An Unofficial History

By Barclay Goldsmith

THE LANDSCAPE

“What country, friends, is this?” Viola, “A Tempest”
“Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar,” Juan Serrat, songwriter

Both of these quotations express intelligence, awe and foreboding. They are good quotes to begin our history. I am a newcomer to this land on the U.S./Mexico Border, having lived here only about 65 years. Many who live here have family that were, at one time, strangers to this land as well: Spaniards, Mexicans, Anglos, and many others. We all trespassed then, and by moving here today, continue to trespass on land settled by people thousands of years before us. This is a land settled through “cycles of conquest” says the late Tucson anthropologist Edward Spicer. The land may be partially settled now, but seeking a rightful place in the sun here has always been contested. As artists we love the physical landscape, but some of us are compelled to witness the scars on the social landscape as well.  Borderlands, in its 26-year history, has had the good fortune of collaborating with artists, community activists and board members who are historically tied to this unique land.  Together we are forging a new path through this troubled landscape as we build a theater that reflects the diverse voices of this region.

THOSE BEFORE US: REBELLION AND RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE

Borderlands Theater has also benefited from the legacy of the artists/activists who performed with an earlier theater, Teatro Libertad, a collective and outgrowth of the early Chicano civil rights movement. Some of us were founding members and others traveled with us in trucks and old cars and “helped with the baggage.”   Libertad was formed in the early 1970s, and provided a pathway for the formation of Borderlands, creating short actos, (and at times full-length plays) in support of many community social issues:  Striking city garbage workers, the famous Morenci miners’ strike, walk outs at Tucson High School, among others. Theaters are built upon the knowledge of other practitioners. Libertad was a rebellion in aesthetics, in politics and in language.

This early teatro, made up of unpaid artist/activists, also toured the state in support of many community organizations,  performed at TENAZ theater festivals in California (TENAZ – El Teatro Nacional de Aztlan, a national coalition of teatros), and was even invited to Mexico on several  occasions. We owed our aesthetics and play development process to actors from Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino and the late Sandra Archer of the San Francisco Mime Troup. They showed us how to research the issues in our communities, and create collective work. We owe thanks also to the early academics and social historians who gave us much needed encouragement: Jorge Huerta, Tomas Ybarra Frausto, and the late Mexican playwright, Emilio Carbaillido.  Sylviana Wood, a longtime member of Libertad, who penned much or the dialogue behind the scenes, emerged as a locally  well-known playwright by the mid -80s

Our aesthetics were rasquache: A celebration of showcasing on stage what you have when you don’t have much: For example, using  garbage cans in all kinds of uses,  as  in  Los Pelados, a play about striking garbage workers. Rasquache aesthetics does not arise because theaters have no money for props, but is rather a shock of recognition for the obvious. That being said, our budget was small, we never charged and our working-class audiences were huge. We used a heady brew of English/Spanish and sometimes Yaqui in a mixture that was truly Tucson. We drew the wrath of many Mexicanos who revered the more formal Spanish. In those  the Arizona Commission on the Arts were reluctant to fund us because “we did not give Hispanic culture dignity.”  We traveled the state, performing in church basements, union halls and parks.  This was a period of getting to know the physical and social landscape of the state and Southwest. We brought theater to communities and groups that had not experienced much theater before and worked in support of many local community organizations.  (Yes, later on, the media did exploit the crazy mixture of language back then, which at the time, had a sense of bravura and rebellion that is still rightfully expressed today with new urban poetry.) We thought by supporting organizations such as the Mine Mill and Smelter workers strike and the flooded out farm workers in Phoenix through the United Farm Workers that we were re-shaping the social map of Arizona. Did we?  We ask ourselves this.

WHO ARE WE REALLY?

Borderlands was formed as an official non-profit in 1986 during a transition time in this country as we witnessed the collective/political energy of many teatros   waning.  Borderlands mission from the start was to present the diverse voices of the U.S./Mexico Border region. At the same time there was a blossoming of Hispanic/Latino/Chicano playwrights, nationally, whose names have now become front and center on playbills and posters, if not yet totally in the national landscape.  Seduced with the idea of performing in spaces with air conditioning, functioning dressing rooms and comforts of more traditional theater for more traditional audiences, Borderlands looked for a home.

