Courtesy MACONDO WRITER PROFILE
Rupert Reyes
by Shin Yu Pai
Rupert Reyes is the Artistic Director of Teatro Vivo, an Austin-based bilingual theater accessible to all theater audiences and artists. A graduate of the University of Texas Department of Theater, Rupert’s playwrighting credits include the Petra Plays (“Petra’s Pecado”, “Petra’s Cuento” and “Petra’s Sueño”) and “Vecinos.” His plays have been produced in cities throughout the U.S., including San Antonio, Houston, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and Minneapolis.
Please tell me about the history of Teatro Vivo, which you founded in Austin with your wife Jo Ann. Were there other existing company models that you looked to in establishing your company? How has the company and mission of Teatro Vivo evolved over the past 11 years? What have been some of the milestones and markers of a decade’s worth of programming?
Back in 1974, Dr. Jorge Huerta, founder of Teatro de la Esperanza (based in San Francisco), was at University of Texas at Austin and had been scheduled to speak at the Student Union. He talked about the Chicano theater movement and showed a short movie about a play. We were hooked. In fact, the playwright for that short play later became my best friend and I was best man at his wedding. By the time Dr. Huerta left, we had formed our own teatro.
Teatro Vivo was founded in January of 2000, making us officially, 11-years-old now. Jo Ann (Carreon-Reyes) and I had been on the board of another successful teatro in Austin. When the board decided that they wanted to pursue large venues and bigger budget productions, we made the decision to continue to work with the smaller venues in town. We liked the intimate settings of the small stages and contact with the audiences. The first play we produced was the second in the Petra Play Trilogy, “Petra’s Cuento” at McCallum Performing Arts Theater. We had great audiences and realized that we had a pretty strong fan base.
Teatro Vivo is a continuation of the style of theater that Jo Ann and I embraced in college. It is based on the Teatro Chicano movement of the 60s and 70s. Our initial productions were true to our mission to bring bilingual theater to Austin audiences that reflect the heart and soul of the Latino community: To open a window into our culture for all. The simultaneous use of Spanish and English was used to achieve this goal. We are heavily influenced by Luis Valdez of Teatro Campesino, and Jorge Huerta and Rodrigo Duarte-Clark of Teatro de la Esperanza. Rodrigo has written numerous plays but is probably better known for the one-woman shows he wrote for the actress Ruby Nelda Perez, “Rositas Jalapeño Kitchen” and “Rosita and the Day of the Dead.”
Vivo stayed really true to its mission until the fall of 2008. We wanted to expand as a theater company and most of the scripts we were getting were either all English or all Spanish. Also the subject matter didn’t appeal to what we thought were relevant to our community or us. We were sent a script that had a great story; great characters and came with a ready-made PR machine. The latter not being a reason for producing it. It had just won the Borderlands Playwrighting Competition in Arizona. When we learned that they were not going to produce it, we jumped on it. “Fantasmaville” by Raul Garza (owner of TKO, a marketing firm) was a big departure from our usual work in two main ways. One, it was written for a younger audience. And two, it was all in English. The wonderful thing about the script was that it took on many issues at once. It looked at mixed-race relationships both in the past and in the present, gentrification, lost youth, and it turned the mirror on us, Latinos, to examine our own prejudices.
This play also had original music written and recorded by David Garza. It garnered two important nominations for company from local awards group, the B. Iden Payne Awards. One for acting, Best Ensemble and the other for best original score, David’s music. In 2007, we also premiered my script, “Vecinos” at the new Mexican American Culture Center in Austin and received a nomination for Best Script by the same organization. In 2008, one of the scripts we produced received a nomination for Best New Script by the Critic Table, for Teatro’s production of “Las Amandas” by Michael Mares Mendoza (husband of Macondo member Celeste Guzman Mendoza). We have had other actors and actress nominated for acting awards in previous productions.
Other milestones: I really have to say that the fact that we are still around is one. We are recognized at an arts leader in the Latino community. We have been invited to join the New Works Community, a newly formed group dedicated to producing new works and promoting the artists that create them, we have been asked to join the Community Council at the University of Texas Department of Theater and Dance and I was honored by Austin Community College as one of the top 25 influential Latinos in Austin. This award came via public balloting conducted by the college.
While we usually don’t get feedback on this, I know that we have launched many acting passions in several community members. When we hold auditions, we don’t look at resumes. We take what the person brings to the audition and many times the raw talent that walked in leaves having grown and developed into a real artist. One of the acting awards that I mentioned above was given to a first time performer in one of our plays. I am a teacher by training and these moments are the ones that I treasure the most.
