have the ability to offer educational programming to further enrich the community’s knowledge of and exposure to the arts. As a community, Austin will witness projects from the beginning of the creative process, up through rehearsal and opening night. “People will have the chance to see the making of canvasses, initial sketches and the masterful strokes and beauty of works created by our local visual artists,” said Miranda. “The work created at ESB-MACC will be TODO AUSTIN // JULY 2013 // TODOAUSTIN.COM 09