In 1987 we moved into the historical but small Teatro Carmen in the central part of downtown Tucson in Barrio Histórico. This, our first “home” had been a space for touring plays from Mexico at the turn of the previous century. The structure was adobe. Well, we did not have air conditioning quite yet. The plumbing was quaint and alley cats battled with actors for their place on the stage. Sometimes the evaporative coolers worked, thanks to designer Todd Poelstra who spent more time on the roof than in the theater. We contracted a roofing company to make repairs and we brought the electrical up to city codes, no small task for a limited budget without any city funding even though this building was historically important.

In this new space, we continued to mix new plays by new writers with homegrown collaboratively developed and produced pieces such as: Los Muertos Nunca Mueran (Scenes of the Mexican Revolution, ) and Beyond Borders (border poetry and music devised with Joan Van Dyke, Lupe Castillo, Rebeca Cartes, Barbea Williams and me with the eclectic music of Bwi Ya-Toli a group highly influenced by South American Andean/Indigenous and border sounds).

We also began to commission and or produce new plays, mostly by Arizona playwrights: Sylviana Woods, Caras y Mascaras; Elaine  Romero, Walking Home, and later Barrio Hollywood; Toni-Press Coffman, Espantos in the Covered Courtyard Cantando Todavia and later, Two Days of Grace at Middleham. During this period we could never figure out if we were an ensemble-based theater or a “normal one” that was producing already written scripts.  Vestiges of devised/ collaboration/collectivity developed scripts were and continue to this day:  When we produced the already collaboratively developed, Latins Anonymous by Diane Rodriguez, Armando Molina, and Nick Najera; Electricidad, by Luis Alfaro (which was highly developed with Tucson actors even though Alfaro ultimately shaped the piece;) Beyond Borders, developed by five writers, and eventually many actors, was a true ensemble piece.

The capstone in ensemble work has been A Tucson Pastorela, a contemporary re-telling of the Shepherds trek to witness the Nativity, originally written for many years by Max Barnscomb with community input, is now a devised work and ghost written by five local authors. A Tucson Pastorela, long a tradition in more than 2,000 communities in Mexico alone, has been a mainstay since 1996, with many of the same actors having been in it from the start. Many ideas were and have always come from the community as input shapes Lucifer’s three temptations to the shepherds as they travel. The late Albert Soto’s portrayal of Lucifer became so popular that they say he competed in attention with the “honored child in the manger.” Gertrie Lopez’s Tohono O’odham Waila music has been our musical anchor since 1998.   All these plays, mostly written with elements of ensemble, community input through interviews and or devised development by a team or writers, have been some of our most popular productions. They have all had very successful runs in Tucson and Electricidad has been produced at such major companies as The Goodman Theater (Chicago) and the Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles) and A Visitor’s Guide to Arivaca (Workshop production)  has been produced at several West Coast Theaters. Were we beginning to shape the new American play landscape in small but important ways even if ultimately we did not reshape the social one, hard as we tried?

Well, looking back to about 1989, Teatro Carmen was really a bust! The ceiling collapsed one cold, rainy night when we were dark and we fled to the comfort of the new performing arts center at Pima Community College. The Anglo audiences had loved the romantic slumming of Teatro Carmen, but our Chicano/Latino audience flocked to the air-conditioned comfort of Pima College. All that remains now is the shell of the walls and roof, and a historical marker by the door, thanks to a community organization called Teatro Carmen. The space is often touted as a reminder of early Mexican “respectable culture.”  To have such an important, though small building left in a state of decay is a sign of disrespect however, mirrored in the more recent bulldozing of large downtown segments to make way for new city planning of the nearby community center.

THE PLAYWRIGHT, FRONT AND CENTER

By the 90’s, admittedly, we became less of an “activist theater”… away from union halls and picket lines to a more playwright focused theater. But, a decade later we had performed enough plays reflecting local issues that we formed the Community Partners Program. More a tradition than a formal program, partners are organizations that have a stake in a particular production and by providing before and after programming in panels, workshops etc., bring the importance of their own work to light.  Especially helpful during this transitional period with interchanges of brief residencies  between Eureka Theater and Borderlands, were guest artists Richard Seyd (acting coach/director) and Oskar Eustis (dramaturge/director). Both of course have left their own marks on the landscape. Their compelling and important work at Eureka (Emily Mann and Tony Kushner) during this time period convinced us that maybe we could have running water in dressing rooms backstage and be political at the same. Their influence on my thinking became important and has remained with us. But depending on ones definition of activist/artists, we were not then on the front lines as often, nor no  longer in union halls or picket lines but there was  a growing number of playwrights nationally and especially in the Southwest,  whose work resonated with our mission, who addressed the scars on the landscape.

Putting us in touch with the expanding number of playwrights, another kind of landscape, was Jose Cruz Gonzales who headed the South Coast Hispanic Playwrights Program and Diane Rodriguez and Luis Alfaro of the Mark Taper Forum, which had a similar program.  (These early initiatives were instrumental in the development of playwrights, though they have since been discontinued.)   Gonzales and Edit Villareal were our dramaturges for four years. Toni Press Coffman, our literary manager since 2000, came on board later and we have managed to keep her in a constant state of anxiety as we have expanded, re-defined or crossed borders in our long journey together.  Playwrights who we were introduced to or  we already knew  and whose works we later produced even up to recent times include: Josefina Lopez, Lisa Loomer, Oliver Mayer, Karen Zacharias,  Milcha  Sanchez  Scott, Bernardo Solano, Edit Villareal, Luisa Alfaro, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Ann Garcia Romero, Larry Kramer,  Cherri Moraga, Jose Rivera  and many others. We teamed up with Gulllermo Reyes of Teatro Bravo in Phoenix and Andres Alcala (actor) as we developed and further work shopped, Deporting the Divas, Men on the Verge of a Hispanic Breakdown:  I and II (Both plays subsequently traveled to Chicago as part of a National New Play Network Festival).  It was too late in the ’90s to shock anyone with these plays but they were hugely successful, as was our U.S. premiere in Spanish of the, Vagina Monologues a few years later in Tucson.

THE LANDSCAPE GROW AND GROWS

The ’90s marked another transition period as we moved into the comfortable new Center for the Performing Arts at Pima College, where some of us at Borderlands taught in the Theater Department — Chris Wilkin, soon to become associate artistic director, Poelstra and myself.

While we brought educational programs to the students in exchange for residency agreements, this period was important for the establishment of yes, a full season of plays but also the establishment of two programs that have stayed with the company since this period: The Border Playwrights Program and the U. S. /Mexico Program. The Border Playwrights Program was a formally structured program for the commissioning, developmental readings and often workshops leading to productions of new works. Calls went out nationally for new plays with a focus on the border or border as metaphor.

Though the national call has been discontinued, in the early years we received many new scripts for consideration and we selected three to five plays to be rehearsed and read each year. Now we choose one playwright to commission or select one relatively new play, often a candidate for world premiere, developed from commissioning ( in many cases) through workshops  and on to productions. Examples of plays we commissioned and did produce are: 13 Days: How the New Zapatistas Shook the World, a co-production with the San Francisco Mime Troup (also on national tour, Joan Holden lead writer with Tucson writers,  the late Daniel  Nugent, Eva Tessler and Paula Loera); Electricidad by Luis Alfaro; A Visitor’s Guide to Arivaca by  Evangeline Ordaz; and this year’s revival of, Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert  by Kara Hartzler, based on field work by Ana Ochoa O’Leary.

In 2001 we were out on the street again. Unlike Teatro Carmen, the ceiling did not fall in but the “roof did” if you get my drift. Ha!  We really do like performing at theaters across the city. We can say with confidence, “playing at a theater near you.” Fortunately the newly renovated and always supportive Suzi’s Theater at the historic Y, is now informally our home and we have produced the Pastorela for ten consecutive years now at the Leo Rich at the Tucson Convention Center again with good backup support here as well. 

THE NATIONAL LANDSCAPE: A ROCKY TERRAIN

In 1999 we were invited by David Goldman to be a founding member of The National New Play Network, a groundbreaking organization of now 27 theaters championing the development and production of new plays. One of the most significant contributions of NNPN is the Rolling World Premiere  which supports three consecutive premieres of the same new play within a 12-month period. Rolling World Premieres, which Borderlands has taken part in, are: Our Dad’s in Atlantis/Nuestra Papa Esta en Atlantida by Javier Malpica developed originally at the LARK Play Development Center in new York, ; Arizona:  No Roosters in the Desert with, partially developed at LARK and produced at  El Circulo Teatral,  Mexico City and Prop  Theater, Chicago;  and this year’s Agnes Under the Big Top by Aditi Brennan Kapil, (National Endowment for the Arts Distinguished New American Play Award,) produce at  Mixed Blood Theater, Minneapolis and Long Wharf Theater, New Haven, and Tucson.

