César Jaquez of SIN MUROS LATIN X FESTIVAL at STAGES HOUSTON

SIN MUROS is A LATINX THEATER FESTIVAL that Stages has been organizing for seven years now. It includes many different activities and runs from Thursday May 23 to Sunday May 26. Broadway World writer Brett Cullum had the chance to sit down and chat with Cesar Jaquez, who runs the festival with a committee behind him.

Brett Cullum: Tell me what the SIN MUROS festival really is. Just if I walk in and I don’t know, what is it?

César Jacques: This year marks our seventh year, and SIN MUROS was originally intended simply to feature readings of plays by local and Texas authors. But now it’s become a big festival where we have performances from the LatinX community. We have an art market. And we have a salsa convention on Sunday. All of this happens between readings of the play. It’s just become a big LatinX festival that we do, which makes it a better annual experience.

Brett Cullum: What is a salsa congress?

César Jacques: So the salsa convention is led by one of our committee members, and after the Sunday show or the play reading, everyone comes out to the lobby and teaches us how to salsa. They connect you with people you’ve never met before and teach you how to salsa. And then, at the end, we all dance together, and it’s a great moment of community building. It’s scary at first. When I first did it freshman year, I was like, I don’t want to dance in front of everyone, but this is such a great way to end it all. It’s so happy. And we love ending the festival like that. We’ve been doing this for about three years now. So it’s been really cool.

Brett Cullum: And you only run for three days and three nights, right? It’s May 23-26.

César Jacques: Yes, three nights. So it’s a short festival, but you need months and months in advance to prepare for it. So it’s crazy to see how fast it’s going.

We believe this festival is truly for playwrights and artists so that they can grow, improve their work and hone their craft.

Brett Cullum: Okay, and how do you attract people to the readings?

César Jacques: We have published a notice of hearing. We, the committee, therefore propose directors. We choose the plays first, then the directors, and once the directors are in place, we send casting throughout Houston and recruit local artists. We get a lot of artists from Texas and all over the region. But we generally try to focus on Houston-based artists.

We put them all in a spreadsheet. So this year we have 88 actors, and we’re telling the directors, okay, go at it like you have two choices. If you fail to get your first pick, you’ll probably get your second, or you may have to share with another play reading. So all directors go. And on this Google Drive. And they watch all the auditions, and they choose, and then we do our best to make sure they get their first choice, or as close as those two. And then we usually use all the artists that audition, we usually try to find them. We either use them as understudies or we ask them, “Hey, we didn’t need you as an actor this year, but we’d love for you to come.” So, would you like to become a production assistant? Would you like to become a manager? We try to allow everyone who wishes to participate in this festival.

Brett Cullum: What’s the calendar ? Is there somewhere I can go see this?

Cesar Jaquez: Yes, so you can go online. And you can see the calendar. Everything is here. It tells you what’s happening, what time, what meetings are happening, and what time the performances are happening.

https://stageshouston.com/sin-muros-a-latinx-theater-festival/

On opening night, we invite the community to celebrate with us. So we have an opening night for the community. We have food and drinks for them.

Brett Cullum: Are the parts in Spanish? Or are some of them in English, maybe a mix of English and Spanish?

César Jacques: Yes, so most of our pieces are bilingual. And so we have a piece this year with a bit of Portuguese because we believe in it. Truly telling a Latinx story or having the diaspora of a Latino actor. We should not focus only on the Spanish language in a singular place. So we look at plays that are performed in different languages, like Portuguese, for example.

We’re just having a good time. So we truly believe that the work resonates with you and the art resonates with you, and you will understand.

SIN MUROS came to Stages from a local artist who now lives in Los Angeles, but he was originally from Houston. I love the festival so much. I love the community and how it has built a community.

There’s been a lot of repeat people, you know, they’ve been coming for years. Many customers say: “I’ve been coming since the first SIN MUROS and I love this festival so much.” So they start bringing people. The implementation was slow. But we are seeing it slowly but surely. And I can’t wait to see where it goes in the next few years. I hope it gets bigger and bigger every year, and it gets bigger and bigger, and we add more things.

Brett Cullum: You know I didn’t even ask that, “SIN MUROS”, what does that mean?

César Jacques: It means “without walls,” which is a perfect way to describe us.

Make sure there are no boundaries. You know that people don’t have anything blocking their path to art, and that’s how I like to see it as if there are no obstacles to overcome to come and see this festival that we are doing . We intentionally made the tickets $5 because we wanted to. We want everyone to be able to see this, what’s the point of having this festival if we make it extremely expensive, and no one and no one can buy tickets for it?

We just want to make sure people can come. So we’re trying to make sure that we don’t create any barriers for you to come and see us. You can pay $10 for a festival pass. You will receive a lanyard indicating all access points, and for $10 you can see all the shows for the entire weekend. Come back as often as you like, and if you just want to see one reading, it’s a $5 ticket.

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