Cal Poly professor to work with Marfa High School

By JD Garcia

Marfa

Marfa Live Arts’ collaboration with Marfa ISD has entered its 15th year with playwright and California Polytechnic State University assistant professor of theater Ramón Esquivel guiding students through the playwriting process this week. Esquivel said this will not be his first foray into community-driven student work programs, which includes the Playwriting Program, in which Marfa High School students spend a week with notable playwrights to write their own plays.

“Many of my plays have actually begun from community engagement programs like workshops and story circles. I’m really looking forward to meeting the students and teachers and staff there,” Esquivel said. The weeklong program, he added, will challenge the students to unearth their creative sides to create a play that may be produced on stage. “I’m looking forward to helping them believe in their own voices and their own vision to write a play that is meaningful to them as individuals,” he said. “I think that’s actually how we end up writing an interesting play: we write something that we want to see as individual people, and it ends up having a more universal appeal if it’s very specific.”

For Esquivel, the program also expands beyond the students themselves, and gives students that may not be well-versed in theater due to a lack of exposure to it a chance to discover it. “I believe that everybody deserves art. I believe everybody deserves theater, access to seeing theater, and certainly access to making theater,” he said. “Theater is an ancient art form. People have been making theater and doing ceremony and rituals before buildings even existed. I think an important part of this program is starting with that as a foundation.” Though they may not know the origins of theater, he explained, anyone can break through the walls put up either by themselves or those around them to discover what lies beyond. “Everybody has the capacity to make theater. Right now, with the play, everything starts with the imagination. You hope it might get produced, but I think the real value is just making a theater play itself. Just seeing how one’s brain—one’s imagination—can create an entire world.” The end result, he said, will show the students exactly what they can achieve using their creativity. “Every student in the school will have written a play by the end of the week. And that, in itself, is an achievement,” he said. “My hope for this week is to encourage students to dream big and create big. I think the extent of that is giving them an understanding that, whatever resources they have, whatever access they have, they are capable of doing something and asserting themselves. They are capable of bringing their individual gifts to the room. I think that’s the kind of longer-lasting impact of this program.”

Though this will be his first time visiting Marfa, Esquivel said he has had an interest in the town, especially from having family ties to West Texas. “I’ve been fascinated by Marfa for a few years,” he said. “I learned about this small town in West Texas that has this world-renowned art scene, and I put it on my list of places to go, but who knew when I’d be going to the middle of West Texas. I do have relatives in El Paso, so it seemed feasible, but then this invitation to be guest playwright arrived, I was, like, ‘Oh! Perfect.’ This is a great opportunity to go to this place I’ve been curious about and to do something that I really, really love.”

Marfa Live Arts, Esquivel added, is doing the kind of outreach he enjoys. “I’m so happy that Marfa Live Arts is connecting with the high school. In other parts of the country there’s always a danger of arts institutions being separate from the community or only targeting a particular part of it, but I like that Marfa Live Arts is going directly into the schools and bringing artists from around the country,” he said. “I’m excited to be part of this arts collaboration between a nonprofit organization and a public school.”

Ramon Esquivel is a playwright, director, dramaturg, and educator. His plays have been produced in theatres, universities, and schools across North America and internationally. 

For more information on Marfa Live Arts programs, please visit www.marfalivearts.org.

About Esquivel:

Recent commissions include Show Me the Gates of Heaven from Thrown Stone Theatre (Norwalk), Fallenstar: The Watchoverers at New Native Theatre (Minneapolis), and Watching for Sasquatch: An Environmental Play of Plays through a grant from Cal Poly. Notable recent productions include Dulce at Scottish Rite Theatre (Austin) and PCPA (Santa Maria), and The Hero Twins: Blood Race at Phoenix College, Magik Theatre (San Antonio), University of Texas at Austin, and Appalachian State University. His play Above Between Below toured Washington and Oregon schools through a collaboration between Seattle Children’s Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre, and the Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre Program. Ramon’s play Dulce won the AATE Distinguished Play Award and has been featured at the Latinx Theatre Commons Sin Fronteras Festival and the Austin Latinx New Play Festival. ZEQ, a play with music, was created through a ReImagine Grant from Theatre for Young Audiences/USA and Children’s Theatre Foundation of America and has been presented at the Austin Latinx New Play Festival and New Plays for Young Audiences at the Provincetown Playhouse, New York University. His play The Shahrazad Society won the Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award from the New England Theatre Conference. He has also been a guest artist at the University of Texas at Austin, Whitman College, Northwestern University, Appalachian State University, Phoenix College, and Central Washington University. Prior to moving into higher education, he taught English, history, drama, and creative writing in secondary schools in Washington, D.C., New York City, Vancouver, and Seattle. He is currently assistant professor of theater, playwriting, at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He received his MFA in creative writing at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, his MA in educational theater at New York University and his BA in history at Yale University.