One of the strong points of NNPN is that in the good sense of the word some of us are geo-centric to our own communities and one of the challenges has been for us to understand and guide ourselves and contemporary audiences to understand that the local or “the other” can be universal. This is a particular challenge in this country, today and especially for theaters that are focusing largely on diversity or voices still not seen on American stages. Our diversity in this country is mushrooming and theaters like Borderlands of which there are several in NNPN, should no longer be regarded nationally as   “Niche Theaters”.  We at Borderlands, particularly in the 2011/12 season, continue to wrestle with this, as we expand our landscape beyond the literal physical presence of where we live here on the border.

We are appreciative of the collaborative support we have received nationally from many, including NNPN: The LARK Play Development Center in New York for development assistance with, Barrio Hollywood by Elaine Romero and Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert and also Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis for collaborative support with two comedies, King of the Kosher Grocers and A True History of Coca Cola in Mexico.  No Passports, of which we are a member, has been instrumental in publishing, Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert for national distribution.   We also have been involved  with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.,  through the National MFA Playwrights Program, producing last season, White Tie Ball by Martin Zimmerman,  following  a staged reading there in 2009. I was to see many works by new playwrights when I directed a reading there in 2010.

COMMUNITY ISSUES FRONT AND CENTER

Throughout Borderlands history, we have always put local issues front and center, along now with the playwright. Even though we are not the touring theater of picket lines and union halls, we have grown increasingly focused on the troubled landscape. This continually refocusing on the local  sometimes battles in our own meetings evaluating and  producing works with other playwrights who do not address this specific region and theaters which are completely different from our mission. Examples of issues which we cannot ignore here on the border  have been explored in  Cherri Moraga’s” Heroes and Saints’ (ground water poisoning);  Julie Jensen’s “Dust Eaters” (Nuclear testing on Utah Reservations). And the most critical in need of debate, understanding and advocacy: Immigration. Almost every Pastorela has embraced this  issue in one form or another and we have come to understand that the issue can be exposed from so many different lenses: ”Journeys”; The Santuary Movement for Salvadoran refugees which started in Tucson); three plays by Guillermo Reyes exploring  Gays and immigration: Deporting The Divas, and Men on the Verge of a Hispanic Breakdown I and II;   “A Visitor’s Guide to Arivaca”, by Evangeline Ordaz (Border advocacy and humanitarian aid organizations,  American Theater cover story 2007); “Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert”  by Kara Hartzler. (Women traversing the desert as undocumented immigrants).  The issues that have plagued this area of the country, La Mesilla it is often called, do not go away. They just become more intense and heartbreaking.

ACROSS INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES

Borderlands has strayed from its border mission in terms of physical landscape, from time to time, embracing works that support The Cannon or Hispano / Latino Culture in general.  Examples are our productions in both Spanish and English of the Garcia Lorca Rural Trilogies: La Casa de Bernarda Alba/The House of Bernarda Alba, Yerma, and Bodas de Sangre/Blood Wedding, along with Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega, which was invited to the Siglo de Oro Festival in Chamizal, Texas, in 1997. We also expanded our borders with plays from Mexico, Argentina and Canada and expanded our horizons in the social sphere with, Nickel and Dimed by Joan Holden and we were the first, after London and New York City, to produce Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.  Plays about famous writers have  included works about Pablo Neruda, Burning Pacience/Paciencia Ardiente; Walt Whitman, Democracy and Jorge Luis Borges, Blind Date/Cita a Ciegas.

