and Their Plays

MEET THE STAFF Michelle Cruz

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Trinity Rep’s Director of Community Engagement since 2018, Michelle Cruz cultivates partnerships with community organizations, produces community-based events, helps shape our seasons, teaches classes… and the list goes on! I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Michelle so we could get to know her even better.

Bradly Widener: You worked at Trinity Rep as a receptionist from 2004 to 2007. What was it like coming back over ten years later and moving into such a different role?

Michelle Cruz: It was very strange! Before I found the Director of Community Engagement job, it felt like, what do I do now? Do I move? What am I doing here? Do I give back somehow? What am I doing with my life right now? I was actually looking into moving to Nashville, TN to pursue more music, delve into a new community, and make an impact in a different state. Then, I saw this job and said this is exactly what I need to do, and I hope I get this. My first inclination was thinking of myself as the eight-year-old who saw A Christmas Carol through Project Discovery. That was my first experience with theater, and I remember Tim Crowe as Scrooge. Even now, I still look at him like, “Wow, Tim Crowe!” That little kid still comes out. It was clear that it was time to stay and make an impact here in Rhode Island, my community.

BW: What does it really mean to be the Director of Community Engagement at Trinity

MC: I think it means a lot of things. There is so much about my job that deals with access. Before becoming the Director of Community Engagement, I worked with Farm Fresh Rhode Island and headed up both the wintertime farmers market and the downtown farmers market on Tuesdays. I knew a lot of the faces in Kennedy Plaza. I was also emceeingthe Burnside Music Series on Thursdays, and I would see a lot of the same folks again. They would recognize me and ask, “Hey, can I come into the park?” That was so striking to me because they no longer felt like that place was for them. At Trinity Rep, I think about what it is going to take for people to actually open that door and feel welcome here. You can walk past Trinity Rep all the time, but not feel compelled and safe and inspired to go in. I still remember my first time at the Project Discovery student matinee as a kid, and there’s this giant lobby, and it’s beautiful but it’s a little scary! When I was hired, I started going to our neighbors to talk about what their access was to us. I was thinking about all the different perceptions that people have about Trinity Rep. How are we reaching out to them? Have they ever been here? Are there programs here for them? I invited former Providence mayoral candidate Kobi Dennis to come talk to the Radio Golf cast since there were so many parallels between the Pittsburgh Hill District in the play and gentrified neighborhoods in Providence (Southside and Fox Point, for example) and Dennis’ own mayoral race. He and Radio Golf’s Harmon Wilkes both aspired to be the first Black mayors of their cities. I wanted to make those connections with our audience that art does indeed imitate life here, especially in that particular production. Kobi headed up an amazing program called Princes to Kings, just being a father figure to 13-18-year-old boys of color from Providence, and he said, “You know, the kids would see

ABOVE LEFT: Michelle Cruz; ABOVE: Community engagement events organized around Trinity Rep’s 2020 production of August Wilson’s Radio Golf included a talkback featuring (l to r) Magelia Babatunde Perez Akinjobi from DARE, Dr. Claire Andrade-Watkins from the Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place/SPIA Media, NAACP President Jim Vincent, and Terri Wright from DARE, as well as a classic Sunday Dinner held in Trinity Rep’s scenery shop.

that summer program you do [Young Actors Summer Institute — YASI], and we just never felt like we could go over there.” The kids would quite literally see the YASI program 20 feet away from them, and they felt like they couldn’t ask what that program was and how they could have access to it. That was very striking to me, as well. I think that’s the beauty of the interchange of different community members and their different perspectives. I hope I can connect them and provide access. It’s important. In talking about access to shows, especially for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color folks, I’ve said, “A lot of us have disposable income. We own homes, we’re doing just fine. [laughs] We will spend our money where we feel welcome, where we feel heard, and where we feel represented.” It’s difficult to hear that in order to get more people that look like me, there has to be more pay-what-you-can. That’s not the issue. It most certainly is for many people, but that’s not the root of the problem. I see that across the board in many theaters and in art in general.

BW: I hear you’re working on becoming fully quadrilingual in English, Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish. That’s amazing. What led you to want to do that, and how’s it going?

MC: I was born here, but both my mom and dad were born in Cape Verde. They said they really wanted their kids to learn the language, so I was taught English and Creole from birth, so that was easy! Cape Verde was a colony of Portugal until 1975, so Portuguese is the official language, while Cape Verdean Creole is more of a dialect. Growing up, we had the Portuguese Times newspaper that my dad would read, and then he’d hand it to me, “Okay, read this. See how much you can understand.” Spanish, I felt, was fairly similar to Portuguese and there are many folks who speak Spanish, so I’m working on it. My reading comprehension for all four languages is good, I just need to be with others to practice!

BW: Someday! Music is a huge part of your life, obviously. Can you tell me more about what music means to you?

MC: Music expresses so much of what I don’t always say. I don’t know if it was a compliment or not, but my dad used to say I’m very “Barack Obama-like” in my demeanor. I have a very calm, soft-spoken demeanor, and then I get on stage and I’m just like BOOM. This other person comes out who’s very sassy, flower in her hair, makeup. [laughs] It’s just an absolute expression of what I am feeling. Something that’s been so hard for me in the pandemic is the lack of that energy exchange. I miss being with my bandmates who are like my brothers and being able to show people a different culture, whether it’s something from Cape Verde or Brazil, or whatever song I’m singing. I know what it’s like to be in love with a song and have no idea what they’re saying, and it’s fine. It’s the language of music and that’s the important part. That’s the beauty of it. I started a program called Music Is Healing where I’ve worked with a lot of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, so it’s also healing on all fronts for me, and I miss it so much.

BW: I hear you. So, speaking about that a little bit more, we obviously believe in the power of theater, and performance in general, to change people’s lives, or I don’t think we would do what we do. What’s the most impactful piece of theater or live performance you’ve ever experienced?

MC: Oh, wow…I think I’ll actually go back to my first experience seeing A Christmas Carol at Trinity Rep because it’s still so well-embedded in my mind. It didn’t necessarily inspire me to be an actor, but it did inspire me to know the possibility of what is truly possible in the arts. Before that experience, I thought, “I sit here in the audience and everything happens on stage.” But they came running out to us and were above us, and just knowing that could be possible, it really opened my younger eyes to what you can do and how you can perform. A very recent example for me is Radio Golf because it was especially pertinent to what I’ve been doing with community engagement. At the last talkback, I invited several folks from the NAACP, the Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place, and DARE, and they were all talking about gentrification and what was happening in the community. Theater can be that mirror to the community, and I think that worked, fortunately or unfortunately, so well with Radio Golf. It brought a lot of conversation, and I hope it continues to do that when we are able to come back in person and have that exchange. These are themes that happen time and time again in these cities, and how we could reflect that through a local lens was really special to me.

BW: What’s something that folks don’t know about you that you wish they did?

MC: I was a pretty good BMX bike rider.

BW: No, you weren’t!

MC: I was! And one of my goals as a kid was that I really wanted to be in the X-Games. Yeah…it did not happen. BMX and skateboarding…I feel like most people don’t know that.

ABOVE LEFT: Carolers gathered at Trinity Rep before singing while strolling to Providence City Hall to join in community sing and lighting of the holiday tree. BELOW: A knitting circle organized around Trinity Rep’s 2020 production of A Tale of Two Cities; a celebration of Dia de Los Muertos was jointly organized with RI Latino

Arts and the Providence Public Library. PHOTO BY NEIL DIXON, HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND