Tanya Saracho was one of only three Latinos in Boston University’s 200-person theater program, so when three of her bilingual, Latina-themed plays were produced there, white non-Latino students took starring roles. Saracho was disappointed with the productions. Actors were mispronouncing Spanish words and didn’t quite grasp their characters. Saracho couldn’t “hear” what she had written.
Last fall Saracho was denied a chance to audition for a Latina part in a local independent film because she was “too light-skinned.” Stunned, she left without putting up a fight. The women who got to audition looked like “light-skinned blacks and Filipinos,” she says. She auditioned for television commercials and industrial films, and several times found herself reading for the same basic part, a dim-witted character named Maria.
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Paz’s father is Russian and her mother is an American of English and Native American descent. Culturally, Paz considers herself Latina. Born in Peru and raised in Ecuador, she moved with her family to Takoma Park, Maryland, when she was 12. Later, in the theater program of Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, she and the program’s only other Latina, Marta Suarez, produced and performed their own shows.
Saracho believes a Latina company should showcase pieces that its members write about their own lives. But it should also give them the chance to play mainstream roles, like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. The works of Latina playwrights should be performed, and so should classic plays, with male actors and with a Latino spin.
Among the things the actors found they had in common was a history of casting directors who asked them to be “more spicy,” and do “the accent.” Saracho–who says, “I always get asked to do a ‘generic’ Latina. Like, what is that, you know?”–wrote a scene based on a dialogue she’d had with a casting director.
Saracho and Paz point to Teatro Vista’s recent production of Aurora’s Motive, which featured a non-Latina as the Spanish lead. They say the actor did an excellent job, but surely there’s a Latina who could have done the same.