However, it was not until 1999 when I was offered a travel grant from Theater Communications Group TCG to visit and see theater in Mexico, where I had lived previously,  that the international component of our theatre became firmly rooted with the new  U.S./Mexico Program . On this travel grant I was fortunate to see Luisa Huertas in, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky/La Mujer que Cayo del Cielo by Victor Hugo Rascon Banda at a National Theater Festival in Monterey.  This play tells the true story of Rita, a Tarahumara Indian of the sierras of Chihuahua who was picked off the streets of Kansas City by police  and institutionalized in a mental ward for eight years because no one understood her language. We invited Luisa to perform it in Tucson in English, Spanish and Tarahumara. Even though the characters in the play were all monolingual and no attempt was made to help the audience understand the complete text, it was one of the most well-attended plays we ever mounted. Several things happened as a result. We became aware that we had and have not focused enough on the Indigenous peoples on our own border and we formed a fledgling support committee of mostly Indigenous residents  called Stands in Circle, a program to bring Native voices and themes, especially of the border, to our stage.  We were successful in kick starting some productions here under this program: Dust Eaters and She Was My Brother (World Premier) by Julie Jensen, a Utah playwright who knows her land and the people who live here well.  We are still looking for an indigenous playwright who knows this border area well, to help nurture this program.

We also realized, kind of late, that our natural landscape, physical and social, is also in Mexico. How can you have Borderlands in your name and not reflect both sides of the border? That our landscape should include Mexico is a no brainer since before the Gadsden Purchase this was part of Mexico (after Spain of course and on and on backwards). I was invited to direct a remounting of La Mujer… by the playwright and Huertas in Mexico City in 2003.  The production then traveled to the UNESCO International Theater Festival in Tampico two years later and then embarked on  a South American tour to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.  I directed Mexican actor Victor Carpinteiro in the Mexican production and Carpinteiro became a TCG International Visiting Artist for a residency in Tucson in 2005-06, and while here appeared in Deseo, by Rason Banda, translatd and directed by Eva Tessler, Bordelands Associate Artistic Director,  following a successful run in  Mexico City) and I was invited back to Mexico to remount, Blind Date/Cita a Ciegas by Mario Diament (also produced by us in 2009). Carpinteiro with Alberto Estrella are directors of El Circulo Teatral in Mexico City, a theater with much the same mission as Borderlands. Most recently we co-produced a Rolling World Premier of, Arizona: No Roosters in the Desert, in Tucson, Mexico City and Chicago (Prop Theater). Luisa Huertas, who founded El Centro de Estudio y Uso de La Voz (CEUVOZ), has played an important role in training  actors  and singers throughout the country and I have had the good fortune to continue collaborating with her at the National CEUVOZ  symposiums  in Mexico City each summer.

REFLECTIONS: MAPPING OUR JOURNNEYS

It takes a staff and board with a long-term commitment to keep a theater such as Borderlands functioning…willing at times to re-asses and re-evaluate its mission and vision. Our journey has been linear and circular at the same time, even, one could argue, slightly contorted, reflecting periods of identity crises (much like many of the themes in our plays).  If we were to create a map of Borderlands Theater’s physical journey it would be one thing, a map of the social landscape would be different, as would a map of playwrights.  Arena Stage in Washington D. C. is now creating a national map for  the new American Theater, plays, playwrights and theaters across the country) and we were invited to help construct this “map” this past year.  Maybe we should put all on the same map and see what happens!

How does one judge a theater’s journey? Where do the maps ultimately lead us?  How many new playwrights have been given an opportunity? How many new landscapes have we traversed or should we have stayed at home, mining the and witnessing the stories  in our own back yards?   How many of the voiceless have  found their voices?    What defines an artist activist? Do you, can you, should you, dare you  quantify artistic /social success by numbers in an audience  survey defining the number of people who did not cross a picket line, or who hiked  on the desert looking for sick unauthorized border crossers?  Should we use the numbers, to quantify our audiences, like a good business model accountability plan?  This is a complex issues for those  of us who reflect our communities in a broader meaning of landscape. The answers are complex though they  need reflection.

THE TEAM

In 1994, Eva Zorrilla Tessler, now Associate Artistic Director, joined the staff and has produced and directed many of our works: touring youth productions such as, Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl and Other Super Heroes Just Like Me; Many  productions of A Tucson Pastorela; two mountings of Deseo/Desire;  School of the Americas by Jose Rivera; and most recently, Oedipus el Rey by Luis Alfaro.  And she is responsible for helping us through perilous pathways.  At times Borderlands is a presenting company and in the last few years we have presented a national dance/theater company she founded and dances with which is also a creative ensemble, The Latina Dance Theater Project. Eva’s dance/theater background has helped re-shape the aesthetics of our company in recent years just as her bi-lingual knowledge has provided many a translation from English to Spanish and Spanish to English. (See bio.)

