Part II

First year of Graduate School Spring Semester

I returned to school for my second semester as a playwright graduate student.

Ahead, I have more classes on theory and writing, but the thing I was looking forward the most, was the stage reading of my first full-length bilingual play. The title: “NOVELA.” The premise: a Latino theatre company struggles to put together an original work as the company can’t get along and their lives start to influence that of the characters and vice versa.

While I worked on such play, a local Latino theatre company hired me as their Managing Director. This was thanks to the fact that I directed a play for them during the fall. The play is called: “Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas.” (Sex, Shame and Tears.) The play was nominated for an ariZoni, which is the state version of a Tony for theater companies. So I became the Managing Director for Teatro Bravo! And if you’re interested, you can check the website by going to the sidebar and clicking on the link: Teatro Bravo!

This semester I was a little bit busier than the first semester so I didn’t have time to feel lonely. I actually started enjoying my life away from my family and friends. And because of the stage reading, which required bilingual actors, I started to meet a new group of Latino people who started to become good friends.
The semester ended in a high note when, “The Virginia Piper Creative Writing Center” named me the winner of the 2004-2005 Writing Summer Fellowship in Playwriting. I received a cash prize of $5,000.00. Yes, my summer was going to be splendid.