Dallas' Cara Mia Theatre plants seeds of transformation with 2022 season

With its 2022 season, titled Seeds of Transformation, Cara Mía Theatre is celebrating 25 years of Latinx theater in Dallas.

On the schedule are three mainstage productions, plus the return to local touring and Jodi Voice Yellowfish and playwright-in-residence Virginia Grise's second year of her Siembra Fewllowship.

"Our 2022 season marks our first year as a resident theater of the Latino Cultural Center for the next 25 years," says executive artistic director David Lozano. "Through collaborations with local, national, and international theater leaders and activists, this season will take us one step closer to becoming a national destination for Latinx theater while investing in communities and neighborhoods throughout Dallas."

The season begins in January 2022 with the Dallas premiere of Luchadora!, written by Alvaro Saar Rios and directed by Gloria Vivica Benavides.

Filled with original music by Cara Mía company member Armando Monsivais and classic lucha libre wrestling choreographed by veteran luchador "Aski, the Mayan Warrior" (whom you might recognize from Prism Movement Theater’s Lucha Teotl), this is an inspiring story of a young girl who pursues her dreams of becoming a lucha libre wrestler, contrary to the norms of Latinx women in the 1960s.

The acting ensemble will feature Dallas' Tatiana Lucia Gantt and Los Angeles-based Cara Mía ensemble member Rodney Garza. It runs January 29-February 13, 2022.

In April 2022, Cara Mía Theatre will present the world premiere of Orígenes/Origins in association with the Laboratorio de la Máscara from Mexico City.

A mythic journey through the history of immigration from Mexico and Latin America to the United States, Orígenes/Origins is created by Mexican director Alicia Martínez Álvarez, Cara Mía company members David Lozano and Frida Espinosa Müller, and Sorany Gutierrez, a core team member of the Artstillery performing arts group.

Obie Award-winning New York playwright Caridad Svich will collaborate with the two companies on writing the script.

Featuring trademark production values from both companies, Orígenes/Origins utilizes masks, movement, and live music, celebrating 18 years of collaboration between Cara Mía Theatre and the Laboratorio de la Máscara. It runs April 22-May 8, 2022.

A third mainstage production will be announced early next year and will be performed in June at the Latino Cultural Center.

Frida Espinosa Müller's solo performance about the border crisis through the eyes of a child, Ursula, or let yourself go with the wind, will have local performances in the Dallas neighborhoods of Pleasant Grove, Oak Cliff, and Bachman Lake in 2022.

Playwright-in-residence Virginia Grise will build on her previous collaborative projects with Pleasant Grove activists and artists as part of her Siembra Fellowship, which provides a paid commission for up to two years for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) individuals working in Dallas that will strengthen their art making, activism, and/or community-building practices.

Grise will facilitate a performance lab called Da Grove: Un Taller for Dreaming that will include workshops by innovative guest artists whose work is deeply rooted in community and liberation as a life practice, including Sharon Day, Marguerite Angelica Monique, Chas (chaz) Jewett, Omi Osun Joni Jones, and Kristiana Rae Colón.

In the second year of her Siembra Fellowship, Jodi Voice Yellowfish will expand her Reclamation Talking Circles series.

These circles are founded on principles of Native culture and wisdom with the objective of reclaiming one’s life from the chaos of the Western world, and will gather local and national artists to guide multi-generational participants through this process.