Behind the Curtain with Elisa Gonzales: Paving the Way for Latinx Representation in Theater
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With a love for theater from a young age, Elisa Gonzales’s journey to becoming a distinguished expert in the arts started early. She was cast in her first play when she was just nine years old. “I've literally been doing this for a lifetime,” says Gonzales.
Gonzales is a Mexican-American theater artist, playwright, actor, educator, and voice, speech, and dialect coach originating from Southern California. Coming to UMass Amherst in the fall of 2020, she previously worked at Millikin University for three years as assistant professor of theater. Today, she serves as Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting in the Department of Theater.
“UMass has been amazing. The Department of Theater is just a really exciting department to be a part of,” she says. “Our students are just so hungry to learn about all the parts of theater, not just their areas of focus. There's a lot of energy in the department. And just over the past four years, it's just been really wonderful to be a part of that community and to contribute to that energy.”
Olvidados: A Mexican American Corrido
Along with her teaching, Gonzales recently produced a one woman play titled, “Olvidados: a Mexican American Corrido,”. Still in development, Gonzales began writing this piece in 2016, her grandmother being her inspiration.
“I began writing this when my grandmother wasn’t doing well health wise. It was just one of those moments that was instigated by this realization that all of these stories were going to pass along with her. I just started writing because I wanted to put her legacy down on paper.”
The project details the experiences of her family during the Repatriation, which happened in the United States, all over the country, particularly in the Southwest. It focuses on the story of her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her relationship to their stories. With the play containing original music written by Californian composer, Moises Vasquez, Gonzales explains the musicality of the show being in the form of the Corrido, a traditional Mexican song style that she describes as an oral history set to music, used to drive the story forward.
After the pandemic putting the project on a brief pause, in 2021, Gonzales got the opportunity to pick up where she left off through the generous support of the UMass Faculty Research Grant and the Department of Theater. She produced a workshop production of her piece at the University in spring of 2022.
In 2022, “Olvidados: a Mexican American Corrido,” was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Music Theatre competition, which she notes as one of the most prestigious festivals for new works that are either musicals, or plays with music.
Most recently, in 2023, Gonzales had the opportunity to continue working on her project through her residency at CitySpace in Easthampton, where she performed a staged reading of her project. She explains the importance of this residency as a way of allowing audience feedback, understanding what resonated with the audience, as well as the questions they had, what parts of the story they didn’t understand, or what they wanted more of.
“The structure of the staged reading was so incredibly useful for me to know how to move forward on the next phase of development. It is a vulnerable experience to share something that's not finished, but it's also just as valuable because when you're working on a piece like this, you're sort of in a vacuum, you know? I'm in my own head. I have my own perspective. My collaborators have their own perspective, but then just hearing the feedback, about what resonated with people was really affirming.”
Mentorship has been beneficial for Gonzales throughout this production as she shares her connection with Marissa Chibás, Cuban American writer, actress, filmmaker, and director. Gonzales’s connection with Chibás grew through the UMass Amherst Humanities and Fine Arts Faculty Network Initiative.
“She was my top choice because I've followed her work as an artist for a long time. She's an amazing and accomplished educator and actress. For me, one of the most inspiring parts of her work as an artist is her work as a solo performer.”
With the opportunity to see Chibás perform her one woman show titled, “The Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary,” Gonzales states she was both floored and inspired by her performance, the two sharing a lot between their artistic identities.
“I think just the process of working with her was really productive and inspiring because I felt like she read the play and she immediately understood who I was as an artist. She understood my voice. She understood the aesthetic of the piece. I just feel like having that shared understanding immediately created the foundation for us to work together.”
In terms of the development for this project, Gonzales describes the process as a marathon, stating, “It definitely is a long process, but I think it's rewarding and it deserves that time.”
Voice, Text, and Dialect Coaching: Enhancing the Art of Storytelling
In addition to her work in theater, Gonzales has worked for the past nine years as a voice, text and dialect coach. Starting at a young age, she realized how much she loved using her voice, which she describes what grew to be her likeness for coaching people on how to use their voice, how to bring clarity to text, and how to be specific in dialects and accents. Focusing on this during her time as a graduate student, Gonzales has received her certification in Fitzmaurice Voice Work, as well as a certification in Knight-Thompson Speechwork. Gonzales has become notable in her work, serving as one of the handful of Latina accents and text coaches in the arts.
Gonzales describes her work as a nuanced layer of storytelling within a play, noting the amount of time, work, research and preparation that goes into coaching accents and dialects for a show. Taking a dialectical approach, she bases the design of the accent or dialect she is coaching on people that align closely with the characters, then she looks at the specific pronunciations, what the articulators are doing with the accent, and the musicality.
“It teaches you to listen in different ways. I think that's one of the things that I love about it is that when somebody speaks, we may not be aware of it, but our identity, our history, our family, that is all behind the sounds that we make.”
A career defining opportunity for Gonzales was getting the opportunity to work on “Real Women Have Curves: The Musical,” just last year, where she taught four different accents to the actors, including, the Mexican, Boyle Heights, El Salvador, Guatemalan, and Guatemalan K’iche language pronunciation. The play is a musical adaption of the HBO movie by Josefina Lopez, a Mexican American playwright from Boyle Heights, a predominantly Latino community in Los Angeles. As a young artist growing up in Southern California, Gonzales grew up reading and attending Lopez’s plays, she considers herself a huge admirer of her work.
“I know the play and the movie really well, so to get the opportunity to work on this musical adaptation on the work of not only a playwright that I admire, but a musical that is truly representative, I think, of the Mexican American and Latino community in Los Angeles, it's just been really exciting to get to contribute to the level of authenticity that the director Sergio Trujillo has really been been striving for. We don't often get to see this kind of representation on Broadway stages in this way.”
Gonzales’s recent work also includes coaching accents for the UMass production of “The Hatmaker’s Wife,” as well as her work for the American Players Theater, the second largest outdoor classical theater in the United States, where she worked as their voice, text and accent coach for a one woman play titled, “Mala.” She will continue her work there this summer for a play titled, “Wolf at the Door.” Along with this, Gonzales was the voice and text coach of William Shakespears Coriolanus at Portland Center Stage, which is set to move on to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in July.
Fostering Dialogue and Community: Celebrating Latine Theatre and Performance
In addition to her creative pursuits, Gonzales recently co-curated a symposium in collaboration with Priscilla Maria Page, assistant professor of theater and dramaturg to Gonzales’s playwright, to celebrate the release of "The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance." The day-long event, to be held on the UMass Amherst campus April 8, aims to blend academic discourse and practical insights, creating a space for dialogue and shared understanding within the Latinx/Latine community in performing arts.
“One thing about this symposium that I'm particularly proud of is how it encompasses the contributions of not just Latine creators from across the country but several in western Massachusetts,” she says.
For anyone who wants to pursue a career in the arts, specifically theater and dialect coaching, Gonzales shares these words of wisdom: “Don’t be afraid to ask people that you admire things like ‘Hey, I really admire your work. And I want to learn from you. Also, keep an open mind as to what you can accomplish and make as a career in the theater and the arts.”
As for Gonzales, she believes that her ultimate goal would be getting to work on Broadway productions and on a movie or TV series someday. Gonzales also expresses her belief in working hard and bringing specificity and nuance to her work, all in the hopes that the opportunities will continue to present themselves.
“I think in time, these things will come,” she says.“These were opportunities that I dreamed of nine years ago, and now I’m doing it.”