Membership Spotlight – May 2024

We are always working on a multitude of projects here at Teatro SEA!  We have our shows, our in school performances and residencies, our SEA Kid’s Network on Youtube, as well as our festivals. Coming up next, we have an Off-Broadway limited run of our highly acclaimed show The Crazy Adventures of Don Quixote at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. This show is a gorgeous musical giving Miguel Cervantes’s book a modern twist featuring magnificent puppets, a stunning score, and of course a bilingual script.

With the work we’re doing to get ready for our upcoming show, The Crazy Adventures of Don Quixote, I’ve been very inspired by Miguel Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. It’s a story that focuses on a dreamer and I believe that working in TYA, you need to be a dreamer. But what always inspires me no matter what is my son.

We are getting ready to take Teatro SEA to Cuba to perform a new adaptation of our show about Purá Belpré, The Journey of Purá Belpre’s Tales, at the Matanzas International Puppet Festival. We are also presenting our Bilingual TYA Theater Books at the ASSITEJ World Conference.  Whenever we are able to take Teatro SEA international, it’s always an incredible opportunity to enrich the lives of the artists there and their community.

When I was in the 3rd grade, a TYA troupe came to my school in Puerto Rico. Right after I went home and told my mom, “this is what I want to do.” Ever since then, I have been trying to create that same spark that I had as a child in every child that we work with and have in our audiences.

Jose Lopez was the puppet master of Teatro SEA for 30 years, starting with us from the very beginning in Puerto Rico. We collaborated on the countless puppets, costumes, scenery he designed as well as the illustrations for many of my books. I loved every project I worked on with him.

I have many, many mentors-all of which opened doors for latino theater makers here in New York and Puerto Rico. Leopoldo Santiago Lavandero, is the father of educational theater in Puerto Rico. He started the theater program in public schools in Puerto Rico, founded a theater school and his work has been a constant inspiration to me. Miriam Colón was a pioneer of hispanic theater here in New York by founding The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and creating a space for us off broadway.

You can always follow Teatro SEA’s work on our Instagram and Facebook as well as our website (@teatrosea/teatrosea.org). You can also follow me on my personal page on Instagram, @drmanuelmoran.

We are about a week away from starting rehearsals for our new show: La Maleta de Maebelle, a heartwarming bilingual TYA/ puppet play inspired by the cherished picture book Maebelle’s Suitcase by Tricia Tusa. The world premiere is on June 14th at The VORTEX in Austin, TX and it runs through the 29th (in case you can make it)!

Glass Half Full Theatre recently received an email with student feedback from Portland Ovations/Westbrook PAC in Portland, ME after they saw Cenicienta (during the national tour that wrapped up last month) and it FUELED me with Joy. Three responses came from students in the South Portland School District—every 1st and 2nd grade student in the South Portland School District attended the 10am performance and received free books. A first grade class sent us art of their favorite parts of the performance, and 2 second grade classes wrote thank you letters to our lead/solo performer S. Mariah Fonseca! I loved seeing their drawings and reading about their favorite moments in the show. Quite a few were so happy that the show was bilingual and that the main character spoke Spanish just like them. (insert happy teary eyes and hearts around my face here).

Oooh, I’m super excited about a TYA / puppet play we are starting to put together that will be workshopped in 2025 and have its world premiere in 2026. It’s currently titled, The Princess and the Sea. We are inspired by the origin story of Guatemalan worry dolls and on the true event of how the Mayan people handled historic sea level changes by draining the lands and making wetland farms (similar to rice paddy agriculture). It will provide an example of good models of earth/human relations from Mayan history that could influence the next generation’s approach to the climate crisis.

There is nothing better than seeing those A-ha! moments, the “hey, that’s like me!” moments, and the all encompassing thrill of live theatre performed in front of and for children who are THERE, present, ready to absorb it all, to participate fully, to be honest and raw in their comments/critiques/cheers, to take the message and run with it or to take the message and fold it in themselves for safe keeping, for future use, for a better world.

Specifically, I really enjoy making/performing bilingual TYA because there are so so so many times that children are in awe that the main character in the play is speaking Spanish (like them!) or are surrounded by things that they have in their homes or doing things they’ve done with their families, etc. It’s a beautiful gift and honor to let children know that Theatre for them IS available, and that they are every bit as capable and worthy of enjoying it/getting it/creating it.

I loved working with Paul Pinon on the original music for our (not TYA, but maybe more like ages 13+) production Yamel Cucuy, the story of a girl on the precipice of adulthood, contending with the physical and metaphysical violence of borders, who is being hunted by immigration agents while simultaneously being haunted by specters from Mexican folklore. When composing original music for Yamel Cucuy, Paul drew from his influences as a professional percussionist and drummer by trade using older, traditional folkloric and indigenous sounding music and then combined that with the spookier themes of the show (and the main character’s love for horror movies) with modern horror scoring synthesizer-based sound and then somehow effortlessly melded it all together to create the perfect soundscape for the show.

