Theatre Stages Spanish Plays and Helps Immigrants Reconnect

Sitting at the table of the GALA Hispanic Theater in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Rebecca Read, the founding director, calls out to a 10-year-old kid who has just walked in. Jose Vierra, the son of Latin American immigrant parents residing in the neighborhood, hangs around in the theater every day after school.

“He comes for almost every event that we have in the theater,” said Read about Jose. 

Jose is among the many kids in the neighborhood to whom GALA offers not just a possible career path, but a platform to understand their own culture better. 

The GALA Hispanic Theater is one of the few bilingual theaters in Washington, D.C., that stages Spanish plays with English subtitles. Rebecca Read and her husband, Hugo, started GALA as an offshoot of the Teatro Doble, the only bilingual theater staging Spanish plays in the early 1970s. 

Called Grupo de Artistas Latino Americanos or Group of Latin American Artists (GALA), the theater now caters to an audience of Spanish speaking communities in the District, including those from surrounding neighborhoods and embassies. 

In 2005, the theater moved into its permanent home in Tivoli Theatre, which was the first building to be renovated after a fire burned down much of the Columbia Heights neighborhood during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in the 1960s.

“It has risen like a phoenix from its ashes,” said Jose Carraszuillo, the director of one of the current plays. “It reflects how the neighborhood too has evolved with time to become a center of arts.”

The theater first started by staging political plays, said Read. “That was because there were a lot of Hispanic immigrants who were fleeing from oppressive regimes in Central and South America back in the 70s,” she added.“Most of these people were artists or performers who came to the U.S. searching for the freedom to express themselves.” 

Read said she started GALA to offer these people a platform where they could not only express their opinion, but also explore their individual cultures further and  act as a bridge between different cultures.
 

Beginning with political plays in the late 70s and early 80s, GALA gradually started catering to an audience mostly comprised of immigrants who come to the United States looking for work.
 

“With the new wave of economic immigration, our plays slowly got depoliticized,” said Read. “We started staging plays for a new audience, immigrants who were not artists or performers and came here looking for work.”  
 

To this new community, GALA offered a bridge to connect to their own cultures in a foreign land. 
 

The actors in GALA come from different places, including South America and Europe.
 

The plays and movies are a mix of comedies and documentaries and generally relate to issues concerning Hispanic immigrants in the United States.

One of the currently running plays is the History of Coca Cola in Mexico directed by Jose Carrasquillo. Some of the actors in the play are from Spanish speaking communities in the surrounding neighborhoods who have worked with GALA for many years. 
 

The play directors in GALA also visit the neighborhood high schools to recruit child actors for their plays. 
Carrasquillo said that he couldn’t have wished for a better location for the GALA Theater in terms of the talent available and the audience. 
 

“The neighborhoods are changing very fast,” sai Carrasquillo. “There are a lot of young people, and the area is vibrating with energy.”
 

There is a lot of enthusiasm for the arts here from the young to the old, he said.
 

To encourage more families to come see their plays, GALA offers a ‘community night’ when tickets are sold at discounted prices. 
 

Since there are a lot of poor families in the neighborhood, the community night has become a hit, said Carrasquillo. 
GALA offers many training programs in acting for children of Hispanic immigrants in the neighborhoods. Many such young people come to GALA looking for alternate careers. 
 

“These programs have helped teach the kids some new skills that they can use besides academics,” said Read. “Most importantly, if they are doing something like this, that means they are off the streets.”
 

On being asked what her vision for GALA is, Read said that she needs more space where she can start many more activities for the kids in the neighborhood. “Doing this helps them gain a lot of self-respect, a feeling that they are good at something.” 
 

She said her dream is to have her child actors recognized by big theater groups and help them make theater a sustainable career.