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GALA seeks artistic leader to carry on co-founder’s legacy

By hola | Published July 18, 2023 | No Comments

For nearly half a century, GALA Hispanic Theatre has given D.C. a distinctive vision of Hispanic culture. After losing its co-founder, Hugo Medrano, who passed away in May, GALA is searching for its next artistic leader to continue Medrano’s legacy. 

Today D.C.’s Latino population is estimated at 14% of the city’s residents, according to U.S. Census data. While Washington, D.C.’s  Hispanic population is newer than those in the Southwestern U.S., Latin Americans have been creating community in the District for nearly a century, according to many residents Hola Cultura has interviewed over the years. By the 1970s, South American refugees added to the burgeoning Hispanic community, which until that time was mostly Caribbean people. 

Medrano, originally from Argentina, made a mark on our city in 1976, when he and his wife, Rebecca Read Medrano founded GALA in their home in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. In the decades since those early days, GALA’s growth can be seen in all its changes in scenery. 

At its first home, inside the couple’s Adams Morgan townhouse, the audience had to cross the stage to get to their seats. The actors used a window in the alley to enter the scenes. After outgrowing that space, Abel López, GALA’s associate producing director, says each new space grew to accommodate GALA’s growing audiences. Eventually, in 2005, they moved into their current 264-seat theater in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood.

We interviewed López to learn more about GALA’s history and its succession plans. In the following interview, he discusses the qualities GALA is looking for in its next artistic leader, its plans for the future and the timeline for making the leadership transition.

Tell us about Hugo Medrano and how GALA Hispanic Theatre got its start.

Hugo passed away very suddenly. So we’re in a moment of transitioning and grieving, and also acknowledging and appreciating the contribution he made not only to the local Latino community, but to the arts and theater community of the D.C. area and the nation. 

Hugo moved to Spain to further pursue a career in theater. Then he moved to Washington, D.C. and wanted to get involved in the cultural scene. He found, however, that at that particular time, in 1975 -‘76, there were very few opportunities for Latino artists. There wasn’t a GALA; there weren’t a lot of other spaces available to Latino artists to pursue their careers or cultural interests. 

He and Rebecca met at a children’s theater company – a bilingual company in the city. They both were cast in a children’s piece. They developed not only a professional relationship, but a personal one and got married. 

They saw a need in the community for artists to participate in the cultural life of the city. So, they got together a group of artists – poets, musicians, actors and visual artists. They put on a play for a Latino festival, and the response was so great, people asked, what are you guys doing next? They thought about it and decided to start GALA as a space for Latino artists. They began to focus primarily on theater, although GALA’s always has had a gallery in its entrance way to exhibit the work of visual artists from the Latino community. The theater became the primary focus because it could speak to the people and share the stories of Latinos from all over Latin America … told on stage in Spanish. So, that’s how GALA first started. 

The other thing which distinguishes GALA from similar efforts that were occurring across the country is because of the international nature of the city [of Washington] that drew from all over Latin America. There were Argentinians, Chileans, Bolivians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. The work that we presented was speaking to all of these audiences, recognizing that each country has its own heritage and its own cultural traditions that together define what Latino Arts is, as opposed to somebody being called Hispanic. That’s huge because [the general public] doesn’t know the distinction between the culture of Chile versus the culture of Peru. Peru has its own history and artists over generations, as does Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador.

So, what we try to present is the breadth of what the Latino arts is in the theater. That’s what motivated them and 48 years later, we’re still doing the same thing.

How has GALA changed over the years?

At its core, we haven’t changed much, the vision is pretty much the same. What’s changed is how we look at the community we serve because the community has changed. It used to be primarily Puerto Rican and Cuban and now it’s much more Central American. Our programming has changed to reflect those cultures and those people. They were actively involved, not just on stage as actors, but as writers and directors, designers and then ultimately [on] the board itself so that it’s more reflective of the community we serve, as opposed to one group of Latinos speaking for the entire community.

Each kind of Latin American country has its own culture and its own history of artists and artistry. We have a commonality in language: we all speak Spanish. Spanish is the language of our countries. In the U.S., English becomes a dominant language, whether you’re born in this country, or you come here. By the second or third generation, they’re bilingual. 

How we retain our language in the future will define how Latinos see each other in this country. The mixture of intercultural marriage among Latinos will also influence how we, people who come to the theater, define ourselves as Latino, which may be very different than we’re operating now or have operated in the past. So I think that the big question is, how do we look at the Latino community in its present form of diversity? Not only diverse history, but diverse interests and aesthetics and experience.

What are the goals and the timeline for making the leadership transition?

The transition has been ongoing for some time in the sense of what we’re trying to do to introduce people to the theater. Hugo and I used to be primarily the directors until about five or six years ago, when we started bringing in new directors from outside who were new to GALA. They were both younger and more gender diverse. So, part of that was the expansion of our reach – bringing in people of different backgrounds and histories because we wanted to introduce them to the idea of GALA and see if they could find a place at GALA in the future.

In that way, we have a pool of associate artists that have an affiliation with the community and with GALA that we look at as potential leaders of the organization itself. But we also are going to make [the job posting] publicly available to seek a wider net to draw from. We want to make sure that the opportunity is open to people from Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S. as well.

What is GALA looking for in its next artistic leader?

We have articulated some [requirements] which reflect our histories. They have to know Latin American dramaturgy and literature. Language – obviously being bilingual will be important because we not only produce plays in both languages, but we also play with bilingualism in the scripts. We purposely use both languages for artistic reasons. So, we want someone who is both knowledgeable about Latin America and the U.S., who has a curiosity about learning about other Latin Americans and their histories. And someone who understands the current climate and environmental ecology of how a nonprofit theater works in today’s world. 

We live in a country at the moment where our sense of identity is threatening to some people who are used to controlling what the system looks like. You see our legislative efforts, whether it’s the federal level, or the local or state level, to eliminate or diminish the participation of people of color in society. [GALA’s next leader] has to have an understanding of the role of arts and culture in addressing those that divide, which is not new to the arts and cultural community, but it’s a question of value. Do we value it enough that we want to encourage our curiosity, the desire to make connections with someone who’s different from you for the common good? 

It will take someone who can navigate that and negotiate the new world as it exists now. What we’re not trying to do is to hold on to the past, but have the past inform the future. We hope we’ll have [a new artistic leader] by the beginning of 2024. They may not start in January, but by January hopefully we’ll know who that person will be.

Catch GALA’s production of “Little Central America, 1984,” written and performed by Elia Arce. It will be performed July 21, 22 and 23 at All Souls Church Unitarian in Columbia Heights. 

*This story has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

— Interview & Story by María Fernanda​ Gómez

— Edited by Yaretzi Chavez

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