Okay okay okay, this is so tough to just name ONE! I want to mention my first mentor, David Yeakle (Tongue and Groove Theatre), who introduced me to the magical world of physical theatre and how fun (and precise!) it can be. As for how and why I’m still making theatre, I want to give shoutouts to Caroline Reck (my Co-Pro AD of Glass Half Full Theatre)  and Connor Hopkins (Trouble Puppet Theater). This power couple (they’re going to cringe at that title) are not just amazing theatre makers and doers, but humans! They have taught me so much about Theatre and all its components and how incredibly crucial theatre is for societal growth and reflection.

They can email me at: Gricelda@GlassHalfFullTheatre.com.

I have had the AMAZING opportunity to be one of the resident teaching artists with the Boston Lyric Opera as part of their Create Your Own Opera Program! This school year, I’ve enjoyed multiple residencies in PK-12 grade classrooms all around the greater Boston to explore, create, compose, and perform original operas. The aim of the program is to demystify and break open this traditionally/stereotypically cloistered and “grown up” art form, centering youth voices and choices, and as always, lots of play and silliness. My favorite project from this semester has been devising with Pre-K, K1, and K2 inclusion classrooms to create the Little Red Hen Cycle: three entirely unique, youth-driven, linguistically-diverse Opera for the Very Young adaptions of the classic Little Red Hen story!

After my experience at the 2024 TYA/USA conference in Atlanta (my hometown!), I CANNOT stop thinking and dreaming about the awesome work that is being done at Kennesaw State University with The Seedling: An Immersive Family Experience. Nature, with all of her invitations for play and discovery, is the backbone of my practice as a playwright and artist, and getting a taste of the magic that they’ve brought to my neighbors in Kennesaw gets my gears going a million miles an hour. I’m moving back down to Georgia soon, and I cannot wait to see, experience, and play with this work in action.

Through my thesis process, I just kicked off the Play at Play Project with my fellow Boston pal, Kylie Fletcher, a multiphase TVY adventure that works to explore the various ways that we can center young people throughout every phase of TVY development. With my background in early childhood education and accessible education, I’m constantly surrounding by rambunctious, creative, awe-inspiring, young folks, so it has been my dream for a while now to let them take the helm in and outside the classroom, theatre, and rehearsal space. Kylie and I led an after school residency with some of my preschool drama students delving into the dramaturgy surrounding trees, decomposition, and the forests that we love so deeply, and began to devise with emerging TVY artists based off of our dramaturgical discoveries!

Woah. At its core- childhood is important! As my Atlanta idol, Olivia Aston Bosworth says: “babies are my business”. Youth is one of the few universal experiences that humans share. It either is actively happening or has happened to everyone. As a TYA/TVY practitioner, I strive to democratically collaborate with young people to open the doors for liberation and social change. It is my goal to be an adult co-conspirator that values the voices of the young people that I collaborate with. Inspired by my play/outdoor/accessibility-infused childhood, I believe that excellent TYA is right at the intersection of access, exploration, and play—inherently full of artistic value. Theatre skills and play skills at their cores are the practices of connection, expression, and communication. The facilitation of these practices, particularly through an accessible lens, invites participants to not only see themselves in the worlds that they are playing in, but to also make sense of the world at large.

Working with Kylie on the Play at Play Project has been SO rewarding. As I am from the Southeast, and Kylie from the Northwest, we have meshed so well in our different areas of expertise and our shared love of incorporating outdoor education, place-based devising, and TVY. I also was over the MOON to collaborate with Lily Lipman, Shanna Sorrells, and Madeline Geier to present at the 2023 TYA/USA conference in Arizona about the intersections of access work and TYA. They truly live and practice by the mantra of “nothing about us without us”. As an early career artist, I am so honored to learn and collaborate with so many artists that I have admired for years as a student.

Good my goodness. I’ve met SO many wonderful comrades through TYA/USA. As I just very recently hung up my graduation gown, hood, and cap (which were, of course, adorned with googly eyes! What else would you do with those silly sleeves?), Emerson folks are right at the top of my heart. Joshua Rashon Streeter threw me into the wonderful pool of TYA over the past three years, and I am so grateful for his mentorship, feedback, and shared enthusiasm. I’ve also been able to experience the magic of TVY at my hometown Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, and I am so excited to continue to learn from and follow folks like Samantha Provenzano and Olivia Aston Bosworth. I’m so proud to be a Georgian, and Southern-centered TYA has shaped me into the person that I am today, and will continue to be as I plant roots.

In the digital realm, I hang out at @misswhittensclassroom on instagram, and we can keep in touch through www.juliawhitten.com! However, you can soon find me in and around the Southeast, but I’m always willing to explore!