Evelyn Cruz, MFA

Professor, Theatre

College of Arts & Sciences

Prof. Cruz's THEA 475 Theatre and Community is a non-traditional approach to creating theatre in cooperation with a community partner, which, in this case, consists of the Mixtec Garden community at Access Community Center. Students in this course and community partners are supported in experimenting within specific guidelines towards a collaborative theatre production. This includes the basics of writing for the stage, directing, acting, designing and ultimately staging. Theatre, perhaps more than any other field of study, is influenced and created by the people who inspire it. To that end, this class is a celebration of being human and explores how issues of race, privilege, gender, sexual orientation, and ablebodied perceptions inform our point of view. This class seeks to tell honest stories that advocate for a more just society. The USD students will help with different components of the ongoing story-telling project around the Mixtec community garden at Access, which may include gathering, recording, and transcribing stories from the elders about the uses of different plants grown in a milpa, which is a Mesoamerican system of growing complementary plants. This experience will expose them to communal and decolonial forms of communication through the planting and interaction with Mexican indigenous migrants in the Mixtec community in Linda Vista