How does Teatro Vivo fit into the overall theatre scene in the City of Austin? Have there been collaborations with other companies? Audience sharing?
One of our most successful collaborations was the revival of “La Pastorela.” This play had been performed in Austin several years in a row with different groups taking it on. Then the building that housed it was torn down. Two years passed and no one had come forward to present it. We gathered with various artists, visual, musicians and other theater artists and formed Austin Latino Theater Alliance (ALTA). We oversaw the production for two years in 2004 and 2005. We are no longer part of this production but it has continued ever since. We also collaborate with other groups as well. We collaborated with a company, Different Stages that wanted to produce “Marriage is Forever,” a bilingual play by Edith Villarreal. We shared marketing, actors and funds to produce this show.
Presently we are working with a gathering of small venue and non-venue theater companies to write a grant to formalize what we are calling the New Works Community. We have received $90,000 research grant from the Mellon Foundation. Jo Ann and I are working with Ron Berry, director of the Fusebox Festival in a cluster for community engagement. We encourage our audiences to attend other theaters. We send out announcements on our email list for other companies as well. Until recently, we sponsored an individual artist who continues to write and perform, Natalie Goodnow. We had to stop when insurance requirements changed and our company could not underwrite other groups or individuals. But we did help artists find someone who could insure them.
You recently performed the show “Route 307,” about your work as a former letter carrier. Please tell me about the writing of that play. [You shared a monologue on letter carrying at the Macondo reading – was this excerpted from your longer play?] How long did it take you to develop and what are the major stories and themes embedded within that text?
Most of my co workers at the Post Office knew I was a playwright and actor and many encouraged me to write a play about the service. I had wanted to but was still too close to write something that might be objective. I got a chance to take advantage of the early out that the USPS was offering and left two years ago. I made a schedule to begin writing the first week that I began my retirement in January and I did. I wrote the first version in about a month. I read it to an intern we had at the time and she gave me some very good feedback. I rewrote the play a second time by August, and then read it to Jo Ann. She too gave me some feedback and I rewrote it again. I invited some friends to come hear the third version and one of the comments really struck a nerve. The comment was that it was not very revealing about me. Since I was the one actor, they said they felt like I was dancing around the edges of what I really felt. I went back and rewrote a very autobiographical fourth version. No one ever heard that one.
About 21 years ago, I left Jo Ann and my kids. I began to date a woman who also worked for the Postal Service. It lasted about a month. The fourth version was very personal, as it was about my realization one day that I didn’t know where I was. I was having dinner with the woman and her kids and I got up to get something out of the refrigerator. I had put a picture of my three kids on the door. I paused and looked at them. I turned to look at the people sitting at the table. I really thought that this was all a dream. That I was still with my family, but I was dreaming that all I had done was not real. But here I was standing looking at the picture and then the people at the table. I remember having the thought, “What the fuck have I done?” I finished dinner, packed up and went to stay with my brother. Jo Ann and I began to talk three weeks later and were back together within three months. The fourth version takes place in that moment that I am looking at the pictures. It was way too serious.
Version five was also very personal but takes a lighter look at a letter carrier on his last day. That is the version that I read from at Macondo. I performed it this year at Frontera Fest and got voted as one of the five Best of the Week shows.
All of the versions have one central theme and that is love. All of the plays explored love and its many forms. Unconditional love, people in abusive relationships that don’t leave, dog love and I mean real dogs, elderly couples, blind love, and unrequited love. All of the stories are true. I have changed the names and addresses for obvious reasons. I did have a retired letter carrier at the show in February and he told me that he had had almost the same experiences. I think all postal workers have had similar experiences.
How and when did you get into acting, writing and performing? Did this career evolve simultaneously with your long career in the postal service? What have been some of the highlights of your acting career?
I can remember at a very young age, probably six, enjoying performing for people. My aunts would give me a nickel to dance for them when they played their 45's. They would then pick up steps from watching me. I just liked dancing. I also loved stories. My mother died when I was seven and I lived with my grandmother for seven years before my Dad remarried. She and my grandfather were tenant farmers. We did have a TV but before bed, we would all gather in one room to pray the rosary and then she would tell us stories. I would repeat these to my younger brothers and one sister. Then I would make up my own.
