Behind-the-Scenes: Meet ESTO co-creator Alex Torra
To bring Esto No Tiene Nombre to life, we worked with a team of thoughtful and talented artists. Today on the blog, meet Alex Torra, the director/co-creator of Esto No Tiene Nombre. And if you’d like to hear more from Alex, don’t miss him on Friday, October 13 at the panel discussion following the screening for Esto No Tiene Nombre!
How did you come to Philadelphia, and why do you make the city your home?
I came to Philly for college, and in my senior year, I was lucky to get cast alongside a bunch of other college-aged folks in a Pig Iron show. That then led to me stage managing their production of SHUT EYE that we then toured to Ireland, Edinburgh, and Poland (twice!). It was such an amazing experience, and I loved my Pig Iron people. After the tours, I left Philly for grad school and ended up in NYC trying to make it as a freelance director. Something didn’t feel right…I wasn't happy about how my art-life was working. Then I found out about a fellowship through the Princess Grace Foundation, and I asked Pig Iron to apply with me, and they said yes, and this wild opportunity worked out and I came back to Philly as Pig Iron’s Associate Artistic Director in Fall 2007. And then I stayed! I was just so taken by the art that was being made here, and I felt relieved that art-making here wasn't defined by competition, and I met some incredible artists who felt like real co-conspirators. I could feel traction artistically and in the community I was trying to build.
What caught your imagination about working on Esto No Tiene Nombre?
Sadly, it’s very unusual for me to be working on queer Latinx work, and that was the first thing that drew me in. I'd been dreaming up a project about queerness and Latinidad -- but it was pretty unformed, and then this came along. I met Denice, and I knew immediately that I wanted to work with her (what a charm bomb!), and I resonated so hard with the idea of building a queer heritage. Like Denice, I don't have queer Latinx elders in my life. I’ve been trying out this phrase lately: I'd like to see myself in the past. I found Denice’s quest to be really appealing, and something that mattered to me too.
When devising a new work, where do you start in moving the stories from the page to the stage?
There's a few different approaches to devising. Denice is a natural performer, and already has such skill as a performer with a real presence on stage. She's also a natural mimic -- there's an actor in there! -- she can imitate others really easily. We talked about the different ways to give voice to stories -- we talked about how she might insert herself into history or how she might embody characters or how these stories resonated off her own story and how that might be presented on stage. We explored the traditions of interview-based solo work, and then we created our own ideas around how she might represent these stories. We made a bunch of material based on these explorations, and we put that material on cards, like 3 x 5 cards, and we did a best guess at a possible order, and we got lucky because the first order worked well! It had a real emotional logic to it, and that first order became the spine of the show. It was really exciting to make a structure that didn't always signal to you where it was headed -- it, instead, was built to be experienced by Denice on stage in real time, for her to experience. We never announced where we were headed, but we hoped the audience could feel the shift she was going through.
If you really look at the structure, Denice gets closer and closer (to the material or maybe to herself)-- she's on the outside as an interviewer, then casts herself in the stories, then becomes the people, and then, she becomes herself.
Do you have a wish and a hope for the future of the show?
Wow, we really need some queer art right now, and I hope this show can tour. We queer folks need ways to feel strength and connection and history, and Denice's words and presence speak to a lot of people and is so powerful. I really think this show should tour all over -- there are people in every community who could benefit from encountering this work.
When you're not doing work with IJ, where can we find your work? And what are you excited about working on next?
I'm the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Team Sunshine Performance.. Right now, we’re developing THE GREAT AMERICAN GUNSHOW, and it will happen in communities across the country. In this work, we interview people about guns/gun culture, safety, and community, and we take the responses and shape them into a performance for that community. We had the pilot performance in central PA last year, with the Philadelphia version premiering in 2025. I'm also currently working on a bananas 24-year project called THE SINCERITY PROJECT, where the same artists make an installment of the show every 2-3 years. Installment #5 -- our 10-year anniversary -- happens December 2024. I've also got collaborations with Shavon Norris, Sarah Sanford, and Eli Nixon coming up in the near future.
