Video: University of Texas Profiles Isaac Gomez and 'The Women of Juarez' (Cohen New Works Festival, 2013)

from its feature on nine 2013 graduates:

For Isaac Gomez, theatre is not merely entertainment, it’s a life-changing event.

I believe through theatre you can change the world.”

The El Paso native created a new work called “The Women of Juarez,” which debuted during the Cohen New Works Festival this year. The play, which incorporates music and dance along with different kinds of storytelling methodologies, shares stories about women who have firsthand experience with the violence and murder of women in the border city of Juarez.

“Our goal is to give a space for the stories to be told, uninterrupted and unaltered,” says Gomez, who recently won a George H. Mitchell Award for Academic Excellence.


The first person in his immediate family to leave El Paso for college, Gomez was drawn to theatre at the age of 10. He acted in community theatre and school plays in El Paso and did some playwriting, but his perspective about theatre has evolved over time. One of his goals is to apply theatre studies to accomplish positive social change and activate a sense of civic duty in people.


“[We want] for people to leave the space and continue to tell the stories” of the women of Juarez. “That’s how you spread awareness,” he says.


Gomez, a double major in theatre and dance and journalism, plans to move to Chicago or New York and continue his work as a “theatre practitioner and scholar.”

THE WOMEN OF JUAREZ by Isaac Gomez, Cohen New Works Festival at University of Texas, March 25 - 28, 2013

presents






by Isaac Gómez, Bianca Sulaica and others

March 25: 8pm
March 26: 8pm
March 27: 8:30pm
March 28: 5:30pm

All performances for "The Women of Juarez" will be performed on the B. Iden Payne Stage in the F. Loren Winship Drama Building at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Before the war on drugs took precedence in our border country of Mexico, Ciudad Juarez had a bigger problem. Told through an ensemble of Latina women, The Women of Juarez explores the ways in which the stories of the women of Juarez – the missing and the lost; the murdered and the ones left behind – are honored and told in unconventional and untraditional ways."

As part of the Cohen New Works Festival presented by the University Co-op (www.coopnwf.org/www.facebook.com/events/545755898779591 for more information), "The Women of Juarez" hopes to honor the real testimonios of the real women in Juarez and the stories they have to tell.

Challenging the ways in which these stories are often told in books, film, and scholarship, our project activates an ensemble of ten latinas, a devised/collaborative script that doesn't follow a traditional "playwrighting" format, and a process that pulls from movement/gestures, real testimonies, generated text, public record, Mexican folkclore, and Mexican music; the world in this play is a complicated one and does not fit in the same scope a "traditional" play does.

Producer and Co-Writer Bianca Sulaica says, "For these Latina women, it's about recognizing yourself in these pictures of these missing women. And as a Latina woman, how you identify knowing that these women who are being targeted much because they are women and what they look like, and how you can related to being a possible victim because of what you look like."

Dramaturg Madilynn Garcia says, "This is a story that is going to change people. And I know it, because it's already changed me. These are stories that aren't told and having this space and this place for the stories of these women is so very important."

Featuring: Karen Alvarado, Dana Arismendez, Jenefer de la Fuente, Briana Garcia, Estrella Gonzalez, Lisa Veronica Martinez, Christen Perez, Graciela Reyna, Karen Rodriguez, and Bianca Sulaica.

Production Team: Isaac Gomez, Bianca Sulaica, Madilynn Garcia, Victoria Solorio, Melinda Wright, Mose Brown, Moses Park

"The Women of Juarez" will premiere as part of the Cohen New Works Festival presented by the University Co-op March 25-29, 2013.

All performances for "The Women of Juarez" will be performed on the B. Iden Payne Stage in the F. Loren Winship Drama Building at the University of Texas at Austin.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)