In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the Department of Theatre and Dance spotlights undergraduate student playwrights Melanie Garcia and Simon Garcia Parra Jr., who are the authors of To Kill a Certain Painter and No Que No?, two one-act plays that premiere as part of Written and Directed By. 

In Melanie Garcia’s play, a group of crazed scientists are attempting to build a time machine in order to go back in time and kill a certain painter (yes, it’s the one you’re thinking of) before he can do anything wrong.

“The ethnicity of two of my main characters, Alma and Amir, are both important to their characters and the plot itself, though it may not be exceedingly obvious how important it is at just a glance,” said Melanie Garcia, a third-year theatre and dance major. “There is hardly any representation of Latino scientists (or any representation of Latino people as a whole) in the media, so I wanted to be sure to include my culture in this play, as it is something that is incredibly important to me and to those who share my same heritage.”

“The experience of trying to live up to the expectations that your family has set for you when you are a child of immigrants is a shared experience of millions around the world, and that is part of why Alma rushes into everything she does: she wants to be sure that she can live up to her parents’ expectations of her and her work. Her parents sacrificed everything in order to give her a better life, and she wants to make sure that she is living that ‘better life’ (more for the sake of her parents than for herself). This is a very common experience among children of immigrants, and I wanted to be able to show that in a play that isn’t necessarily centered around the subject of ethnicity.”

Simon Garcia Parra Jr.’s play focuses on an actor who walks into an audition room and must grapple with the decision of whether or not he wants to portray a stereotype.

“I would say that there were two reasons why I wrote this play,” said Simon Garcia Parra Jr., a third-year theatre and dance major. “The first and biggest is that I wanted to have at least one play while being a student here that my parents could understand.  And the second was that I wanted to see people in college that look like me on stage because I know that it’ll inspire someone in the audience to think they can be on stage too.”

Melanie Garcia’s play will be directed by undergraduate student Brianna Thomsett while Simon Garcia Parra Jr.’s one-act will be directed by doctoral student Diego Mitotli Martínez-Campos. 

Written and Directed By opens on Oct. 30 in the Wyatt Pavilion Theatre. The program of new student one-act plays performs Oct. 30 and 31 and Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 1 and 2 at 2 p.m. Free and open to all. 

Content warning: Adult language, themes and situations.