Innovator

Congratulations to veteran theatre and film director, Jose Luis Valenzuela, who has been awarded the 2024 Gordon Davidson Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

Both Jose Luis and I worked under Gordon Davidson, the founding director of the Mark Taper Forum at different times in our careers.

The groundbreaking Latino Theatre Initiative housed at the Taper was the brainchild of Jose Luis and Evelina Fernandez, who ran it before Diane Rodriguez (RIP) and I took over from 1995-2005. There would be no LTI, hundreds of Latinx readings, workshops, commissions and productions without Jose Luis.

As Artistic Director of the Latino Theater Company, the 40-year-old ensemble that operates the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC) in downtown L.A., LTC has produced over 150 plays since acquiring the space in 2007.

Among LTC’s powerful initiatives include the Encuentro Festival, a recurring transnational theater festival featuring companies from the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean; National Latinx Theater Initiative, which has distributed over 9 million to over 50 Latino theater programs across the U.S. and Puerto Rico; the Circle of Imaginistas, a 5-year commissioned writers circle for early and mid-career Latinx playwrights; and a deeply affecting large scale public spectacle, the annual holiday pageant, ‘La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin’, a collaboration with Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, celebrating its 21st year.

Mentored by the Norwegian director, Stein Winge (RIP), Jose Luis is a UCLA Distinguished Professor Emeritus and served as head of the MFA directing program at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television.

I met Jose Luis in the early 1980’s but for some strange reason we didn’t sit to a meal to break bread until just a couple of years ago. A meal thirty plus years in the making!

In the time since, I have joined the Imaginistas; sat on the panels to help pick the Encuentro; the National Theatre Initiative; had my play, ‘The Travelers’, produced in a season; and enjoyed getting to know Jose Luis, Evelina, Sal Lopez, Geoff Rivas, Lucy Rodriguez, and the hardworking members of this company in a more meaningful way. We have sat talking history, introducing ourselves through our work, showing art, talking (and talking) about new plays and all their possibilities.

In community everything is possible. An award like this helps amplify our leaders, connects the history of a movement to each other, and affirms our essential role in the American experience.