If you were ever to visit rural Graham, Cochise and Pima Counties you would maybe hear Alida Wilson-Gunn, chatting with students in the far off hills.  She has been with the company, first as an actress, and now as Education Outreach Director, for almost 20 years.  On investigating the sound you would find her in one of the small, rural border schools in places you’ve never heard of, conducting exercises to create student developed plays for the Coyote y Culebra Youth Project, part of Borderlands Education Outreach Programs. Based on an original idea by University of Arizona anthropologist Maribel Alvarez, and with scripting assistance from Toni Press-Coffman, this project, which develops plays from students’ stories, has been touring schools now for four years with Borderlands’ actors. Most of these schools are in a federally defined poverty areas and the work Alida and other teaching artists do,  helps teachers integrate Theater and other arts back into the daily classes of traditional sunjects.  It may be the only time these students have ever or will ever get to participate in the arts. (More about our education program, which has urban components as well, is on this web site.)

Toni-Press Coffman who joined borderlands as a dramaturg and grants writer about 2000, has an extensive bio on this website.

And we have a dedicated team of designers, though at times they were worn out and exhausted, trying even to find out where the current theater was: Jim Klingenfus, sound designer and John Longhoffer, scenic.  These designers have been with us almost from the start.  Longhoffer was our first designer of a “real play” in a “real theater” in 1987, Burning Patience/Paciencia Ardiente.  Designers that have more recently joined as are listed elsewhere in this website.

Our board of 12 members does not have term limits and some members have been with us now for almost 20 years, Imagine! They are good bridges with our community partners program, some very active “in community” as well. The board has also raised and contributed their own income when able and throw a great annual fundraising party: A  Pachanga  which has become notorious in the community. (You just try to get invited, just try!)

FUNDING

It’s common knowledge that arts organizations cannot make it without the continual contributions of donations large and small. We faced an extremely difficult time this past year (2011) and many, many donors and new people from around the country we did not even know, knew about Borderlands, came to the rescue. THANK YOU.

Administrators that stuck it out over longer periods of time have included Guadalupe Castillo, Debra Padilla and Adriana Valenzuela.  Castillo was our first and held court in the smallest office you can imagine on South Sixth Avenue, the back part of a home owned by the generous Alva Torres.  It was right in the shadow of the large Arizona Theater Company, “the State Theater of Arizona.”

Many of us legitimize our work by citing funders and awards. Some of us do not. Borderlands is grateful for the generosity of several foundations, institutions  and organizations over the years that have either provided grants or who have supported us with contracted services or in kind support: The University of Arizona College of Humanities (Chuck Tatum, former  Dean)  for inviting  Borderlands artists to classrooms and seminars;  Pima Community College Center for the Arts for residency programming (Carl Wachsman, former  Dean),  The National New Play Network; The Shubert Foundation; The Edgerton Foundation; The Kennedy Center New  American  Play Award (2004); the Rockefeller MAP Grant; the National Endowment for the Arts; Theater Communications Group; Arizona Commission on the Arts; Tucson Pima Arts Council; Tucson Community Foundation; Kresge Arts Tucson; The Dana Foundation; Southeastern Arizona Arts in Academics, Karen K Husted Director; The Southwestern Foundation; The Dorris Duke Charitable Trust; The Mellon Bank; Hispanics in Philanthropy;  National Arts Stabilization, and in Mexico El  Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes INBA, and the School of Theater at  National University of Mexico, (UNAM) and many others. Thank you all!

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

First ever Tucson/Pima Arts Council  Mayor’s Award for the arts and service to the community, 1999; Corazon de Justicia Award 2001(Coalicion de Derechos Humanos); Coalicion Indigina de La Frontera, Community Service Award; Feature with cover in  American Theater Magazine, 2007; One of  eight theaters, nationwide,  selected for  interview  in  Theater in America Series, 2005: Kennedy Center New American Play Award  and Rockelfeller Map Award for Electricidad,;  Special Citation,  Mayor of Mexico City for 100th performances of La Mujer Que Cayo del Cielo, Tucson Community Foundation, community service award for  Best Small non-profit organization, 2009.

And thanks to two West Coast theaters: Teatro Milagro/Miracle Theater, Portland, Oregon (Olga Sanchez); and Teatro Vision (Ana Maria Alvarado) for coming up with, in the nick of time, last minute suggestions for new plays to produce. We hope we have been helpful also.