I loved to go to church and watch the priest and the alter boys “perform.” My older brother was an altar boy and trained me as soon as I was old enough. I loved it. The ritual was in Latin so I always thought that I was the only one who knew the lines. I stayed an altar boy well into high school. In junior high, I had begun to explore the literary events and enjoyed the competition. What I also enjoyed was the opportunity to travel if you competed. High school exposed me even more to speech giving and finally my senior year, we had a theater program. I stayed after school one day to wait for a girl I liked who was rehearsing. I had won a speech contest the year before but had not really gotten interested in acting. The lead in the play quit after an argument with the teacher and the girl, in front of everyone, said that I would step in. I did. The teacher was so impressed she asked me to do another play and to commit to the one-act play contest in the spring. I said yes to all and our production made it all the way to state. I decided that I wanted to teach theater and that is what I majored in at UT Austin.
The writing always came naturally. I can’t remember any one event, but it seemed that I was always asked to write for events. When we started our teatro in college, I was the main writer since I was the theater major. I can’t say that I enjoyed it at that time or felt that it was a calling. When I got my first job after graduating, it was teaching theater to Latino kids who had problems with drugs, alcohol, or sniffing paint. There were no scripts for them so I wrote them. It worked out great. I left teaching to go work with Teatro de la Esperanza, a collective writing company. Still, I didn’t consider myself a playwright. It was after I left the group that Rodrigo Duarte Clark called and asked me to write a play. It was 1993, and I had left the group 10 years earlier. He commented that he had always liked my contributions and he wanted to see what I could do with a play based on the idea of an appearance by the Virgen de Guadalupe in present day. “Petra’s Pecado” was born and won a competition that Esperanza was having that year. It continues to be one of my most popular plays. It was then that I realized that there were more plays inside of me and that I should continue to write. I was still a letter carrier but I can tell you, that my heart warmed whenever I got to call myself a writer. The USPS gave me security to develop my writing, my acting, directing and producing. It really was just a job. I realized that rehearsing and performing at night gave me the strength to show up for work everyday at the post office.
Please tell be about the recent sci-fi film that you have been shooting on-location with grad students from the UT Austin film program.
This is a great project. I say, “is” since I still have some voice over to record and one “love” scene to film. Since it was a student film, the director only had the equipment for so long and didn’t finish filming before he had to return everything. We’re waiting for an opening.
The project is called “Gliders of Arco-du-santi.” It is set in the future where androids operate the windmills that generate electricity. Their human supervisors visit them once a year to check up on operations and stuff. I have known this same android for 30 years and on this visit, she asks the impossible. She has fallen in love with a human in a town that no longer exists on the grid. She asks me to help her escape. This is a crime punishable by death. The android uses my love for my now deceased wife to convince me that love should be allowed to flourish no matter what the risks. I help her escape and all goes bad. I am badly burned by the sun’s rays (you cannot venture outside without a special suit.) She does find her lover and I am sentenced to life in a coma. Only she alters my brain waves to let me live in a fantasy world where my wife is still living.
I don’t usually do student films. The script was the most perfect role that I have ever had the chance to perform. I audition and will admit that I was on edge hoping that I would get it. Usually when you audition, you learn to forget about it as soon as you walk out. You are either going to get the role or not. We filmed mostly at UT Austin but did get a chance to travel to West Texas desert to film the sand dunes. The director, Jaime Cano, was great. The cast and crew was top notch. This is not usually the case for student films. Graduate student films, I guess, should be right up there with the professional productions.
My fifteen minutes of fame are my roles in Office Space, (the waiter at the end of the movie) and Ms. Congeniality (a security guard). The latter allowed me to have a dream come true. My two favorite actors have always been Sean Connery and Sir Michael Caine. The security guard role was with Benjamin Bratt and Michael Caine. He was amazingly generous. After we shot the scene, he came to me and thanked me. I have also been on the cutting room floor. One of the best scenes I have ever filmed was for the movie, The Alamo, shot mostly here in Austin. The wonderful part of being cut was that I got a personal letter from John Lee Hancock, the director. (Also the director for The Blind Side, that won Sandra Bullock her Academy Award.)
Have the tools and skills that you acquired in Agnes Chavez’s digital storytelling workshop carried over into your creative practice? Have you created any new digital stories that you might like to share as a part of this profile/interview?
I have edited some of Teatro Vivo’s archival footage for grants. I help Jo Ann, who does publicity with some promotional web videos. I did the writing, filming, performances, and editing. I work mostly in i-Movie but have applied a lot of the skills I learned in class. I did a story for Jo Ann almost immediately after the workshop and have been getting ready to do one on my granddaughter Amelia. I have gotten some great footage from my i-Phone, which is easier to use than my video camera. Pictures are also great. I have also been thinking of doing digital blogs with photos, video, and music. I was writing a blog for Teatro Vivo but was thinking of doing one with the same idea as a story, but more editorial.
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